Reminderminder: my last surgery before the summer break is today in the Woodbridge library, 10-12pm. If you have any problems, issues or difficulties – do come and air them!
Monthly Archives: July 2013
Questions to Suffolk County Council
At every full council meeting elected members have the opportunity to put questions to the Cabinet members at Suffolk County Council. I am asking the following:
Caroline Page to Cabinet Member for Roads and Transport (Graham Newman)
Public transport is an essential part of supporting the future welfare of the county – particularly in rural areas. And yet it is coming under increasing pressure and failing to meet needs just at the time Suffolk needs it most.
I would like to ask the Cabinet member when he is going to press national government to alter the ridiculous ethos of so-called competition which has caused deregulated buses to provide such a terrible service to the people of the Suffolk countryside over the last decades
The other questions can be found here
How HomeStart spends £1000 in Suffolk
I have just received a monster cheque – monster in every sense of the word – from the Inner Wheel of Woodbridge, who were kind enough to make HomeStart Suffolk Coastal their chosen charity this last year. HomeStart are immensely grateful and will use the money wisely .
What on? On our wonderful volunteers, the bedrock on which the whole ethos of HomeStart stands.. £1000 is exactly the amount it costs to fund one of our HomeStart Volunteer Preparation Courses.
We run four or five of these a year if we can afford them, week-long courses – each one of which is an intensive preparation for an average of 9 volunteers for the role and requirements of a HomeStart volunteer.
It covers everything that Volunteers really need to know: starting with the basic essentials such as values and attitudes, family bonds and the stress factors that can affect family life, before going on to more specific and vital issues such as confidentiality, safeguarding, and setting boundaries, the mechanics of visiting and finishing with the emotional and philosophical issues concerning when support should end.
Whereas the visitor to Suffolk sees our beautiful countryside, our ancient townships, and the all the wonderful things Suffolk has to offer, rural poverty, deprivation and isolation are a continuing problem: hiding in plain sight. These courses are a wonderful investment in the future of the people of east Suffolk . Each and every volunteer we train will go on to support 1.5 families every year they remain with HomeStart.
This cheque therefore represents an altered future for an additional fourteen struggling local families a year.
Thank you very much, Woodbridge Inner Wheel!