The course was funded through a personalisation grant provided by Supporting People programme, and was organised by In Touch staff in partnership with Southampton City college to help customers achieve their personal development goals.

As part of the course, participants were introduced to a variety of culinary skills and new ingredients through cooking a different dish each week. The course began with a simple pasta recipe and ended with a more complex goat’s cheese and tomato tart recipe.

All 10 service users completed the course and were given a specially adapted cook book to take away with them so that they could continue developing their cooking skills at home. The course participants found it an enjoyable and motivating experience, and are looking forward to helping develop future courses.

For more information please contact Alex Marshall, Communications Officer on 01273 766 002

Paul will be providing tailored employment guidance and advice training for staff who can then pass this information on to the customers that they support.

The training engages support workers with the challenges and barriers that In Touch customers often face when trying to move into employment, and gives them practical methods to help customers into work such as a CV Creation Toolkit, which matches the skills and experience of customers to the area of work they wish to target. It is a step-by-step guide with templates aimed not only at producing a quality CV document, but helping customers realise their potential.

There are plans to roll out the training to all In Touch staff in Sussex, Hampshire and Kent and hopefully this will mean that In Touch customers get all the help they need to improve their confidence and get involved in work, training or volunteering.

For more informantion, please contact Alex Marshall, Communications Officer on 01273 766002.

The event was an excellent opportunity for In Touch promote the  new Winter Warmth service to potential customers in Brighton and Hove. The Winter Warm Scheme is a new free service for anyone in Brighton and Hove over 65,  disabled or a single parent or a family with a child under 6 years old.

The service can provide free melt- ice to customers during very cold weather, provide temporary lighting if the lights fail, or electric heaters and electric bed blankets if the heating has failed.

It was an excellent opportunity to network with other local services, such as Age Concern, local Care Providers and other Council Services to promote our services.

This new service is also available to people living within the larger East Sussex area and will be able to provide valuable support to vulnerable people during the cold winter months ahead.

For more information about this service please contact Janet Geering, East Sussex Services Manager on 02070893307

The acquisition brings 120 contracts, 4,200 clients, and another 500 staff into the Family Mosaic organisation.

There will be no change to the day-to-day service for clients or loss of support staff as they will also move across with In Touch to Family Mosaic along with the existing contracts with local authorities.