About us

Originally formed back in 1994 as The Junction, Harrogate Skills 4 Living became established as a charity in 2010 with the ‘day-skills’ centre-hub on North Park road in central Harrogate. During the past decade, our needs-led approach has resulted in lots of diversification and we’re proud to offer a wide range of care and support services for people with learning difficulties and autism in the locality.


From housing to employment and health to skills development we have a broad range of programmes available: we’ve even recently started two exciting new social enterprises – the Harrogate Chocolate Factory and the Harrogate Chocolate Factory Café both run with and by our trainees.

We’re not content to stop there though as we believe that there are still many other types of care and support services that are needed. That’s why in 2022 we’re starting our ENGAGE22 project which aims to find out what’s working well and what’s not working so well in our local community of people with learning difficulties and autism (including families and carers). This will be your chance to have a say about the future of social care and support services here in Harrogate - please watch out for further information coming soon about how you can get involved.


HS4L has a learning culture where everyone is encouraged to be the best that they can. We are also values based and our 5 'C' values are:
A graphic showing our core values of care, communication, courage, competence, and commitment
We recruit staff and volunteers whose behaviours demonstrate their core belief in these values and put our service users, their families and carers at the centre of everything we do.

Our trustees

Barbara is a parent of three adult children, two with learning disabilities and autism. Barbara has a Master of Arts in Education (Applied Linguistics); Barbara’s studies focussed on communication with people with non-verbal or non-speaking autism and/or learning disabilities and those with ‘behaviours that challenge’. Prior to being a parent-carer, Barbara held a management role at the London headquarters of a telecommunications company; presently she works in the community and voluntary sector helping people with mental health needs and/or other barriers move towards training and employment.
Jenny specialises in internal and corporate communications, with over 20 years’ experience across numerous industries including financial services, legal, insurance, manufacturing and healthcare. She is currently Head of Internal Communications at Barchester Healthcare, a leading care home company in the UK.
Find out more about Lee soon.
Catherine is an Organisational Sustainability and Change Resilience Specialist. Her OSCR Practice supports leaders and their organisations to build sustainable infrastructures and embed resilient change capabilities into operational functioning. Plus, how to utilise factors of success to enhance effectiveness to create sustainable performance.
Stephanie is a qualified lawyer and former primary school teacher with 20 years' experience in international law firms. Now working in the NGO sector, she leads a team managing legal projects across the UK and EU for a nature restoration charity.
Carl started life as an Instrument/toolmaker Maker (Aerospace). Then continued to University studying Manufacturing and an MBA. He was also the Operations manager at Pace and worked as a Project Manager Contractor before moving to Bulgaria and starting new projects.
Trevor retired after a long career in public service, mainly housing related. A past chair of Young Persons’ Housing Charity he is currently involved with Groundwork Leeds and is a volunteer with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Trevor was the Chair of Trustees for Harrogate Skills for Living Centre between 2018 and 2022 and brings his experience of governance, performance management, service improvement and organisational change to the HS4L Trustees board.
Interested in becoming a trustee? Contact skills@hs4lc.org.uk