Category: Good News Stories

By Zoe Roberts, Activities Co-ordinator

St Mary’s had previous been a centre with no activity. Since starting working with the session, we have successful run coffee morning, a quiz session and a multi-agency drop in at the centre. Since Christmas, we have held crafts sessions at the centre. This has been attended by eight people. The ladies have enjoyed their first six sessions and we have looked to book in another set.

We discussed them setting an informal group up themselves but no one wanted the responsibility. They feel they would be out of pocket having to buy resources and much prefer to attend organised things as they are learning new skills.

We are now looking into this so that we can leave centres with ‘leavers packs’. This will include teas, coffee etc as well as other practical and fun resources. However, this should help ease the transition to maintaining activities. We are going to arrange another coffee morning with them and look to hold a multi-agency in the centre once a quarter with the support of our HRA contract. In attention to this, we have arranged for exercise sessions to take place at the centre with RUCST.

The centre and the fledging groups is likely to need some kind of continued support, into the year. However, from a centre where there was previously no activity and the only use was from Mears (whose staff use this centre for lunches), it has been positive to start to see a growth in there.

After the success of his intervention with the lack of food provision for low-income families during the school holidays, Marcus Rashford launched a book club with the aim of getting books into the homes of some of the most vulnerable children in our society. With statistics reading that if a young person isn’t at their expected reading age by Year 2 then they will always be playing catch up. 25% of 15-year-olds have a reading age of only 12, these 15-year-olds are then expected to sit GCSE qualifications without the full comprehensive capacity to understand all of the questions.

We wanted to make a change within the areas that the lottery areas that we work in. We decided to run book collection event at venues across the funded areas such as community stands and schools. We incentivized the book collections from the community by adding a name into the hat for each donor of the project. We chose to select waterstones vouchers as a prize so that those who donated could buy some new books. We had received an estimated 250 books through families and schools.

Continue reading “RotherFed Read”

Rachel first started working with this group in November 2020 whilst we were in lockdown. As it was not possible for the group to meet due to the restrictions, Peter the Chair kept in regular contact with the group, either by phone or calling in on them whilst walking his dog. He also did a Fish and Chip run every Friday to the local fish shop, for the group and other local residents. To a lot of residents this was a real treat and something to look forward to. Peter featured in the RMBC Home Matters magazine for his fish and chip runs.

Once the neighbourhood centres opened again, the group started to meet back up in person, they were so happy to get back inside the centre and all get together.  They hold a breakfast coffee morning every Tuesday from 10am and continue to have their fish and chips on a Friday, but this is now in the centre at 12 noon.  I have met this group on several occasions now and help and support them where I can.  The group would like to get some new members to join the group, they don’t have to be residents just from Leverton Way, they can be from further afield. I have discussed with the group different ideas to get more people interesting in attending i.e. arts and crafts, day trips, events etc. The group like to put on lunches too but needed new equipment to enable them to do this.

Rachel supported the TARA to put in for the COMF funding and they have been successful. This will enable the group to purchase the new cooking equipment they require and also put on events etc.  I will support them all with this in 2022. The funding also paid for the group to have a Christmas meal out together. 

This is a really friendly group who want to make a difference for the people around. I really enjoyed working with Peter and the other members.

Energy Know How have been working with Green Doctor on how we can help people heat their homes for less and how to support our most vulnerable clients. We quickly discovered that our community groups would benefits from Green Doctor’s Winter Warmer packs, especially the older people groups. With the winter months ahead of us, we learnt that we have clients that could benefit from these packs massively.

We have been visiting Green Doctor’s office in Morley to fill our cars with the packs, as well as help pack them all together. Each pack has a pair of gloves, hat, fleece snude, socks, thermal mug, blanket and a hot water bottle.

We have started this with such great success, we’ve had the packs for less than 3 months and already provided over 100 packs to Rotherham residents. We are looking forward to continue in the new year!

We met the client initially in September after visiting a group that she and her husband attended.

A short while after we were asked by a colleague from another project to contact her by phone as she needed some help with her bills. The client had accrued a substantial credit and wanted to know if and how this could be claimed back.  We gave the client information about how to do this and she called back to say her energy provider was arranging for smart meters to be installed (which she was happy with) and once done she should receive a refund within 7-10 days of £1,100.00. This was scheduled to happen in early November and the client was happy to wait a little while as smart meters would make it easier for her to take readings in the future.

In Mid-November the client contacted Sharon again as she had her new meters but had not received any further information about her refund and the timescale previously given had elapsed. The client was becoming exasperated with her energy provider and had called them several times.

Sharon made a complaint on behalf of the client to the CEO’s office at her energy supplier and following contact with the client it was confirmed that refunds had been processed on 18^th November.

Unfortunately, these did not materialise. I chased up this complaint on several occasions until eventually the client confirmed receipt of her substantial refund early in December. I had made it clear in my emails to her energy provider that their service had fallen short of what was expected, and they offered the client an additional £120.00 credit on her bill for the customer service failures.

Although this took more time to resolve than it should, the client has now received her refund and compensation. She does also now have smart meters so she can get readings easier and prevent estimated bills in the future which contributed to the build-up of the large credit balance.

Client has been asked to check that the £120.00 credit shows on her next bill – if it does not, she has been asked to let me know and I will complain again.

A ‘thank you’ message was received from the client.

It’s that time of year again! Elf Watch is back due to its success last year we decided to bring it back. The Elf watch social media project engages with online community members of the RotherFed Good News Story members to post pictures of what their mischievous Elves have been getting up to over the run up to Christmas. This year the community have not disappointed as we have seen some crackers sent into us. This is designed to be a fun active post where people can show off their creative side and we’re seeing people have fun with this one.

As always, the project started on the 1^st of December and ran until the 24^th of December. The post has seen over 64 pictures added by 12 members of the Rotherfed Good News page. We received new images daily.

Continue reading “Elf Watch!!”