Orchard Hill College is an Outstanding specialist college offering life-changing learning opportunities to students.
General Description
Orchard Hill College is an Outstanding specialist college offering life-changing learning opportunities to young people and adults. There are six vibrant college centres across London and Surrey where committed, specialist teams deliver a range of programmes to meet the needs of the students.
Students who study with us have a wide range of needs including:
- Profound and multiple learning disabilities
- Moderate learning difficulties
- Physical and sensory impairments
- Mental health and/or emotional difficulties
- Communication and behavioural difficulties
- Social and communication disorders e.g. Autistic Spectrum Disorders
- Specific medical needs
Catchment Area
The college has six centres across London and Surrey.
Curriculum
Programmes are designed to support and empower each student to achieve their aspirations and goals, whilst developing skills to become more independent members of their community. Students can choose from a number of programmes according to which suits them best:
- Skills for Work and Living
- Foundation Skills for Life
- WorkStart: Pre-Traineeships/Traineeships (19 - 24 with an EHCP)
- WorkStart: Pre-Traineeships/Traineeships (19-24)
- WorkStart: Into Work - Work Experience
- WorkStart: Into Work - Outreach
Specialist Facilities
To ensure students have the right support when taking part in our programmes, the college has the following specialist teams:
- Nurses and Health Assistants
- Speech and Language Therapists
- Occupational Therapists
- Physiotherapists
- Music Therapists
- Job Coaches
- Digital School
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Our expertise
We have expertise in meeting the needs of students with:
- Profound and multiple learning difficulties
- Autism spectrum disorder
- A wide range of physical disabilities
- Severe autism spectrum disorder
- Mental health needs
- Autism spectrum disorder with associated challenging behaviour
- Expertise in meeting the needs of students who are blind or visually impaired
- Multi-sensory impairment
- Communication difficulties
- Expertise in meeting the needs of students who have specific learning difficulties
- Behavioural difficulties
- Emotional difficulties
- Moderate learning difficulties
- Severe learning difficulties
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Our curriculum
We offer:
- Opportunities to follow vocational courses
- Opportunities to follow vocational qualifications
- A personal development programme
- A programme to enable students to learn more about themselves and how to form relationships
- Opportunities to prepare for further training after college
- Opportunities to improve and develop communication skills through the use of Alternative and Augmentative Communication aids
- Opportunities for work experience
- Opportunities to use and develop information technology skills
- Opportunities to prepare for work after college
- A programme to help students to look after themselves more independently
- Opportunities to explore a range of living options after college
- Opportunities to develop strategies to promote appropriate behaviour
- Opportunities to improve literacy, numeracy and/or communication skills
- Opportunities to experience real work situations
- Opportunities to improve communication skills such as the use of Makaton, Bliss, symbols or objects of reference
- Opportunities to experiment with sound, touch, smell and sight in order to aid learning
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Our specialist services
- Extensive use of assistive and adaptive technologies
- In-house speech and language therapy
- In-house occupational therapy
- A range of therapeutic services
- Specialist training to enable independent travel
- In-house psychiatric services
- In-house physiotherapy
- Sessions to improve posture and mobility
- In-house nursing services
- Specialist orientation and mobility training to enable independent travel
- Specialist staff to meet personal care requirements
- In-house medical provision
