Headway Newsletter Winter 2024
Hello Everyone,
Thank you for your positive comments from the last Newsletter and here is the last one for 2024! I will do the next one in Spring 2025. I know this time of year can be challenging and there is that thing about trying to do the right thing or be in the right place or wishing that there were more people around you. Whatever December and January look like for you, I wish you all, the best possible for 2025.
Our services are here to help you and here is a summary:
Our Community Links Service provides outreach information, specialist brain injury recovery advice for people with an acquired brain injury and their families and supports them as they come to terms with the changed circumstances brought about by brain injury.
(We can work with you and/or your family on specific issues – that may be accessing other support services, applying for different benefits, or you may want someone to walk alongside you on your journey for a while).
Our Enablement Service is centre based and open every weekday offering activities that focus on the five elements of rehabilitation: emotional functioning; cognitive functioning; learning; social interaction and behaviour. This takes the form of a structured timetable so that people can select the activities that help them work towards their goals. We work one to one and also employ a group format to harness the unique recovery benefits of peer contact and support.
(We know that coming here for the first few times can be daunting and we will do whatever we can to make this work for you and provide activities and the social support that is right for you)
Our Social and Support Groups provide a relaxed environment within the community where people with an acquired brain injury and their families can meet new people, share experiences and support each other. We provide training events, social events and facilitate carers support groups.
(We have set up outreach groups in Cheltenham and the Forest of Dean, we have carer support meetings each month)
You don’t have to access one service at a time and many people coming to the Enablement Centre will also work with one of our Community Links Team and their partner may come to the Family Support group. You may want support from the Community Links team on a specific issue or perhaps the carer support, or our Enablement Service may meet your needs.
If you would like to know more about the Community Links Service, the outreach groups or the family support group, please ask to speak to Cath, Christine or Estelle.
If you would like to know more about the Enablement Service, please ask to speak to Lewis or Lisa.
So, please if you need help, tell us and we will do our best, within the financial constraints we have!
Equally if you feel that you are not benefitting as much from our Enablement Service as you did when you joined, please do talk to Lewis as it may be that accessing the Community Links service when you have a specific issue, rather than attending Headway House each week, may work for you better now. We do have to notify Gloucestershire County Council when people don’t attend if they receive funding through the Council. This means that the Council are aware when people aren’t using our service.
To those of you who self-fund your place with Headway Gloucestershire, I am sorry we have had to put the rates up from January 2025. I have already spoken about the challenges within the sector in terms of finances so, I am afraid it is unavoidable.
Staff have attended various short training events related to roles and Lisa Warren (Deputy Enablement Manager) has attended a 3 day First Aid course which was very practical and enhances the First Aid training that we all do.
Sam is at college undertaking an accountancy course and scored 97% in her first exam!
We also provide information at events and recently attended a Carers Rights Day event in Shurdington. We try to ensure we represent the ABI Community in whatever we do and are also involved with the national organisation – Headway UK as well as working with other Headway organisations across the country.
We also attended the Barnwood Trust strategy day in October which was a great opportunity to represent our concerns and meet new people. Thank you Hayley, your introduction was brilliant!
University of Gloucestershire – An enormous Thank You to everyone who took part in the work undertaken by the University of Gloucestershire over the summer. The face-to-face survey work to evaluate the enablement service is now complete. An initial presentation of findings took place on 4 November 2024. I will update on the detail of this in the next newsletter. Suffice it to say, we are already working on what you said, and I hope you will see an even better service from Headway Gloucestershire moving forwards.
Volunteer Hours – excluding the Trustees, we access around 1200 hours of support from our Volunteers – this is a massive contribution to our ability to deliver services. This is absolutely wonderful and my thanks to Angela, Matt, Rebecca, Roxy, Gwyn and Cherry as always!
Christmas/New Year Closure – we will be closed from 4pm on Monday 23rd December and will reopen on Thursday 2nd January 2025.
Seated Exercise – we are currently piloting a seated exercise session facilitated by an expert instructor from G Fitness. We are also working with the University of Gloucestershire to develop additional exercise routines and have submitted grant applications to try to provide more choices.
We made £1286.51 on the night.
This came from:
Raffle – £664
Crafts – £407.91
Cakes – £75
Tombola – £121.60
More money is still coming in and we will update you all in January with the final figures. Thank you to everyone and we hope it was enjoyable!
I have submitted Grant Applications to a number of organisations and will continue to do so. This helps us to offer more services around the county as well as providing other activities in the Enablement Centre. I do spend quite a lot of time doing this, as, like many Charities, the contracts we have don’t cover the existing staff costs, let alone employing additional team members!
We attended a University of Gloucestershire careers event on 21/10/24. A number of students are interested in 35-hour placements with us, we are pursuing this opportunity.
Rebecca (Volunteer) and I presented at the Gloucester Royal Hospital Brain Injury Team training on 6 November, which was held in our building for individuals with an acquired brain injury and their families/carers.
I have also attended a few networking events to promote who we are and what we do. In 2025, we will endeavour to deliver at least two profile raising and fundraising events, however these are very resource intensive.
A further Fire Evacuation test was carried out on Tuesday 22nd October. We cleared the building in under 3 minutes and the processes agreed with the Fire Wardens and in the risk assessment operated effectively. A further test will be undertaken in March 2025 on a different day of the week. There are a couple of elements that we need to review, and this is underway.
Eco Grant – we were lucky to receive a grant from Government for works to the building. The roof insultation and solar panels are now complete. The new windows and doors will be installed before the Christmas closure.
We have replaced the microwave in the Living Skills kitchen and have purchased a new fridge. All items had stopped functioning!
The wheelchair friendly path is now complete in the garden! We were lucky to receive a grant for this and have a further grant to develop some raised beds. Hopefully this will make for being able to use the garden once the weather improves! I will take some better photos to send to our funder but here is the view from the window!
Please find on the next page a poem from Sally about the year. Thank you so much Sally
Thank you for reading this, do let me have your thoughts/comments and speak soon
And my thought for this newsletter…
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” — Pablo Neruda
Julie
Julie Reader-Sullivan
(CEO Headway Gloucestershire)
