The Rainbow Hub dream that has become reality
It all started with parents who said they could not find suitable education for their children and an idea became a dream that has come true. In Summer 2023 work started on building the Rainbow Hub school which opened its doors in September 2024 and has been judged to be ‘Outstanding’ in all areas by OFSTED (Nov 24).
The weather was a challenge for many months but nothing stopped work on Rainbow Hub’s dream – their purpose-built school in Mawdesley for children with special educational needs due to physical and neurological disabilities.
The school has four classrooms: a multi-purpose hall; two additional therapy rooms; accessible life skills kitchen; ground level rebound trampoline; outdoor classroom, new meeting spaces and a dedicated parent/carers room.
It has solar panels and air source heat pumps with mechanical heating to ensure a constant temperature.
Designed in neutral colours for a calming effect, all education and therapy rooms have an H track ceiling hoist and classrooms contain both education and therapy equipment making them multi-purpose.
The school is initially offering places to children aged 4 – 11 years who have physical and learning disabilities. There are currently seven children attending with space for a further 25 places following recent approval from the Department for Education. Future plans will extend to offer places for young people up to 16 years. It has been developed for children with physical/neurological disabilities whose families struggle to find an environment that can meet their physical, social and learning needs.
With the growing number of children needing places in a specialist setting, local authority schools are not always able to meet specific needs of children with physical disabilities who deserve the same access to an education as any other child. A combined education and health approach at Rainbow Hub will help children to lead as full and independent lives as possible.
Lyndsay Fahey, CEO, Rainbow Hub, said, "we started with a dream and to make this dream a reality we secured funding of £5 million from Wain Foundation which was a remarkable act of kindness for which we will be forever grateful. This development will allow us to extend the good work we already do in conductive education and our specialist nursery. It will allow us to provide support to children who may sometimes be over-looked but deserve every opportunity to become as independent as possible."
She continued, “groundworks have also begun for a hydrotherapy pool for which we were delighted to receive a grant of £100K from Chorley Council as part of the Rural Prosperity Grant Scheme. We hope this will be completed by September 2025. However, these wonderful donations are restricted to the building projects and we will still need to raise £700K each year to keep our core therapy services running so the support of all the other wonderful people who help us is vitally important.”
Please take a moment out of your day to watch their video (link below) to see some of the facilities and a few of the recent activities the children have enjoyed doing in school.
If you are interested in placing a child at the school, then please contact Martyn Berry, Head Teacher [email protected] tel: 01704 823276
For more information on the work of Rainbow Hub or to support them, please visit
www.rainbowhub.org or follow them on social media @rainbowhubnw