News

Bevan Crescent

Laura/ / Good News Stories, In Your Community

The residents of Bevan Crescent community group have created community activities for over a decade. The group have a communal garden that is well maintained, they have held many fundraising events for the group and other causes including clothing and food donations to charity. It is fair to say that the residents of Bevan are very community focused and have successful kept the group running. Unfortunately, the longest serving committee member announced they were stepping down after 10 years of volunteering. Although the community were shocked at first having an experience committee member stepdown from a leading role. However, the residents have now stepped up to take leading roles.

The group reached out to its members and wider community for support in creating a new committee. RotherFed attended a session during a coffee morning with the group, the members talked about roles and responsibilities that committee members would have to take on. It was decided they would like to continue to run the activities the previous committee ran. After members had taken on the responsibility of running the sessions and settled into their positions, the group have now signed a constitution and are officially a constituted committee and are in the process of opening a bank account with a view of applying for funding.

The future looks bright for Bevan Crescent, after losing a valuable member of their committee they have rallied community member who are ready to take the group to the next level.

Friendship Call Participant – Maggie

Laura/ / Friendship Calls

Maggie has been receiving the befriending calls since May 2022. Her husband passed away in 2018. Even though she does have children, she has said since her husband passed away, she hasn’t had someone to talk to about ‘normal everyday things’ which she really missed. During Lockdown her mental health really suffered as she wasn’t able to see her family much.

Recently Maggie has had lots of health issues which has resulted in her being in hospital on numerous occasions. She has also found out that her eldest brother, who she’s always been ‘thick as thieves with’, has terminal cancer that has spread to most of his body. All of this stress has led to a decline in Maggie’s mental health.

She has spoken to the same volunteer since she started the calls and has developed a close bond with her volunteer. Maggie said that her volunteer always pulls her out of her ‘funk’ and they end up in giggles whenever they talk.

Maggie said talking with her volunteer helps her to forget ‘how bad things can be’ even if it’s just for half an hour, she said she felt like the conversations flow so easily as they have very similar interests and outlooks on life. They have covered every topic imaginable. Maggie loves the fact the volunteer is sometimes somewhat blunt (in the nicest possible way!) saying “yes everything is bad at the moment, but things can’t get any worse, can they?” and “you need to put on your big girl knickers and get on with it don’t you, if you don’t do it no one else will”. Now her mental health is a lot better than it was, her overall health has stabilised a bit now and she is enjoying spending time with her brother making as many memories as possible, they are planning on a having the whole family take a cruise over the Christmas period. In Maggie’s own words “never underestimate the difference the calls make, sometimes it’s the one consistent in my life and it means the world to me”.

Friendship Call Participant – Jean

Laura/ / Friendship Calls

Jean has only been receiving the befriending phone calls for a month. She is a full-time carer for her husband who has advanced Alzheimer’s. She was really looking forward to the calls as she said she had been feeling very lonely, she can’t get out much due to her husband’s condition and this is a huge change for Jean.

Her first call was with a volunteer called Debbie, Jean said they were talking for over an hour. They covered everything from family, hobbies, and volunteering. Jean said that talking to Debbie had “cheered her up no end” and Debbie was “an absolute treasure”. Debbie said the phone call was the highlight of her day as well.

Jean called the office saying how much she had enjoyed her call with Debbie and how much it meant to her that Debbie had taken some time out of her day (longer than planned) to chat with her. It had made such a difference to Jean that someone would do this having taken time out of their busy lives to make the call and chat to some random “Tom, Dick or Harry” about anything and everything. Debbie and Jean now speak on a regular basis, and both enjoy the calls immensely.

This really does show just how important the befriending calls are to people who may not have anyone to talk to.

Litter Picking with Equans and Sanctuary Housing

Laura/ / Good News Stories, In Your Community

In the Dalton area of Rotherham there is a large housing development, creating a combination of new affordable housing for private owners and social housing. Part of the Corporate responsibility of the two firms involved is to ensure that their staff are required to get involved in social action locally. The firms have chosen to organize litter picks around the site to give them a visible presence within the community. They have asked the Heart of the Community project to support the work as we can link them in with local services to promote their work as well as linking them to the community groups that are already active in the area.

All levels of employees are expected to take as part of their contract from management right down to construction. The people from the team that we have met so far have been surprised at how rewarding the simple task of litter picking has been and some have even described how addictive it can be and “make you want to make sure everything that you can see has been removed.”

Continue reading “Litter Picking with Equans and Sanctuary Housing”

Friendship Call Participant – Caroline

Laura/ / Friendship Calls

Caroline has been receiving the befriending phone calls since September 2022. She has long covid which has left her with brain fog, reduced mobility, and anxiety. It has also exacerbated her COPD. She lives with her adult daughter who has mental health issues. Caroline said she felt she didn’t want to ‘burden’ her daughter with her problems. 

On her referral it was stated that Caroline used to be an avid reader, when she was asked about what hobbies and interests, she had she said that reading has always been a passion but due to Covid she hasn’t been able to get any new books, so her main passion in life had come to a grinding halt. This made a significant impact on her life. After some googling I found out that RMBC runs a delivery service with the libraries in the area which is run by a lovely lady called Debra.

After speaking with Debra who runs this service. We were able to organise the mobile library coming to Caroline’s house with a selection of books covering a wide genre.

After she had received the books, her volunteer said how much of a difference there was in her tone of voice, and she seemed to have rekindled her interests in life. Caroline said she had about 15 books to keep her occupied which should last “about a week”. 

Caroline was so flattered with the fact we went the extra step to help her, and now we are working closely with Debra at library services who will be referring people to the befriending calls and any of our participants who can no longer access books are being referred to her. 

“Having the calls from RotherFed is really useful as I am able to express myself freely without causing my daughter who lives with mw undue concerns as I know she worries.”

Friendship Call Participant – Harry

Laura/ / Friendship Calls

Harry is a lovely older gentleman who lives alone and due to a fall, which broke his hip now has reduced mobility. He gets around his flat using a wheelchair or a frame. He does have family who take him out once a fortnight. On his referral Harry said he often feels down in the evenings when he thinks about his deceased wife and the 2 children they lost. Harry is from South Wales and used to serve in the army. He has always enjoyed telling stories from his army days.

 He has been talking to the same volunteer since he started receiving the befriending calls in May 2022. His volunteer always says how much of a gentleman Harry is and how much she enjoys hearing all his war stories, he has had several near-death experiences including being run over by a tank! The phone calls last a minimum of 30 mins and are normally closer to an hour, their longest call was a whooping 2 and half hours! They have conversed about everything from Harry’s Army days, his family, politics, health and about the monarchy. 

His volunteer enjoys the calls immensely as she has a passion for history and hearing stories from someone who has lived through some of the most important historical events in recent times. The friendship that has developed between Harry and his volunteer really is something special. Harry has said he feels the calls have given him a new audience for his stories and he enjoys them so much because they alleviate some of his loneliness and isolation.

Friendship Call Participant – Steven

Laura/ / Friendship Calls

 Joanne has been speaking with Steven for some time now on the befriending service and apparently prevented him from taking drastic measures on several occasions. He is having cancer treatment plus struggles with mental health challenges. The last couple of calls Joanne has made he has been very down, and Joanne have pushed a little hard to have a chat even though he has said he hadn’t felt like talking. A quick 5-minute call because he’s down turns in to a lengthy chat whereby, he perks up, he chats and laughs and at the end of the call always says he feels so much better and that he is glad Joanne kept him chatting. The befriending call service has so many good news stories, and such a vast amount of positive outcomes.

Digital Champion Support

Laura/ / Good News Stories, In Your Community

Alison is a lady with disabilities Joanne met at the Catch-up Café. Alison attends regularly and is a council tenant, she needed help with her mobile phone as she had ‘lost’ her text messages or so she thought. Del was helping Alison to see if he could find them and tidy her folders and apps up on her phone. She was getting quite distressed about it as that was how she received messages about GP and hospital appointments Alison asked if Joanne could look, so Joanne asked Del to text Alison to see check what the issue was. By doing this Joanne was able to locate the Text Message folder on Alison’s phone and move the folder to her front screen for easy access. Alison was over the moon and so relieved, you could see the stress fall away. Christine and Allie (organisers of the café) were happy that Alison had her messages now as they could see she was becoming quite anxious. They can absolutely see the benefits of having a digital champion representation at the Catch-up Café, they don’t want anything formal, just a mingle and chat kind of ethos. This was very good for us to engage with different housing tenants in a informal setting.

Woodsetts Neighbourhood Watch

Laura/ / Good News Stories, In Your Community

Woodsetts Neighbourhood reacting to an increase in burglaries in the area and a large rise in offroad bikes recently, decided they needed CCTV in the village. Working closely with the Police community support officer’s (PCSO’S) and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council’s (RMBC’s) CCTV department the group scouted locations that cameras would be most effective to cover the hotspots that developed through COVID. The group and partners both agreed that 9 Wi-Fi enabled CCTV cameras were needed and the Police would need an extra unit to view the footage from anywhere in Rotherham live but this would come at a substantial cost to the group.

Not deterred by this the group decided to raise the funds they needed and over the last few months, the group have been crowdfunding and holding social events to raise the money needed to install CCTV in the areas they had highlighted, in the first 5 weeks the group had managed to raise over half the cost through donations from residents and businesses in the area demonstrating not only the community’s backing for this project but that the community had come together behind the group and the project, but the group knew crowdfunding alone wouldn’t reach their target.

At this point the group decided to approach their Parish Councillors and Rotherham Council Councillors for help with the remaining funding. Both sets of councillors were more than happy to help get the group to the target, this means the group now have the funds to pay for the CCTV system for the community and it will be installed soon making the groups goals of a safer Woodsetts one step closer to becoming a reality

Making Our Neighbourhoods Centres Grow

Laura/ / Good News Stories, In Your Community

The coffee sessions and now the bingo sessions have made a huge difference in Anne’s life at High Nook neighbourhood centre. Before these sessions existed she did not have much of a social life and said she spent her days inside watching TV. Now she comes to the centre for the coffee morning and bingo, and it has given her a bit of social life. People she knew faces of; she is now getting to know better. She said she has formed new friendships and even invited one lady into her home whilst she waited for her to get ready to go down to the centre, which felt nice for her. She feels like bonds are growing slowly but surely and its due to the sessions at the centre.

She also told me that coming to the centre has also given her the confidence to go to other places which she rarely did before. She said she is going out to Worksop tomorrow which she’s never done on her own. She feels the sessions have made a positive impact on her mental health and given her confidence.  She is also the bingo caller at the sessions which has given her a sense of purpose and the responsibility of doing this makes her feel good and needed. The bingo reminds her of old times when they use to have bingo on before and she is hoping the group grows and sessions get stronger.

She told me she has arthritis in her hip and knee so didn’t do much physical activity outside of her home so just going to centre has made her move more which in turn helps her feel better mentally as she knows she is moving more.