Rehabilitation centre to create jobs after securing Northern Powerhouse funding
A new rehabilitation centre which helps people recover from serious illness and injuries plans to create at least 30 jobs this year after securing a £250,000 funding boost.
STEPS Rehabilitation, which opened earlier this year in Sheffield, aims to be a national centre of excellence for adults recovering from brain or spinal injuries and complex trauma. It has already recruited 35 staff since it was launched by sisters Toria Chan and Jules Leahy to address the lack of facilities for younger patients in need of intensive rehabilitation.
The sisters and their fellow directors have invested more than £1.6m of their own money to build a state-of-the-art centre with 23 bedrooms, a large physio gym, hydrotherapy pool, games and music rooms on the site of the former Jacobs engineering works off Abbeydale Road.
The recent £250,000 loan was provided by NPIF – Enterprise Ventures Debt Finance, which is managed by Enterprise Ventures and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.
Toria Chan, clinical director at STEPS Rehabilitation, said: “A six-year dream has come to fruition and the ability to work with patients and our hand-picked team in a purpose-built facility, with my footprint on much of the clinical design, makes all the hard work in getting here seem worthwhile. I have enormous confidence we will be able to make a huge difference to those patients who share our drive and determination to work hard and maximize their recovery. We can now offer patients the tools with which to push their own recovery to its pinnacle.”
Peter Sorsby, investment manager at Enterprise Ventures, part of Mercia Technologies, said: “STEPS Rehabilitation is a new first-class facility for the North of England and the only place in the region which offers this range and level of complex rehabilition. Toria, Jules and the management team have put in many years of hard work and invested a significant amount of their own money to open STEPS and the initial response has been very positive. We are delighted to be able to provide this funding to support them through the early stages.”
