About

The Cottage Cafe, Torquay, Devon

Come visit our new cafe for a range of drinks and light bites. The Cottage Cafe also provides internship opportunities for people we support.

The Cottage Cafe is set up to support people through Supported Internship, through work experience and through some voluntary work.

Students from ROC College are able to access a Supported Internship where they can work towards developing their skills in catering through barista training, customer service, and learning how to prepare food. Learning all aspects of food hygiene in order to help them move into employment in the future.

Other people that we support can also access the cafe to gain work experience or some voluntary work and we’re also going to be working with the local job centre who will be referring people to us for work experience placements.

On a Monday and Tuesday the cafe is being used to develop Life Skills then we’re looking at Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays at the moment for the cafe to be open to the public.

This is all supported by a Job Coach in the cafe who will work with them one-to-one to develop these skills.

Part of the Job Coach’s role and part of my role will be looking at how we can move people forward into employment and support their transition from something that’s very supported into more independent working.

“When the people come in then I was doing the services, all the types of food and then, you know, carrying them to the people, and I enjoyed it.”

We are working currently with the local Education Department and the Job Centre. Also we’ve developed some really good links with local employers. So that we’re looking at developing positive outcomes for the people that we’re working with and, you know, sustainable employment opportunities.