Category: In Your Community

December saw a handful of events take place within our communities seeing residents and partners coming together to festive events to get into the Christmas spirit. Our communities had 56 residents total attend a Christmas tree decorating, Christmas coffee mornings and residents Christmas Celebration.

The first event was the Oates Close Community centre Christmas Tree decoration event. Heart of the Community supported RMBC with this event to decorate a Christmas tree that has been planted outside of the Oates close community centre. The tree will grow bigger and bigger each year and will hopefully become a great feature of the estate for future Christmas events to come. Residents came together to write their own messages on baubles and decorated them with glitter and pens. We then decorated the tree with all the baubles that had messages on for the community at the end of the event.  Hot chocolates with cream and marshmallows, mince pies and other hot drinks were available for everyone taking part which went down a treat. We asked the children what they absolutely loved decorating the baubles, colouring them in and using the glue and glitter to make the colourful.

The firework display took place on Saturday 5 November, and this was a fantastic event with over 2500 attending.  As well as the spectacular firework display, there were children’s rides, catering stalls and a disco.  Everyone who attended said how much they had enjoyed it and how good the fireworks were.  Over £1000 was raised on the evening through a raffle, donations from the children’s rides and the fireworks.  This money will go towards 2023’s display which has already been booked for Saturday 4 November. 

Josef attended the Energy Know How Clifton Learning Partnership drop-in session. Lynn enquired whether the client had received his £66 government prepayment meter voucher from his energy provider. The client confirmed that he had tried to cash it in at the post office however his name was spelt incorrect on his voucher and the post office would not redeem the voucher. The client did not speak good English and got frustrated on the phone trying to speak to people. The client had his electricity bill and Lynn offered to contact British Gas to try and help him sort it out. British Gas were happy to speak to her with the clients consent and she managed to log the client’s problem with them. She arranged a further telephone appointment with the client and British Gas requesting an interpreter to help with communication. She also informed verbally and in writing what the client would need to have to hand when British Gas called. The client was very happy with the assistance offered and relieved that this issue would be resolved to enable him to cash his vouchers. The client thanked Lynn for the help offered.

Following the Energy Know How presentation to a group of senior citizens at Whiston parish hall, Stanley asked if they could help him. He has his energy supplied by Scottish Power and in April 2022 they increased his direct debit to £380 which he managed to pay but it was a struggle – he knew this was far too much and tried to get them to reduce it but several times they said they had worked it out on his previous usage.

Eventually they agreed to lower his payment to £232.00 which he is still paying and from Oct-Mar will get the £66 refund due to the government £400 grant to households – he is, however in credit by £790.00 following his latest bill which shows he is still paying more than he has used. On this basis his credit balance will continue to grow.

He has attempted on several occasions to contact Scottish Power as their website says he can have his credit balance back; however, they use automated chat bots which do not take him to where he wants to be, and he has not had any response to call back requests or emails. Sharon discussed with him the process of how he can make a formal complaint and gave him the email address for the CEO of Scottish Power – Kevin Anderson. They discussed what he needed to include, and she gave him guidance on how to draft his email considering he has had multiple customer service failures from them, and he should be due to a minimum of £90/£120 compensation. They also discussed ways to save energy including using a slow cooker and having radiator foils/led lightbulbs. With this in mind, he requested a green doctor visit. His wife is partially sighted, and both are in their 80’s.

He was very appreciative of the help and advice he was given and will make the complaint to Scottish Power.

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.

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.”

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 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

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.

It’s that time of year again where RotherFed attend the Rotherham show. This year we decided the Heart of the Community project was going to spread the love and good vibrations on both days of the show. We were astonished at the response we have had to the luau stand and how residents are helping those who need it know matter how small the task. A whopping 1023 Rotherham residents embraced the Luau theme and our mission to discover the little acts of kindness. We’ve estimated from 1023 pledges over 1500 residents will benefit. We have found that residents are supporting each other in a variety of ways such as taking out the bins, looking after a friend, raising money for Charity, helping people find their car and so much more! We thoroughly enjoyed the weekend speaking with residents, groups, and the service providers and having fun at the stall. Here are just a few examples of what we talked about with you: