Virginia House Residential Academy and Centre for Excellence is one of The Cyrenians’ flagship projects.
As a ‘Leading Place of Change’ the building was refurbished in 2008 as part of the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) ‘Places of Change’ programme.
‘Leading Places of Change’ offer residents ‘a bed… and a reason to get out of it.’
In February 2009, the refurbishment complete, Virginia House re-opened, providing:
- 17 en-suite bedrooms with shared kitchen facilities
- a state of the art recording and radio suite, linked into a fully equipped rehearsal room
- a static, fitted, fully equipped gym
- an holistic health therapy room, offering weekly massages and C Card sexual health advice
- IT facilities within an open learning setting
Staff develop personal plans with each service users to encourage positive risk taking and involvement in both service delivery and activity development. The aim is to increase the number of people moving on positively from supported accommodation.
The project involves the community and the environment is cheerful; conducive to learning. Established service users are involved in the induction of new arrivals to the project.
Training programmes are available in both personal development and vocational subjects. These include basic key skills; confidence, self esteem, numeracy and literacy; pre-tenancy; health promotion; harm minimisation; money and debt management; personal safety; employment coaching; horticulture and grounds maintenance.
Training courses for NVQs and other recognised qualifications are available in health and social care, customer service, cooking, gardening, music and IT.
Virginia House was originally designed and built in the 1850s for the Cruddas family by John Dobson, the famous Newcastle architect. For fifteen years prior to its refurbishment in 2008 it was a Direct Access hostel accommodating up to 31 homeless people. Now restored to something of its former glory it is a large stone house set by a tranquil stream in wooded grounds, five minutes from Newcastle’s Scotswood Road and a crucial link in ‘the journey’.
