careadmin

Community Navigators supporting community resilience

by Leave a Comment

Our Community Navigators have been working with partners across the county to support communities as well as individuals.

Susie, our Chief Executive Officer was featured on Huntingdon Community Radio’s “Over to You” programme, outlining the support we provide to local people and inviting listeners to get involved.

Our Volunteering & Outreach Senior Coordinator met with Norfolk-based ‘Ask Lily’ to discuss more collaborative working for people living along the border with Cambridgeshire.   Ask Lily sit within the Kings Lynn & West Norfolk council and are commissioned to combat loneliness and social isolation in adults of all ages. They maintain an online directory of organisations, services and activities that help people live healthy, active and independent lives. Care Network services and volunteering opportunities will soon be featured and our team are already referring into Ask Lily.

Adult Learning and Skills, Cambridgeshire are working on a ‘Sharing Stories; Sharing Lives’ project to equip volunteers to facilitate older people to share and tell their (life)story. Care Network was invited to be involved in the first stage of the project: developing storytelling-based training and resources. Our teams contributed to the development of Stor-E tree question materials and training sessions. This will be a useful tool to help people explore their personal history and ambitions, offering the opportunity to connect with others and improve wellbeing

In Fenland, we are part of the new Wisbech and Surrounding Villages Charities Network and Whittlesey and March Food Poverty Network. We regularly attend partner meetings and our Community Development and Healthy Fenland teams continue to offer support to new community projects aimed at tackling poverty. As a Golden Age partner, we run stalls at community fairs aimed at the over 50s held across Fenland. Our Open Arms team joined us at the last fair at Wisbech St Mary to engage with members of the public around the subject of loneliness.

We took part in the recent Steel Bones Celebration Day at Isleham; this was attended by around 300 amputees and their families.  Lesley and Corrina provided information about our services to families enjoying samba music, sports, holistic treatments, hair braiding, inflatables and face painting in the sunshine.

Our teams were recently trained in Making Every Contact Count by Everyone Health. We had lots of lively discussion and practice focussed on helping people to make positive changes to improve their health and wellbeing.

 

News from our Fundraising Manager

by Leave a Comment

A quick glance through the news headlines can feel really bleak. Loneliness epidemics, our struggling NHS and Social Care system, pubs and other important community facilities closing.

 

But then I read the feedback from people Care Network has supported – the very real difference that time, kindness and understanding makes, and I can’t help but feel excited for the future.

 

In April this year I was brought in to make sure we have the funds to continue to be here when people need us.  One of the first things I did was to see what was in place,  then I made sure that it was easy for people who wanted to support us to do so.

 

I am really pleased to say we have now made it even easier to make a donation by texting CARENETWORK to 70085 to donate £5*  or you can donate here through Wonderful.org

 

Over the next year I will be looking to our supporters, volunteers and staff to help make our fundraising successful. I would love to hear from you if you have any ideas, or would like to get involved. Call me on 01954 211919, or email Alison.l@care-network.org.uk

* Each text costs your donation amount plus one standard rate message.

Wellbeing

by Leave a Comment

Wellbeing is at the heart of everything we do at Care Network and as organisation we aim to improve the wellbeing of all clients, volunteers and staff.

Cate Winters and I continue to work across Cambridgeshire to provide wellbeing support to clients who are experiencing feelings of stress, low mood, mild to moderate anxiety and/or depression. We provide strengths-based interventions to help clients identify what they need and would like to do and support and encourage them to achieve their goals. Sometimes we are able to draw on some amazing additional support from volunteers; this really can make a huge difference to a client’s progress – in two recent instances very isolated individuals have been supported to get out and about and both now routinely access community based support and activities, which has really helped improve their lives and how they feel. We are hoping to boost the number of people who volunteer with the Wellbeing Team, so if you are interested in finding out more about this please let me or Azanda Sithole, our Volunteer Lead, know.

Cate will be piloting a fortnightly Wellbeing Booster Group for 6 sessions in March town from September to November, with the support of our excellent volunteer, Charlotte. For more information on the group please contact Cate or myself.  We will hopefully be running something similar in the South of the county in due course.

The staff Wellbeing Working Group is busy hatching plans for staff to engage in some wellbeing related activities in our planned Wellbeing Week in September and Azanda is also planning to restart the popular volunteer and staff wellbeing walks in the different districts soon.

Kate Blackwell, Senior Coordinator, Wellbeing. Kate.b@care-network.org.uk  01954 774 802

Meet our Trustees – Peter

by Leave a Comment

I work internationally but have always lived in Cambridgeshire as have multiple generations of my family.  I live in Caldecote with my wife and two teenage sons.

My background is product management and business strategy in the information technology, telecommunications, television and Internet markets.  I work for Nokia’s IP and Optical networks business.  We design and build multi-terabit network equipment that powers the internet. The “bits” that made up the page you are reading now probably traversed some of Nokia’s equipment as the largest provider in Europe for Carrier Routers and Metro Optical networks.

In previous roles I have worked on video delivery systems and applications for delivering TV services into people’s homes all over the world, helping Nokia and predecessors win two Emmys.

I have worked on and with a number of business leadership teams from small startups to multi-national telecom companies, preparing materials and data for board and share holder meetings. I bring vast experience from a technology background which is supplementary to the healthcare and business backgrounds of our other board members.

In my spare time I enjoy road cycling, I’m not quite a middle age man in lycra, but I’m probably not far away. I also enjoy cooking with a sous vide and smoker.

 

Open Arms – bringing people together

by Leave a Comment

The Open Arms Project has expanded into new areas and reached over 1000 people. Through workshops and visits, around 50 community groups are delivering inputs and sharing simple strategies that help them to build connections.

Early findings and feedback show that providing activities in this way helps people gain confidence to take action and reach out to the vulnerable in their communities by giving and sharing which in turn boosts happiness in the community.

 

In June Open Arms teamed up with a Play park in Wisbech. The idea was to hold a Big Lunch to build relationships with the local community due to some antisocial behaviour around the play park. Despite it being a wet day a small group of local people were welcomed into the play park for a cuppa and bite to eat in a space that normally a hive of activity for children of all ages

 

An elderly neighbour attended the event and highlighted that they didn’t get out and was feeling lonely a lot of the time. As a result of a conversation it was decided to hold a regular coffee morning at the play park every two weeks. On the first occasion 3 people attended, the group grew to 11 and the next one brought 30 people together from the community!  Open Arms got the PTA at the local school involved with the coffee morning providing more links for people in the community.

 

This week it was noticed that the elderly neighbour was not present. This resulted in a visit to their home, they were found to have become ill so others from the group arranged a doctor’s appointment and transport, got some shopping in and one offered to take food round and keep an eye out for this person.

Volunteer news from Azanda Sithole

by Leave a Comment

I can’t believe it’s been seven weeks since I joined the Care-Network team. I suppose it’s true when people say ‘time flies when you’re having fun’. My first day was the 3rd of June and it happened to coincide with Volunteer Week (1-7th of June 2019) which was the week for our volunteer celebration event, talk about timing! I’m a pretty hands on person, plus I used to work in events so I absolutely loved getting involved. Most of the hard work had already been completed by the team so it was plain sailing. The best thing about the volunteer celebration event was meeting some of the volunteers,  including those who had been with us for five or ten years. How lucky are we that we have people who have given their time to support our clients for a whole decade, it’s really inspiring. I’m looking forward to meeting more volunteers and continuing to learn more about Care-Network, we do so much and every day I learn something new about the services we provide. Whether it’s Healthy Fenland, Help at Home, Community Navigators and Community Development, there is so much that goes in to providing a bespoke service to clients and the communities throughout Cambridgeshire.

Our picture shows Susie presenting Roger Carr with a certificate for volunteering for us for 10 years,  Graham Austin also received his 10 year certificate at the event.