CHICKS has grown drastically since its inception, from helping just 25 children in our first year, to providing just over 1,150 free breaks in 2011 at our two spacious Retreats. Here is our journey...

1992...
CHICKS was founded in 1992 by two teachers who wanted to help the many underprivileged children in the UK that had never had the joy of a proper break. They felt the children would greatly benefit from a free respite break away from their disadvantaged home lives.

1998...
In the early years, the breaks were held exclusively under canvas and were only run during the summer on a farm near Lydford Gorge in Devon. In the spring of 1998, CHICKS moved into a rented property, known as 'Woodside Retreat', in Milton Abbot, Devon, on a leasehold basis. This allowed CHICKS to extend the season into the spring and autumn months and even run some camps into the winter months in later years to accommodate even more children.

2003...
With such high demand for places on camp it soon became clear that there was a great need for a second Retreat. In 2003, CHICKS was delighted to have found Coastal Retreat, which sits in eight acres of its own beautiful grounds, only one mile from the sea in Cornwall. The Retreat is situated in the village of Tywardreath, near Par and St Austell on the South Cornwall coast and is just fantastic!

CHICKS Cornish Retreat was officially opened in May 2003 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and Lady Mary Holborow, after securing a Lottery grant and months of running a Capital Appeal to purchase this beautiful site.

2004...
Despite being a magnificent Retreat, the rent at Woodside proved to be a large overhead for the charity to sustain and with rental costs increasing by quite large yearly increments it was decided to start a Capital Appeal at the beginning of 2004 to purchase a new, larger Retreat.

2005...
At the end of 2005, CHICKS had enough funding in place to secure the purchase of a new property - Moorland Retreat in Brentor, nr Tavistock in Devon, which was perfect for our needs and provided an ideal setting for disadvantaged children to come and escape from their home lives.

Today...
CHICKS now runs both Moorland Retreat and Coastal Retreat at maximum capacity between March to December. It is our goal to establish a third Retreat by 2015 to ensure we continue to keep up with the demand for respite breaks for disadvantaged children, the timing of our third Retreat will depend on funding and our main priority in 2012 is to continue to provide much needed free respite breaks at our existing Retreats in what is proving to be a tough year for the charitable sector.

Our aim is to keep helping as many children as possible...

Your support is what makes this possible.