At The Chamwell Centre, we believe in creating an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to contribute and thrive. Our facilities including a hydrotherapy pool, soft play area, outdoor adventure playground, and community café, serve as platforms not only for leisure and therapy but also for empowerment through employment and volunteering. We offer a range of roles across our reception, kitchen, and community café, providing valuable work experience that enhances skills and fosters independence. Our team members with disabilities are integral to our operations, contributing actively to our community's vibrant atmosphere.
Beyond work opportunities, we encourage social interaction and personal development through various activities and events. Volunteers with disabilities play a crucial role in our programs, gaining experience, building confidence, and making meaningful connections within the community.
Chamwell provides access to its facilities for people of all ages with permanent or temporary disabilities, additional needs, limited mobility, and the older generation, enabling them to enjoy family time and enhance their movement, skills, and social interactions. The Chamwell Centre Charity encourages and supports a safe, integrated, inclusive community hub.
OUR AIM is to provide a visionary and unique centre to enable children, young people and adults throughout Gloucestershire to overcome disability. This includes pupils of The Milestone Special Needs School, SAND Academes Trust and beyond.
OUR VISION is to enhance the wellbeing of those with disability - how they feel, how they function on a personal and social level, and how they feel about their lives.
The Chamwell Centre derives its name from the Chamwell School, which was Gloucester’s special school for children with physical disability and stood on the present Milestone School site until 1997, when three schools were amalgamated.
The resulting Milestone School, rated ’Outstanding’ by Ofsted, is now one of the largest special schools in the country with over 320 pupils, all with severe and complex additional needs.
A further expansion came when three other special schools joined Milestone to form the SAND Academy in 2019, for another 200 children with additional needs. In 2015, the large hydrotherapy pool, on which the school relied, became unsafe and needed to be replaced. The site also lacked suitable facilities for play, physical activities and social opportunities for its pupils. A little research showed that the problem was much wider than that, with a general lack of suitable facilities in Gloucestershire for recent school leavers and adults with complex additional needs. After wide consultation, plans were drawn up for The Chamwell Centre to be built on The Milestone campus.
A dedicated group of trustees, each bringing specialist knowledge and experience, formed a charity and launched an appeal which eventually resulted in £5.1 million being raised to build a visionary and unique resource for the people of Gloucestershire. Chamwell was designed to cater for the needs of the pupils of The Milestone School and The SAND Academy during school hours but at all other times, to be a resource for all in the Community who can benefit from its services.
We have a state-of-the-art building, which is now coming alive with all the wonderful people who are enjoying being part of this groundbreaking project. Chamwell’s challenge now is to ensure that it meets the needs of The Milestone School, SAND Academy and all those with complex additional needs in the County of Gloucestershire.
This is their building. The generous benefactors who made it possible, made their donations so that everyone, no matter what their degree of difficulty, could access sports, leisure, therapies, and play in a spirit of friendship and equality.
Our launch has been shakier than we would have hoped, because of the Covid pandemic but despite this, great strides have been made and we plan to forge ahead with plans for more adapted sports and therapies, more social opportunities, music and many more activities, always being guided by the wishes of the Chamwell users themselves.
The possibilities for Chamwell are endless. We are in uncharted territory because there are no other Centres like Chamwell – we are the pioneers of a new concept in caring and meeting the needs of all those with complex additional needs in our community.
By means of our research, our focus groups, our wide network of contacts and professionals, we plan to develop the Chamwell Centre so that it truly reflects and fulfils the needs of the community which it serves.
Fully accessible with overhead hoist from the assisted changing room through to the pool
An exciting colourful adventure zone over three floors, accessible by wheelchair users, who can join in the fun of sliding, rolling, or bouncing from one activity to another.
The Chamwell Centre Community Café caters for visitors to the Centre and the local community, offering delicious hot and cold food and drinks throughout the day.
The Chamwell Centre was built entirely by charitable funding and will rely on the generosity of the public, businesses and charitable trusts to continue its work and to ensure that children and adults in Gloucestershire can enjoy its facilities.
Volunteering
•
Making a single donation or regular giving
Organising a fundraising event
•
Remembering The Chamwell Centre in your will
