Our History

CHICKS was founded in 1992 by two teachers who realised that there were many underprivileged children in the UK that had never had the joy of a holiday before and would benefit from a free break away from their disadvantaged home lives.

CHICKS has grown from helping just 25 children in its first year (under canvas) to providing breaks for 600 plus children a year in 2007 at it’s two Retreats. Our aim is to continue providing more deprived children with a respite break each year until we have reached a 1000 breaks a year by 2010.

In the early years the respite breaks were held exclusively under canvas and were only run during the summer on a farm near Lydford Gorge. In the spring of 1998, CHICKS moved into the property, ‘Woodside Retreat’, in Milton Abbot, Devon on a leasehold basis. This allowed us to extend the season into the spring, autumn and even the winter months.

With demand for places so very high it soon became clear that there was a great need for a second centre. In 2003 we were delighted to have found Coastal Retreat which sits in 8 acres of own beautiful grounds, only 1 mile from the sea. The centre is situated in the village of Tywardreath, Par near St Austell on the South Cornwall Coast and is just fantastic!

Our Cornish centre was officially opened on the 14^th May 2003 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, Lady Mary Holborow after securing a Lottery grant and months of running a Capital Appeal campaign to purchase it.

From 1998 until 2005 CHICKS continued to provide free respite breaks out of our original Devon based centre ‘Woodside Retreat’, which we rented on a leasehold basis as well as our new Coastal Retreat in Cornwall.

Despite being a fantastic centre, the rent was a large overhead and increasing by quite large yearly increments. At the beginning of 2004 we started a Capital Appeal to purchase a new, larger centre, so that we could lay greater foundations for the future of CHICKS and the disadvantaged children we strive to help, whilst eradicating the need to pay rent.

At the end of 2005 we had enough funding in place to secure the purchase of a new centre, Moorland Retreat in Brentor, Nr Tavistock in Devon, which is perfect for our needs and will act as a fantastic centre for disadvantaged children to come to for a really vital break away from it all.