Life Skills

Our Life Skills training takes place at Grove Cottage @ Thirst Café, which is open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 10am-2pm, during term time.

(Unfortunately our Life Skills training is not currently running due to Covid Restrictions)

Grove Cottage’s Life Skills sessions cover a wide range of lifestyle topics such as cooking, money management and personal hygiene, which help our members live more independently.

We also run sessions focusing on employment skills such as CV writing and interview skills and aim to help our members obtain volunteering placements and paid work.

All our Life Skills courses take place in a friendly environment, at a pace and level appropriate for our members.

In February 2019 we introduced the Bronze gateway award for our Life Skills members which is a non-competitive activity-based award. People who take part in the award set their own challenges and progress at their own pace. It is open to all ages and abilities; to take part you need to become a member of Grove Cottages Life Skills programme. This new initiative is a nationally recognised scheme called the ‘Gateway Award Scheme’ and is loosely based on the Duke of Edinburgh award. For more information on the scheme please click here.

Our regular sessions are £6 per session. To register for the Gateway Award Scheme there is a one off registration fee of £21 and a cost of £4 per session. To find out more about our Life Skills sessions please email lifeskills@mencapgrovecottage.org.

Grove Cottage aims to be a fully inclusive organisation and is committed to supporting people through financial hardship. We can therefore, on a case by case basis, subsidise the cost of our services. If you would like to speak to our Operations Manager confidentially about this please email om@mencapgrovecottage.org.