Raising a cup to success story

A heart warming success story of residents from a specialist care home in Balby creating and running their own coffee shop, has been celebrated three months after the cafe's launch.
Residents from a specialist care home in Balby in Doncaster have enjoyed a special night to celebrate their achievements of creating and running a pop-up coffee shop over the past three monthsResidents from a specialist care home in Balby in Doncaster have enjoyed a special night to celebrate their achievements of creating and running a pop-up coffee shop over the past three months
Residents from a specialist care home in Balby in Doncaster have enjoyed a special night to celebrate their achievements of creating and running a pop-up coffee shop over the past three months

The celebration night was held at Woodfield Road Community Club, with service users from Exemplar Heatlh Care's home Quarryfields, friends and family and Exemplar staff raising a cup to the success story.

Set up during the Summer by the service users at Quarryfields, The Platform is a unique pop-up project that has seen service users create a brand new pop-up coffee shop, help choose the interior, complete barista training and work in the shop.

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 Education facilitator at Quarryfields and The Platform lead, Heather Johnson, said: 'It's a pleasure to get together and reward everyone for their great work on the first pop up shop. Staff, family members and other service users voted on the volunteer's skills in customer service, reliability, commitment, timekeeping and baking skills.

'Having a job to go to each day '“ somewhere they can excel and feel valued '“ has improved the wellbeing of service users.

'The positive change in some of our residents has been incredible '“ people who couldn't hold conversations before can now chat confidently. It's been an amazing 12 weeks and I'm looking forward to the next 12.'

Exemplar handed The Platform £500 to help them start the project, which has now successfully been paid back thanks to the hard work of the residents at Quarryfields.

The Platform will now become an arts and crafts shop and invites the public to come and make and buy crafts themselves, at the same time as enjoying a coffee and a sweet treat.