What’s our Founder & Company Director been up to this year?

Hello everyone,

It’s Chris here again! I wanted to let you all in what I have been up to so far in 2024.

CHRIS REDMAN

Where do I start? Well to be honest, it’s been a little bit of a crazy month or so here at Ultimate Kids and my personal life. I got married in the Lake District to my amazing wife. I am in the process of buying a new home for my family (Don’t get me started on the length of time this is taking!) I have been training for the Liverpool Half Marathon on March 17th and I also decided that it was a good idea to spend some time on my own personal development in order to support the team at Ultimate Kids…

Yep, that’s a pretty busy personal life at the moment although with the completion and progression within my own studies it will allow us to connect, support and provide for the local Primary School & Nurseries as well as communities within Sefton, Knowsley and Liverpool Councils.

Some of the qualifications I am currently enrolled on and/ or have achieved recently are as follows:

• Level 5 Primary PE Specialism
• Level 3 Forest School Leader
• Level 6 Outdoor First Aid
• Level 3 Designated Safeguarding Lead
• Level 1 Introduction to Coaching Basketball

Now, enough about me let me tell you about some of the exciting things and some of the hardships that have been going on at Ultimate Kids since the turn of the New Year…

STAFFING

To kick the year off with a bang myself and Liam received an enquiry through our website for someone called Lucy. She had shown interest in seeking a job with Ultimate Kids and sent her CV in. Her CV was very attractive and our initial thoughts were that she was overqualified for any of the current roles we were looking to fill. Now at this point as a Company Director I had gotten to the point where I felt we needed additional personnel in management here at Ultimate Kids but, after looking in the bank it didn’t seem likely. Nevertheless, we got Lucy in for an interview…

Skip the nitty gritty bit and myself and Liam spoke and decided we could not pass up on someone like Lucy joining our team so we took the plunge and I am pleased to welcome her to our Ultimate Kids team as the new Operations & Camp Manager. It has been an exciting month working alongside Lucy and we can already see we have made the right decision in bringing her into the team and have no doubt she will bring great value.

Staying on the topic of recruitment, I am also very excited to welcome Kai Birch to our Ultimate Kids team as our newest Sports Coach & Marketing Assistant. Kai has a very bright future ahead of him and we can not wait to watch him grow.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t all been rainbows and butterflies in regard to staffing here at Ultimate Kids. There have been numerous interviews, ghosting sessions and let downs during the past couple of months but with fine work from Liam McQueen who is our Staffing & Partnership Manager, has managed to keep the boat watertight and keep all partners happy with excellent cover staff. Now, I don’t want to speak too early but… It seems like things have calmed down in regards to staffing lately.

OFFICE SPACE

With the addition of some key members to our team, we are having to expand our HQ but more on this in a further blog and make sure to follow our socials (@UltimateKidsLtd) for regular updates on the build.

NEW PARTNERS

I touched on the uncertainty of being able to fund new employees here at Ultimate Kids earlier on and it truly was a worry to me. Regardless of my concerns I understood the value that these team members would bring and in less than two months we have managed to secure 3 new Primary School partnerships within Sefton & Knowsley Council delivering:

• PPA Cover
• Staff CPD
• Nursery sports coaching
• School sports
• After school clubs
• Structured lunch time clubs
• Before school clubs

And as well as the addition of 3 new primary schools we have been fortunate enough to start working with a further 5 new Nursery partners across the regions as well. I am always grateful and super excited when a new primary school or nursery contacts us regarding our amazing sports coaching services so please do drop me an email!

HAF FUNDING

As many will know, Ultimate Kids Camps are a massive part of our history here and I think it’s safe to say that they are definitely embedded in the communities of Sefton. Now with that said, in recent years we have been working closely with Sefton Council and have been granted HAFP (Holiday Activity & Food Programmes) funding every single round to offer free spaces across our sites to the families in receipt of benefit-related free school meals. It is my pleasure to announce that we have been granted a further 1,085 spaces to offer across our Ultimate Kids Sports Camps during Easter 2024.

ULTIMATE KIDS DISCOUNT CARD

I am proud to say that we are continuously look at ways to improve our offerings and I’m delighted to introduce our latest support to the families we work with in the form of our ‘Ultimate Kids Discount Card’. This will allow families to present their card in store when purchasing from local businesses and will receive a discount.

The discount card scheme is completely free for businesses to get involved with and all they have to do is get in touch with Ultimate Kids and let us know how much discount they would like to offer and then we do the rest. I must add, it is also free for the families we work with as well.

FORMBY FESTIVAL

Our goal is to be as unapologetically disruptive as possible this year with our marketing campaigns and one of our main events of the year will be taking place at Formby Festival in Duke Street Park.

We have massive Ultimate Kids plans for this event and would like to encourage any parents seeking sports clubs, holiday camps, after school clubs, school sports to pop over and speak to us. Will we be offering multiple discounts and more!

Our Marketing & Creative Manager, Emily will drip feed you some insights to our plans over on our socials, so make sure to follow and subscribe to our pages.

NETWORKING & WELL-BEING WALK

I think one of the highlights of my month so far is starting a Well-being & Networking Walk every Saturday morning for anyone within the Education sector (more details can be found here: INSERT LINK). Although, exciting and a great opportunity for anyone to focus on themselves with support from like minded individuals; do you know how many turned up on the first walk? ZERO, yes that’s right a big fat zero. 

Now, for some that may seem like a failure and/ or a waste of my time but the truth is, I have been working in the Education sector for the best part of 12 years now and I personally needed a stroll in nature with my happy little French Bulldog called Rolo so that’s what I did; and it was the most perfect way to start my weekend! I will still turn up every single Saturday and I know that over time more and more people will come and see the benefits to what a Walk & Talk can do for their mental and physical well-being.

That’s all from me, and I will be sure to update you all again soon.

Thank you for the continued support,

Chris X