Supporting You This Winter

Every winter our services are a lifeline to many older people. In the darker colder days of winter, when the weather is often wet and windy, it is very easy to stay indoors and quickly become very isolated and lonely.

Our services keep people connected. The Day Services and Friendship Clubs are warm and welcoming places for people to meet, chat and share food. We also have lots of interesting and engaging activities. On average we have 1,660 attendance every month. This year we were very fortunate to be supported by many clubs and businesses, who volunteered their time to ensure our members had fun and also generously donated gifts, food and held Christmas parties. Take a look at our fabulous supporters - click this article Link to xmas giving.

Our Sharing Time volunteers made weekly home visits, over Christmas, through rain, shine, storm Ciara and storm Denis bringing cheer to 430 older people who use the service. Yes we support over 400 home friendship visits a week throughout the year!

Pic. Lilia and Tina Sharing Time

Practically, our Home Support workers kept people’s homes clean, cleaning kitchens and bathrooms, vacuuming and changing bedding, enabling older people to enjoy their home and keep safe from injury. Last year over 400 households received Home Support from us.

Our Community Wardens and Community Support at Home workers kept in daily contact with 220 service users, providing a listening and caring ear, reassurance and carrying out tasks such as shopping, reading post and small errands.

Our Handyperson team, whose aim is to prevent falls and accidents in the home, completed risk assessments and home safety checks, fitted grab rails, key safes, secured carpets, put up shelves, changed lightbulbs, fitted blinds and draught excluders, doing lots of the little essential DIY jobs that everyone loves to have done and many older people struggle to do. In 2018/2019 the team helped over 2,100 people.

We have an extremely busy Information Service, which includes the Visiting Support Service, who offer extra support during difficult times such as bereavement, ill health or moving home. Over the winter we also supported flu clinics, where hundreds of people attended. We have given free and confidential support to over 13,000 people on a huge range of issues.

This year we have been delivering an additional, NHS England commissioned, Winter Pressures Project, working closely with the British Red Cross in enabling safe and timely hospital discharge for older people helping them to go home.

From December 2019 and until March 2020, we are assisting 7 days a week and have helped many people to get home sooner. We provide support for 6 weeks allowing patients time to rest and recuperate. We help with shopping, move furniture (e.g a bed downstairs),fit independence safety aids, cleaning (some emergency admissions mean food is left at home for several weeks), refuse/bin collections, bill payments, benefit checks and connect with support such as family, friends, community and other services.  We have worked over the entire festive season and on Christmas Day we visited Bob, who had just been discharged from hospital, supported by us, on Christmas Eve.

We thank all of our funders and supporters, who enable us to deliver these services. We can only provide this level of help and make a positive difference to so many people’s lives because of you. We have some core commissioned work, but much of our service delivery needs subsidising from funds we must raise. Whilst we are part of a recognised national brand, being Age UK, we are an independent local charity, with our own registered charity number, board of trustees and responsibility to raise our own funds to deliver our local services. We are therefore very grateful for all donations, sponsorships and fundraising activities local supporters give to us.

We are always looking for corporate supporters and ways in which we might partner. If you know of any businesses who would like more details on how to implement their corporate social responsibly or simply willing show some level of support, please get in touch with us, contact: fundraising@ageukcap.org.uk

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