Setting the scene....

So who am I?

My name is Rebecca, and I am a 37 year old single parent living and working full time in Lincoln in the East Midlands. Four years ago I set up a social enterprise called The Healthy Hub CIC (THH) which was designed to offer supported employment opportunities to anyone that considered themselves disabled or disadvantaged in the labour market in Lincolnshire. I was motivated to set up The Healthy Hub after struggling with my own employment issues after a period of mental ill health in my early twenties. I was also working with a great group of mental health volunteers to run an involvement project for a charity which was continually struggling to find money to exist and support people. Over the past four years I have worked with an amazing team of people to set up more social enterprises and to merge our social enterprise company with a national social enterprise group called Dimensions Community Enterprises CIC. Together we have supported hundreds of people to gain skills, confidence and employment. Our social enterprises are innovative and different and have a fairly unique theme running through them because they tend to trade in regular, customer facing businesses rather than seeking contracts and grant funding to exist. People don’t need a referral to come and be supported by us and they don’t need to tell us their entire life history to work in one of our enterprises. Many people have found this inspiring and empowering and we hope to be able to expand and grow our support throughout the UK in the coming months and years. Our businesses are many and varied and range from cafes and gift shops to commercial cleaning, holidays and gardening businesses. All of them provide transitional supported employment to disabled and disadvantaged local people and all of them are trading with the public on a daily basis.