Halifax charity's bid to create unique day care centre for young adults with disabilities

Unique Potential is aiming is to establish a centre for young adults leaving school aged 19 with one of the aims of helping them into employment.

The charity has been set up Derrick Clarke who has worked in the health, fitness and wellbeing sector for over 35 years.

"What we want to do is deliver a high quality, dedicated learning environment to help support young people locally to live better lives," said Derrick who has piloted a programme for young adults with behavioural disorders successfully allowing the programme to be introduced within other groups.

"I found that there was a gap in people with learning difficulties leaving school and looking to go into further education and employment. This is where we hope to come in.

"We have a 14,000 square foot site in Halifax secured and we hope to house a range of activities making it one of the largest centre of its kind.

"We want the adults who come to the centre to try a variety of things and find something they like which can help them in the next stage of their life and into employment.

"This will be a centre for the community and the next step now is to secure more funding to progress the building work."

The Unique Potential team have been working closely with special needs schools, Calderdale Council and other supporting agencies to ensure the centre design and layout supports the wide range of in house activities on offer.

Among the ideas for the centre include creating a kitchen area to teach people how to cook, physical education facilities and a hydrotherapy pool.

Derrick also has a passion for music and is keen to teach people how to play a musical instrument and set up a choir.

Unique Potential is appealing for any help from building companies or craftsmen to help with the building project.

People can also make donations to the charity by visiting their website here