The service, which operates in East Sussex, including the Brighton & Hove areas, provides older or vulnerable people a trustworthy, reliable and affordable service carrying out small jobs around the home.

The Award was presented at the Foundations ceremony at the House of Lords on 24 April and Graham Towse, the Minor Works Manager who heads up the team of trades people in East Sussex, picked up the award on behalf of his team.

Janet Geering, Services Manager, explained that these services help older or vulnerable people to remain safe and secure in their own homes. She added, “We are extremely proud to be given this prestigious national award which recognizes our commitment to providing low cost, high quality handyperson services.”

Grahame Towse added: “I could not be more proud of the team, who have proven that with a flexible professional approach it is possible to deliver the highest level of interventions, encompassing a wide variety of trades, during periods of uncertain funding opportunities. Ultimately our reward is the positive feedback we receive from those people we are able to help live independently and this award is very much the icing on the cake.”

In Touch also received commendations for their Handyperson and ‘Warm Homes Healthy People’ services in Kent. This service was set up to help people over 75 with heart or respiratory problems to keep warm during the cold months and therefore reduce the risks of hospital admissions.

For more information about these servcies click here or contact Alex Marshall, Communications Officer on 01273 468020 or email her.

L to r: Graham Towse, Lucy Hastings (Age UK), Julie Myers, Regional Director and Claire Howell Area Manager.

Support workers are ideally placed to help clients into employment and training as part of their move towards independence. As part of Family Mosaic’s commitment to supporting people into employment, Paul Corcoran from the Pathways2work team is working with In Touch Support staff to build employability support capacity.

Wade Parker was referred to In Touch to support him in his new tenancy in summer 2011. Wade’s support worker, Andrew Pearson, assisted him to get his benefits in place, set up payment of his utilities, and even get a pull-out sofa to enable Wade’s two young children to stay with him.

Once Wade was settled into his new home, his Support Worker encouraged Wade to develop his skills for the workplace by completing courses and gaining qualifications in Customer Service, Food Safety, Catering, Principles of Manual handling, and Health & Safety in the Workplace.

Soon Wade’s efforts paid off and he successfully gained a part-time position at the historic Red Cow Inn in Folkestone.

Wade’s immediate plans for the future are to increase his hours at work so he can become even more independent, and in the longer-term become a qualified licensee and manage his own pub.

Wade’s advice to other customers out of work is: “Don’t lose your confidence.” He found that taking part in training courses helped prepare him for employment by increasing his confidence and providing him with new skills.

There are plans to roll-out employability support training to all In Touch staff in Sussex, Hampshire and Kent. In the meantime, if you have any customers who have achieved education, training or employment goals with In Touch support, please contact Paul Corcoran on 07507 761256 or paul.corcoran@familymosaic.co.uk

The service, which operates in East Sussex, including  the  Brighton & Hove areas, provides older or vulnerable people a trustworthy, reliable and affordable service doing  small jobs around the home. These small jobs can mean people are able to remain safe and secure in their own home for as long as they wish.

The Handyperson Team, headed up by Mangaer Grahame Towse, have worked really hard to build up the service and are all deservedly proud of acheving this award.

For more information on the East Sussex Handyperson Service click here or call:  0207 089 3293.

Yvonne spoke to the customers in the Planetarium about the opportunities in Family Mosaic that they could be involved in and about the ‘Get Connected’ and ‘Greening Communities’ projects.  She also outlined how to apply to the Social Inclusion budget to fund other projects and activities that would focus on Citizenship.

The customers then had the opportunity to ask Yvonne questions followed by a presentation from Steve Curtis  on how the customers are able to get involved in the future Regional Forums.

The customers were then treated to a short animation film about a rocket being launched to Mars accompanied by Rocket Man Elton John which was projected onto the dome of the planetarium. One customer remarked that it was brilliant and wanted to see it again!

It was time for refreshments and we ate home made cakes and drank all the tea, coffee and juice we could manage but this was also a great opportunity for all the customers to come and have a chat with Yvonne, Steve and Ann-Maree. There were some really great suggestions for future gardening projects and some suggestions how we could use IT equipment like Web Cam chats with staff who manage rural areas as well as an Art group in North Hampshire. 

The customers were then able to access the Science Centre where they could wander round and try out the inter active experiments for themselves.

12 customers from the Southampton Disabilities and Floating Support services attended the event and were encouraged to come up to a board displaying word and pictures depicting different moods such as anxious, calm and happy and to choose the one that best depicted how they felt.

Shelley Edwards, the trainer from Progress to Success, then guided the group through several excercises showing how to build confidence including the ‘wheel of confidence’ where the attendees scored themselves from 1 to 10 on how confident they felt in different situations.

One of those who attended who had initially chosen the word ‘scared’ to describe how they were feeling was then able to stand up in front of the group to feedback on one of the excercises that they had completed – a real transformation!

All the customers worked really well together and ended up chatting happily about their experiences of the workshop. A couple of the attendees also said that they would like to try some Assertiveness and Positive Thinking Training in the future.

For more information on this or any of the other work that In Touch does, please contact Alex Marshall, Communications officer on 01273 766 002.

The new Greening Communities Project worker will work along side partner organisations and other internal services to support communities to realise their ideas in developing and improving open spaces.

These projects will start with customer consultations and work through to delivery and eventual completion. These will include clearing days, planting days and on to creating edible spaces as well as developing natural play, sensory gardens and relaxation areas so that people can have a place to meet up and form long lasting friendships well after the project worker has handed it over to the customers to run.

For more information on this or any other services that In Touch deliver, please contact Alex Marshall, Communications Officer on 01273 766002

If you would like to get involved with other Social Inclusion projects within In Touch, please contact Ann-Maree Purnell, Social Inclusion Officer on 07785 724 983

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.