Jamie's Farm
PLEASE NOTE: Jamie's Farm does not accept individual referrals. Instead, we host groups of 6-8 young people, alongside their school/organisation staff members, for week long residential programmes on our beautiful Bath farm. Jamie’s Farm exists to transform the lives of vulnerable children in challenging schools. We provide a unique combination of ‘farming, family and therapy’ through an intensive week on beautiful working farms, and a robust follow-up programme back in school. We aim to re-engage children with educational life, and enable them to fulfil their potential both in school and the wider social setting.
Jamie’s Farm exists to transform the lives of vulnerable children in challenging schools. We provide a unique combination of ‘farming, family and therapy’ through an intensive week on beautiful working farms, and a robust follow-up programme back in school. We aim to re-engage children with educational life, and enable them to fulfil their potential both in school and the wider social setting.
The charity was established in 2009 after Jamie, teaching in a challenging school in South London, brought back two sheep from his family home in Bath for the pupils to look after. Jamie noted the instant impact on the students who thrived from the responsibility of feeding and caring for the animals. Teachers also noticed a remarkable change in the attitude of these individuals towards their school life, and the idea for Jamie’s Farm was born.
We believe that when children are not engaging fully with their education it can be difficult for them to see their potential as successful people. The consequences of this disengagement are likely to be felt many years in the future, as a course of underachievement and under employment can be set very early in a young person’s life. At Jamie’s Farm, we offer a unique, preventative solution to empower young people to change course.
Small groups live and work on site, supported by our experienced staff who focus activities on positive, tangible outcomes. They get involved in farm jobs, from lambing ewes to wood chopping, and from gardening to cooking. As a result of the Jamie’s Farm experience, young people demonstrate improved relationships, behaviour and engagement with school. On return to school, visits are followed up with group sessions including a celebration attended by Jamie’s Farm staff to transfer the experience to young people’s everyday lives at home and school.
Children are rarely given the time and space to reflect, renew and determine a new path for themselves, and this situation is particularly severe for those children growing up in deprivation. To combat this, through a residential visit to a working farm offering a combination of farming, family and therapy, Jamie’s Farm acts as a catalyst for change. Children see their futures in a new light, and their teachers develop the skills needed to support the continuation of change for their students.
‘Jamie’s Farm is the single most powerful intervention for young people that I have discovered in 15 years in teaching and senior leadership. The experience has a profound effect on the students’ sense of self, their self-esteem and aspirations and their relationship with other people. If I could send every child in the school I absolutely would!’
SENDCO/Inclusion Lead, The John Fisher School