Meet the Reaching Team
George
CEO
Michelle
Project Officer
With a background in retail management, Michelle brings a strong customer focus, excellent relationship-building skills, and a creative approach to support Reaching’s mission. She manages our free provision and volunteer team with a person-centred approach, ensuring everyone feels valued and supported.
Outside of work, Michelle is a real people person – she enjoys spending time with friends and family. She also enjoys getting creative with flower arranging.
Natalie
Project Officer (Recovering Homes)
Natalie has worked in the health and social sector for 16 years. A graduate in psychology, she’s a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist, specialising in trauma and neurodivergence. Natalie has a wealth of experience across the public and charitable sectors.
In her free time, Natalie is renovating a property; she is enjoying the process of giving something dilapidated a new lease of life. She has a passion for learning and also loves exploring the countryside with her dog Myla.
Georgia
Funding & Fundraising Assistant
Georgia is working as our Funding and Fundraising Assistant while taking a gap year from education. Her passion for helping others is being channeled into our community and business partnerships, working to strengthen our bonds within our community and further boost Reaching’s impact!
Georgia’s other passion is the theatre, and she tries to catch as many shows as she can in her free time. When she is not at work or the theatre, Georgia enjoys socialising with her friends and trying new foods.
Charlie
Project Officer (Recovering Homes)
Charlie is a vital part of our team and works across all of our projects, spending most of her time working on Recovering Homes, managing cases. She’s currently in her second year at uni and is studying social work.
Charlie has little free time around university and working 2 jobs, however she is quite the expert on all things hair and beauty (we take full advantage of her knowledge), and also looks after her very demanding cat, Millie!
Our Story
How Reaching Started
Reaching started life in April 2021 as a Local Authority funded project, delivering outreach support to over 200 people struggling with life changing difficulties such as social isolation and mental health. When funding ended, the team, led by founder and CEO Georgina Salt, decided to continue their work. In November 2022, Reaching CIC was founded.
What We Do
The provision offered is unique to Reaching and has been developed by our service user and professional community. We have a team that is passionate about delivering the best support possible to those who need it most.
Our support programmes are available to any adult in need in Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire. We have no eligibility criteria, therefore removing barriers to support. We believe that the key to transformational change and impact is creating trusting and nurturing relationships, and we keep the service user at the heart of everything we do. As one service user reports, “Reaching was the only service which made any sense.”
Developing Our Resilience & Growth
We support one of the most deprived communities in the UK, with some neighbourhoods defined as being ‘left behind’ (APPG). Stoke on Trent is ranked 12th in the indices of deprivation, with 32.1% of neighbourhoods falling into the top 10% of most deprived neighbourhoods nationally.
We’re building a fantastic support network of local organisations, businesses, volunteers and individuals who are integral to our success so far.
Since our beginning, there have been:
LIVES TOUCHED BY REACHING
We’ve accomplished far more than we could ever have imagined when we started our Reaching journey, but we have so much more to achieve, and we are always looking at ways to develop and meet the ongoing needs of our community.