Category Archives: Social Care

Help with cost of living pressures

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How your Council is helping

As winter set in, the Council set up Warm Hubs around Elmbridge. These were up and running in early November at the seven Centres for the Community, including Weybridge. These offer our residents a hot drink and somewhere warm to be as the temperatures drop. The Centres teams are also supporting with advice and signposting when requested.

On the 16th November, the Cabinet agreed to dedicate £250K to support residents with cost-of-living expenses and this was approved at December’s Council Meeting. This will go towards food vouchers for approximately 1,500 families on benefits with children aged 16 years or younger. Some local businesses have also contributed to this fund, and we thank them for their commitment to the community.

Elmbridge Borough Council has been working with partners from around the borough to support residents at this difficult time:

  • We have administered the £150 energy rebate schemes for eligible taxpayers.
  • We have used the Household Support Fund to support Elmbridge pensioners and those on benefits.
  • We are working closely with the local Citizens Advice to offer payment plans for those struggling with council tax and other charges.
  • Our cost-of-living support hub is being kept up to date with all the latest information and support available.

We will work with our charity and voluntary sector partners to ensure this new funding quickly reaches the most vulnerable.

Visit our cost-of-living hub to see the range of support on offer.

Weybridge Ukrainian Hub

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Every Tuesday morning between 1000 and 1200 a group of volunteers from Elmbridge CAN, our local refugee charity, hosts the Weybridge Ukrainian Hub at the Weybridge Centre for the Community.  With over 400 Ukrainians in Elmbridge through the Homes for Ukraine scheme, this and other weekly hubs throughout the borough are proving to be a vital source of information as well as a place for fellow Ukrainians to meet over a coffee and homemade cake.  

From finding out where to enrol for English classes, how to open a bank account or register with a GP or access school places and everything in between, including access to a Food Banks and other necessities that we take for granted, the hub has grown to provide support in CV writing and interview skills whilst also organising children’s activities. After several weeks, some of the Ukrainian visitors have also taken on support roles themselves as they have become more integrated into life in Weybridge.

There have been uplifting stories but also harrowing ones and the volunteers have shown compassion and ingenuity to find ways to lessen the trauma of settling into a new life a long way from home. It is always a pleasure when the same faces come back to the hub regularly to share details of their progress.

If you would like to find out more about volunteering at these hubs or would like to host a Ukrainian visitor or family, please email jsarsby@elmbridge.gov.uk



New Mayor launches his Charity Appeal

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Following his election as Mayor of Elmbridge at the Annual Meeting of the Council on Wednesday 19 May, Councillor Tony Popham held his charity launch via Zoom on Thursday 20 May. Councillor Tony Popham has chosen to support The Grace Dear Trust for his Mayoral term of office.

Judy Sarsby writes:

In a year like no other, when so many are struggling to stay positive, it was encouraging to hear that the new Mayor has chosen a charity that reflects the needs of the young people of the borough struggling with mental health. The Grace Dear Trust is a powerful and active mental health charity set up in the memory of a sister and daughter, Grace, lost to suicide in February 2017 aged just 27. Grace had been suffering with depression and anxiety from the age of 13. The aim of Grace’s father, Graham, and sister, Hope, is to help save the lives of other young people suffering with mental health issues. Mental health is still seriously underfunded and requires more effective approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Their slogan “it’s ok not to be ok” communicates the message that we can all have feelings of depression, but that we can reach out so that we do not have to suffer alone as there is help available. Many young people struggle to understand their own feelings and don’t know how to talk about them; this can lead to them suffering in silence without seeking the help they need. The charity supported by the Mayor, who lives in Hersham and has a teenage daughter, raises money to deliver presentations to schools and organisations on the importance of good mental health. The charity partners with local schools and clubs, providing mental health training courses and sets up strategies to support club members and pupils. They have embraced the pairing of sport with good mental health and also set up a young persons’ theatre project where they talk about their feelings through creative and performing arts. The Grace Dear Trust is certainly an appropriate cause in a year when showing empathy, listening and community spirit are of optimum importance to the young.

https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/mental-health/find-an-urgent-mental-health-helpline

Volunteering during the lockdowns

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An interview with Cllr Ashley Tilling 

Focus: How did you get involved with volunteering during the Covid-19 pandemic? ​  

When the national call for NHS Volunteers was broadcast in April I put my name forward. But for a couple of weeks I heard nothing. I then​ bumped into a neighbour who was involved in the Surrey First Responder volunteer scheme – organising the collection and delivery of medicines to people who were shielding, isolating or too ill to go out. He was very happy for me to join his small team.

Focus: How does the scheme work? 

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I received a list of prescriptions requiring to be picked up from pharmacies and to whom they were to be delivered. Some of these were marked urgent, so needed to be collected that afternoon, while others could wait until the following morning. 

Focus: Typically how many people were on your list?

Usually between four and six scattered around Elmbridge. I decided to use the scheme to try to keep fit and so dusted off my road bike. A typical route would be from Weybridge to Hersham, Esher, Claygate, Thames Ditton, Molesey and back via Walton on Thames, collecting and delivering along the way. Between April and July, I had made well over 80 deliveries all over Elmbridge. I was also recently called up again and helped during ‘Lockdown 2’. 

Focus: Have there been any challenges? ​   

Sometimes I would turn up at a pharmacy to find that they had not received the​ prescription on my list – it then took some persuasion and co-operation from the pharmacist to sort this out with the issuing GP practices. Finding the location for a delivery could also be a headache – a lucky encounter with a passing postman once helped!

A regular Weybridge recipient comments:

“We are so grateful for our prescriptions being delivered. Both my husband and I have multiple prescriptions, all cheerfully delivered. We have shielded since before the first lockdown and are so looking forward to the vaccination. Thank you to all those who have worked delivering our medicines”.