The Care Fund remains very busy in the run-up to Christmas. In addition to our own Christmas festivities and activities to support Care Fund clients we are also supporting other local groups who are laying on their own festivities for some lonely and more senior residents of Harpenden.
A new initiative has been launched following the success of this teamwork. The Town Council and ourselves have realised that the winter could be very difficult for some in our community. A new group has been formed with some of the same members and some new to take part in the Harpenden Winter Support Partnership to provide a coordinated response to the cost-of-living challenge.
In addition, we had a very active stall at the Harpenden Christmas Carnival (Sunday, 27 November) with balloon dogs, swords and mice much in demand.
Hall Bookings continue to be very busy and whilst we have two new regular, weekly hirers – a Pilates class and a church group - we continue to turn away requests from potential regular hirers due to lack of availability. There has been no let-up in the number of party requests either with bookings now being taken well into January. The Harpenden Arts Club held their annual exhibition at the Halls in October for the second year running with record sales and visitor figures.
Home Visits continue to receive approximately 60 calls a month and have had seen quite a run on appliances that have failed over the last couple of months. We have recently had a number of requests for utilities grants as the weather has started to deteriorate. Youth & Schools has also been active in awarding grants and in the final months of the year activity has definitely been seen to pick-up.
We have been engaged with a broader district initiative, the St Albans Older People’s Partnership, that aims to pull together a wide range of community groups and advice agencies working with older people in the St Albans District. The key objectives set out were: 1: to inform other organisations about the breadth of support available for older residents on low incomes by sharing details of current work undertaken; 2: explore ideas for providing greater support; 3: explore ideas to encourage the uptake of Pension Credit and Attendance Allowance. The familiar theme with regards to barriers was a lack of funds and a lack of volunteers.
Volunteer recruitment has picked up over recent months, covering a wide range of Trust activities such as Befrienders, Wellbeing Friends, the Library team, the Memory Lane Café, the Frazzled Café and Appeal Collectors.
The partnership with Harpenden Library has now been running for 8 weeks, and in the words of the Library Manager, “we are really pleased to see how much the Harpenden residents are already benefitting from this project”. Well over 100 local residents are making use of the Library Express service on a Wednesday afternoon, when, without Harpenden Trust volunteers, the library would be closed. The partnership is also providing a great opportunity to promote the Trust and its work.
Our Ukrainian refugee families support has continued thanks to donations from the Town Council and St John’s Church and with a supply of laptops being delivered over the past couple of months. This enables our Ukrainian guests to be able to communicate with families back home, as well as work from home and job applications. We have continued to meet with the Town Council and other charities to coordinate our response to the Ukrainian situation.
Wellbeing Friends continues to accept clients only following a referral made by the General Practitioner/Social Prescriber, with 16 new referrals in the past quarter. Wellbeing Friends are currently in contact with 38 clients and have had a total of 302 interactions with them in the past three months. Of the concluded referrals, clients have joined walking, weight-loss, history, exercise, and art groups. Feedback received continues to be positive. Frazzled Café numbers continue to be steady with the 3 facilitators and we are planning for a daytime session starting in 2023. Memory Lane Café is still a great success with 10-14 couples per week and includes activities such as Harpenden Musical Memories, African Drumming and craft sessions. Arts on Prescription held at the EMC continues to be a great success. We are supporting the Stormbreak programme – supporting young childrens’ physical and mental health – which continues in 6 local primary schools where teachers are being trained to deliver the programme.
Attendance at both our coffee mornings continues to increase. Recently we invited two speakers to the Tuesday group. A person from Trading Standards Service spoke on how to avoid being scammed, and more recently a person with financial experience spoke on the current government energy program. Both occasions were well received.
The Transport team currently stands at 26 drivers. Of these, six take the same clients to the coffee mornings each week whilst the remainder are ad hoc drivers for coffee mornings and other events.
Nick Luckett
Chair, Care Fund
01 December 2022
