Our Mission
Our mission is to provide a safe and fulfilling way of life for adults with learning difficulties in East Kent, coaching each individual to achieve their potential. Through enjoyable and productive work, both in the local community and in our Garden Centre, Café and many craft, media and horticultural activities, our students develop life skills as well as the confidence to make personal choices about their own lives. Every day, we challenge ourselves and our students to do and be the best that we can.
In the 1980s, a group of concerned people came together to share ideas and create a vision. They all had learning-disabled adult children, for whom they wanted the best possible life. A fulfilling, adult way of life, with appropriate opportunities for personal development, a choice of productive and fulfilling occupations, a secure home with supportive relationships, and strong links to the local community.
The first step was to purchase a number of substantial family properties in the South East, which were accessible to public services and local amenities. The Fifth Trust was formed in 1990 to raise the finance for, and then to create and manage, appropriate facilities to meet the needs of the homes’ residents. Today the Fifth Trust Centre provides education, vocational training, work-related opportunities and recreational pursuits at our two sites in the Elham Valley, not just for well over 50 residents of these residential homes, but also for more than 50 external students from the local area.
The Fifth Trust continues to provide services to residents of four of the original homes with which we have an association, but is financially and legally separate from them. To find out more about the homes or to enquire about residential vacancies, please visit their web site by clicking
How We Are Financed
The Centre relies primarily on the fees paid by the local authority (Kent County Council). But these are insufficient to fund everything that we do, so we seek to improve our income in a number of ways. Our students enjoy horticulture and garden outworking activities, as well as making craft goods, woodwork items and food. At our Elham Valley Vineyard site, we have set up The Vineyard Garden Centre and The Vineyard in the Valley Café, which provide safe, developmental work opportunities for our students as well as selling what they make and grow. All these activities generate revenue to supplement donations from the public, companies and other charitable bodies in support of our work.
In spite of the significant expansion in the Trust's activities and turnover and the costs associated with being a charitable company, subject to a full annual audit, our administrative and fund-raising costs remain low. The Trustees are unpaid and do not claim expenses.
The Vineyard Garden Centre Ltd and The Vineyard in the Valley Café are both limited companies owned by the Trust, with directors drawn from the roster of Trustees and the General Manager. The Garden Centre and Café are open to the public seven days a week at the Elham Valley Vineyard site, and from Monday to Friday they provide a safe and stimulating developmental environment for our students, under expert care and instruction. Any surplus generated by the two operations is reinvested in the Trust’s activities to support the work with our students.
The Trust will soon be 25 years old, and we have recently conducted a fundamental review of our work and where we are heading.
Without being at all complacent, we're confident that we're delivering a high quality service, and this is borne out by expert outsiders who come to visit us. However, we want to look at better ways of monitoring and validating our quality and performance, without introducing any kind of 'box-ticking'.
We shall continue, and in some areas expand, our involvement with our local community. Our students’ rewarding interaction with people, places and organisations in the area is vital to our person-centred approach. It also helps us to build our pool of volunteers, upon whose generous and caring involvement we entirely depend.
As a major capital project, we are planning to implement a complete upgrade of our IT systems to support our way of working, including ways to share and communicate easily between our two sites, at Greenhills in Barham and at the Elham Valley Vineyard.
He is a solicitor in private practice with Messrs Gulland & Gulland of 16 Mill Street, Maidstone, in which firm he was a partner for fifteen years and is now employed as a consultant.
Stephen lives with his wife Eve in London and Goodnestone. His brother-in-law, Alan, lives at Greenbanks, one of the original residential homes. Stephen is chairman of the company which runs Greenbanks.
Her career has seen her move from private legal practice into broadcasting regulation and beyond to a broad portfolio which has included being a member of the Gambling Commission, the Press Complaints Commission and the Better Regulation Commission.
Anita Robson spent most of her career in the City as a Director of a major Lloyd’s Insurance Broker. Having for the most part worked in General Management, a role which additionally embraced more than twenty provincial offices, she latterly joined the Board of Directors of their Financial Services Company. Since finishing her long career in the City, she has helped to set up a small rural Heritage Centre where she worked as an Administrator during its embryonic stages. She joined the Fifth Trust as a volunteer in 2012. Inspired by the work of the Fifth Trust, she was enthusiastic to contribute more and in 2013, she joined the Board of Trustees.
After her daughters were born Sue became a stay home Mum, doing some part time jobs. She was clerk to her Parish Council for eleven years; assistant in her village Post Office for ten years and worked in a local nursing home for seven years. She also did quite a lot of voluntary work: Secretary at her younger daughter’s school PTA, and governor at Nicola’s special school. She joined her local Mencap Society and was instrumental in setting up independent housing for adults with learning disabilities and was then asked to join Homes Foundation and a couple of other steering groups. She was involved in the running of the local Gateway Club for about fifteen years. During this time she gained two A Levels - English Literature and History and was part of a pilot OU course on learning disabilities.
