We need your help to raise funds to take The Working Kitchen beyond July 2021 

Our aim is to create a dedicated and permanent social enterprise providing real work experience 6 days a week for autistic jobseekers from across London wanting to work in catering and hospitality.  

 Visit our website, follow us on social media, come to our weekend café in Bermondsey we would love to see you, even if it has to be take-out for now.

We make great cakes. Try some, pledge your support today and help get autism working.

The young people and adults that CareTrade supports, want to work. 

At CareTrade we believe  'employment is the biggest single factor to transform the life of an autistic person'. 

2020 was the year the government had set to half the disability employment gap (meaning moving from 48% to 60%  employment for those with a disability). For autistic adults where full time employment is just 16% this would require almost a 4 fold increase and that was before Covid. 

CareTrade has been at the forefront of innovative new projects to support autistic adults for the past 10 years on their individual journeys towards and into employment and more independent lives. Our flagship programme is The Autism Project which we have run in partnership with Guys & St Thomas' NHS Trust since 2010. Typically 60% of our graduates move into employment and even in the midst of the  pandemic last year, 25% moved into employment. 

The biggest challenge we are currently facing,  due to Covid,  is a lack of real work experience for our autistic students and job seekers.  This is desperately needed.

Learning through doing is the best way to gain the skills and confidence to move into paid employment and so CareTrade is planning to open the Working Kitchen to provide this and a delicious range of foods to sell in our weekend café traineeship programme that we run from the School House Café, 11 Monnow Rd, Bermondsey, London SE1 5RN (owned and run by Spa School on weekdays term-time).  

We have funding to run a pilot of our Working Kitchen for 3 days a week until the end of July 2021.  We need your support to make this a permanent social enterprise and give autistic jobseekers a chance. Our aim is to open this in September 2021.

        Thank You.