Our story

We give the right people the right training and support at the right time to help them to move forwards.

Our Programme Director, and author of the courses, is expert Richard Daniel Curtis. He established The Root Of It in 2013 to help people get to the root of difficulties and overcome them. The multi-award winning team have been involved supporting Governmental departments, such as their involvement with the response to the Kids Company Closure and the Syrian Refugee Crisis. In addition, Richard has sat on All Party Parliamentary Groups, Greater London steering groups and is a member of the European Alliance for Apprenticeships.

The Root Of It founded The Mentoring School in 2015 to establish standards in mentoring, the Mental Health Awareness Programme in 2018 to drive mental health friendly ethos and culture and the accreditation scheme for mental health aware employers, the Mental Health Tick in 2020.

Richard is the chair of both the Mental Health and Wellbeing Awards and also the National Special Educational Needs and Disability Awards. Outside of work, Richard has two young children and lives in Southampton. He has an extensive history in volunteering, through first aid and ambulance work, amateur theatre and also helps run an annual brass and wind band course. His work supporting doctorate students at the University of Southampton has earned him multiple awards.

With the impact of the global pandemic starting to become apparent on jobs in various industries, Richard vowed to help those impacted. In May 2020 Richard organised a successful Crowdfunder campaign to set up a website to offer skills training to those made redundant as a result of the pandemic.  Known as Skills to Feed the UK, the project, which was match-funded by Solent LEP, aimed to train people to work in the food sector. By the time the fundraising had finished and the site developed, this had moved on to a need to provide more general employability skills and Skills for Progress was founded!