Potential Plus UK has received funding from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund, to offer a programme of online courses for young people, as well as for their parents, free of charge.

The vPlus courses provide exciting online experiences for children and young people with high learning potential and their families. We have already launched Rough Science and Explorations, Codebreaking and Cryptanalysis, Anyone Can Write A Poem, and Los geht’s. More are being posted each week for varying age ranges, so please keep an eye on the vPlus Community page on our website. The courses are due to run until the end of March 2021.

We all know how important it is for our young people to meet with like-minded peers. It creates a sense of belonging, reduces feelings of isolation, and helps maintain positive mental health. Similarly, parents need opportunities to meet with other families who ‘get’ their child and understand their experiences. We know that many families enjoy the social aspect of our weekend events and are missing catching up with established friends and making new ones. So, the next steps for our vPlus Community include creating opportunities online for social meetups. If you have a suggestion for a social topic or discussion, please let Catherine, our Online Community Enabler, know about it.

Last, but by no means least, we are rescheduling our vPlus Virtual Festival to cover the February half term and it is also now free of charge thanks to the Coronavirus Community Support Fund. Put the dates in your diary now – Monday 15th to Friday 26th February 2021. There will be a whole array of fantastic presenters on topics of interest to our vPlus community and they will be recorded so that you can catch up later if you miss the live presentation. The festival also enables us to engage with our member schools and network of organisations to extend the reach of all our activities to more young people and their families.

We look forward to you, your family and your students joining us in the vPlus community.

Julie Taplin
Chief Executive