About Me
Ruth Hill founded Fruits of The Forest in 2016 and is passionate about supporting children and their families to grow in health and happiness.
After having worked in the NHS for 28 years, working as a nurse, midwife, health visitor and most recently a public health specialist in schools she has a real understanding and knowledge of the importance of health and wellbeing being at the heart of everything we do to ensure our full potential.
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Ruth qualified as a Level 3 forest school leader in 2013. She has recently qualified as a therapeutic forest practitioner, is a qualified first aider and holds a food hygiene qualification. She is also a qualified mental health first aider.
Fruits of the Forest predominately delivers forest school provision. She runs sessions for schools during curriculum time as well toddler groups, holiday clubs, parties, family sessions and youth group sessions. . She also will run bespoke programmes and offers an introduction to forest school training for teachers and other professionals.
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Forest school follows specific principles and is a child led programme that allows each child to learn and develop at their own pace. It offers experiences and opportunities which will allow the child to learn to take risks safely as well as learn new skills. With this in mind and in order to support schools who require evidence of impact Ruth has developed a skill progression toolkit which maintains the intrinsic motivation of each learner but provides school with a framework of progression.
Aside from forest school, Ruth is passionate about healthy eating and children learning the skills to be able to cook. She has developed a cooking in the curriculum programme for all primary aged pupils where children learn essential life skills on how to prepare and cook healthy recipes as well help them to develop their twist on a recipe and experiment! Ruth also works freelance as a Health Consultant for School Health UK -supporting schools to achieve a much better lunchtime experience for children and staff.
Over the last 7 years Ruth has supported many local charities and has collectively raised over £12,000. She has personally completed many challenges to include cycling from London to Paris and has completed The Thames Path Challenge, a 100km walk over a couple of days. She has also facilitated many charity events and has volunteered with charities to assist with their work. She will work with schools to facilitate any fundraising they wish to do.
She is currently working with Dudley Mind to develop a bespoke programme , based on the social prescribing model to support children in schools with their mental health and wellbeing.
Ruth is married, has 3 daughters and a mad Springer Spaniel. She enjoys keeping active and is an Event Director for the local junior parkrun.
