Preparations for Christmas

Christmas seems to be coming upon us very quickly indeed. All the shops are full of decorations and ‘tempting’ gift ideas, and November has still got two more weeks left!

We do like to make Christmas special for our clients but as I have mentioned before, it is a very difficult time for many of them and it is equally as difficult to pitch it right in what we plan.

The staff have been talking a lot about what we could do that would bring enjoyment and making the clients feel valued and not forgotten, without just adding more to their sadness and loss that this time evokes.

It is a delicate balance and we want to get it right. We appreciate that we will not be able to do this for every client. We want them to have a sense of belonging and family.

So this year we are probably going to do something very different.

As yet we cannot reveal what this will be but when we have finalised everything we will let you know. We feel excited and sense already that the plans we are making will be good ones.

Before that though is our Open Day this Saturday, 12.30pm to 3.00pm. We do hope you will come and join us. All the details are in our previous blog if you missed it. It promises to be a good day…and hopefully it will not rain!

Open Day

We are holding an ‘Open Day’ on Saturday 28^th November, 12.30pm to 3pm, and we would love to invite you all.

It is an excellent opportunity to find out more about what we do!

You can come and see for yourself some of the wonderful art work I have described in the blog previously.

There will be an opportunity to buy a small selection of greeting cards, Christmas Decorations, Chutney and our famous Piccalilli!

We will be serving home-made soup, delicious puddings and hot drinks all for £2.

Please do pop in and say hello and meet many of the people you have come to know through our blog in person. We would really enjoy meeting you too and it would be such an encouragement to our clients and the staff.

For those who don’t know where we are, our address is 2, Orange Street.

If you go to West Street and know where Tesco is you just look across the road and see a small street, which is us. On one corner is the University Archaeology Department and on the other corner, right by the West Street Tram stop a bright yellow retro shop called Cow. Ours is the blue door just below the brick archway.

Christmas dinner sorted!

Wendy faithfully shops for the Centre every Monday morning at Morrison’s supermarket. As I have mentioned before she is an excellent shopper and has an eager eye for any bargain. It is amazing how small our food bill is every week, especially considering the quality of the meals we eat and also the quantity we use.

It is wonderful to listen when our food is served as you will hear virtually nothing. A hush comes over the place and you know that is because the food is so good. Our clients are very grateful on the whole and it is very satisfying to hear all the thanks and praise to the person in the kitchen that day.

Wendy came in today very excited as Morrison are saying that if you spend £40 per week for the next 5 weeks between now and Christmas they will give you £25 off your Christmas shop. This will pay for our Christmas dinner, so this is amazing for us.

Every Christmas we give our clients a splendid dinner. It really is a lovely delicious meal. Often this time is a sad one for clients and many other people too, bringing back painful and difficult memories of Christmas’s past. But we endeavour to make it as joyful and as light as possible. We stay open until H.A.R.C. (Homeless and Rootless at Christmas), open their doors to provide food and shelter during the Christmas period.

So that is our Christmas dinner sorted and I don’t need to remind anyone how quickly it is approaching!

Harvest Gifts

It is the time for Harvest and we are receiving some very useful and timely gifts for our Centre. I have said this many times before but it is such an encouragement to the staff and the clients to receive these gifts.
Abundance comes faithfully every week with their fruit they have picked. Abundance is a non-profit making organisation that harvests a glut of local fruit. They re-distribute the surplice to organisations like us. We have put their apples and pears to good use. On Friday the Centre had a delicious Apple Crumble and the rest of the fruit was cooked and put in our freezer for later use. When these young men arrive on their bicycles pulling their trailers it is not only an amazing sight and such a tribute to these people who faithfully pick and distribute the fruit but it a gift that allows our Centre food and provision we would not probably have.

Waitrose the supermarket off Ecclesall Road, last month made us one of their three monthly charities. Customers when they are paying for their food are given a plastic disc and then can place it in one of the charities of their choice. We were against two other charities. The neuro-care charity won, and you can understand as they do sterling work, but Bens will receive a cheque which again will be put to very good use. It was amazing again to be considered and many people will now know of our existence who didn’t before.

Victoria Hall, the Methodist chapel, has kindly asked for Marmite and Marmalade for their Harvest gifts to be given to us. We have received many many jars, and these are being used for the breakfasts we provide. It is such an encouragement to see our pantry full of these kind gifts. Many of the people who donated these gifts came to the Centre themselves, often with very heavy bags, which showed real care and interest in us.

In the pipe-line at the moment is another gift from St Thomas’ Church Philadelphia Campus. They had their Harvest gift day and we were the only recipients which again is wonderful. It comes at a time when we are struggling to find finance to keep the Centre running and so this too will be so gratefully used.
All these groups have generously given their time and resources and have shown a love and interest in Ben’s Centre which as I said has so encouraged us and practically helped us enormously.
A big thank you to you all.

Pool Table

We have a really good pool table in the Centre. As we pursue other activities we are gradually weaning clients off the idea that this is all they can do! Many would just love to come into Bens and read the paper, play pool and perpetuate a ‘pub’ like atmosphere but without the alcohol! Having said that the pool table is a place where often clients unwind and begin to enjoy themselves. Life is hard and clients often forget how to have fun and laugh. So we value the table and the part it plays in our client’s lives.

As you can see our table needs recovering desperately, and it is amazing to see how it has lasted so long, especially when clients use it so often. This is very costly and in the grand schemes of things at the moment other essential items like food, our rent, and staffing take priority and there is no money left in the pot for this. We have had many discussions with staff and clients too how we could get this table recovered. None of the ideas as yet have materialized but we are hopeful that one day one will. Have any of our readers any ideas? We would be open to any suggestions and look forward to hearing from you. There has to be a way to get this recovered and hopefully we will find it with your help.

Our window is finished

Our window is finished. As you can see it looks really beautiful and has been such a successful activity for all the clients, staff and volunteers. It has surpassed any of our expectations. It is always an unknown quantity when a new activity is introduced and often it can be quite a slog to encourage clients to get involved.

This activity has from day one just taken off, and it has caused a lot of discussion and also been greatly admired. Clients realised very quickly that there was no right way of doing one of the small acetate panes. So, therefore there was no chance of failure. Not that we ever set any activity up with  a chance of failure but often it is how the task is perceived by our clients that inhibits them.

Wendy has found out, with years of experience that you lead by sitting down yourself and starting the activity. Before long clients will be ‘nosey’ and ask what you are doing and then it’s not long before they want to try it for themselves.

Clients loved working with the tissue paper. The colours were spectacular and even the choosing of these caused such good discussions, often stories were told that we hadn’t heard before. Sometimes when a pane was completed a client would be quite critical of their work, but once put up on the window, with the light streaming through, they saw that they had created something beautiful.

As no two panes were alike it was good to see that all the panes together made a beautiful window. No colours clashed but seemed to enhance the effect. It led to talking about us all being different and yet being able to be part of a bigger and more lovely picture.

Our next project is beginning and you will hear about it shortly.

If any of you would care to take a small detour off West Street, on Orange Street, and look at the fourth window down you will see the window. We would love to hear your comments.

Staff laugh at me a lot…

Staff laugh at me a lot as I tend not to remember where I have left my reading glasses and I do the usual squint which helps me to focus more clearly…and find my glasses! It’s hard when you can’t see very clearly and it can become very frustrating too. I have mentioned before that one of the most valuable things we have ever done in the Centre was to go and buy a selection of reading glasses and allow the client’s to use them. They have become very popular and have opened up many more ways for the clients to become independent, using the telephone and filling in forms, and also to engage with activities too.

Unfortunately glasses get lost and broken easily when you are intoxicated, so our supplies are dwindling rapidly. Clients are able to have an eye-test and a free pair of glasses every two years on the National Health Service with the benefits they are on. But the prescription pair, although obviously more suited to clients, tend to go the way that the ones we give out do.

Walking into the Centre this morning our wall of stained glass was looking so beautiful and has been a real success with our clients. Although not finished yet it is a lovely example of client’s enjoying an activity and has brought out some hidden creativity in many.

Mondays are our big crossword day. It’s a hard one to complete as the prize is £1,000. It has become a group activity and what we don’t manage to finish today, Edwin, our volunteer on Tuesdays usually manages to complete. We have yet to win the money!

All these activities are good and are made more enjoyable when the client can read the clues and see the activity in front of them clearly with the glasses we provide.

So very soon another trip to purchase some more glasses; [any bought glasses in the range of 2-3.5 would be greatly appreciated. We cannot accept prescription glasses]. In the meantime today’s activities are out in our little garden. We are going to plant some bulbs as the weather is so glorious. It also speaks to us and our clients of hope and expectation, as we know in the Spring we will have a beautiful colourful display.

A busy week

Last week was busy and very varied, with points of sadness, drama, frustration and some really good times…welcome to Bens!
Victoria Hall had kindly offered to give us their harvest gifts, and had asked us if there was anything we would particularly like. We suggested gifts of marmite and marmalade would be useful. So our week began with lots of older people, often having struggled with very heavy bags, bringing us a LOT of marmite and marmalade. We are very grateful and it will be put to good use; but it did have a surreal moment or two as a steady flow of more senior people came depositing all the jars, mingling with all that was going on in the Centre!
Monday ended with a meeting here in the Centre, a multi-partnership of representatives from the Police, Health, City and other organisations working to look together at the many issues that present with client group we work with. It was good to listen and hear the varied approaches to finding workable ways to deal with the problems that present themselves, and also to hear about some very positive initiatives taking place.
It was sad too this week as we said goodbye to two loyal helpers at Bens. Firstly it was Maria, our admin lady. Maria has been such a help to our Centre in all the work she has done for us, not least our much improved filing system. Tuesdays will not seem the same without her, and also we said goodbye to Euan, our volunteer, who also came in on a Tuesday. Euan has been a lovely volunteer and a big help to us. We shall miss them both and wish them well for all their new plans for the future.
It would not be Bens without Wendy having some project on the go for clients to try. We are attempting to fill one of our windows with our own small squares of ‘stained glass’.
It has been very popular as it allows clients to express their individual creativity, and as there is no right or wrong way of doing them, client’s confidence has grown. As you can see they are very attractive and it has been fun doing them, and to cap it all Sue managed to do two!

The week ended with a bang, a serious incident with a client. Very sad and also a reminder to us all that we are dealing with clients who have serious addictions and sometimes choices are made that are not good ones. But all in all it was a week with more positive happenings than negative.

Back after break

Well we are back after our break. I guess like everyone when you have a break you feel reluctant to get back into the routines of life.
But it is so good to know that we are working with clients who without the services of Ben’s Centre would be denied what is available to them, by way of services and help. This is not because there are no other services available, but because of client’s severe alcohol problems often they cannot assess these.
Our new ‘term’ will bring new challenges along with many of the old ones too but we expect to see good things happening and today is that new day; where we can look forward with hope and expectation. Next week our blog will have new things to share, you just have to watch this space!

Feedback from our AGM

We have an extra blog this week as we thought you may be interested to hear about our AGM, and also Ben’s Centre is going to be closed next week and re-open on September 28th.
Our AGM went really well and was well attended. A group of our clients attended too which was good. Wendy always tries to give a resume of the past year and this year she spoke about fruit. Fruit is always a sign of growth in the plant world Gifts were given out to our faithful volunteers and staff and they were these amazing ‘Winter Flowering Cherry’ plants, to tie in with the ‘fruit’ theme.
This year has been a hard one in many ways and a lot of our clients have been dealing with many issues in their lives. Often seeing the fruit or the progress in their lives is not always obvious, but in many clients’ lives, there are small steps taken and ‘fruit’ beginning to grow.

Our presentations to the clients, awarding certificates and a gift, were an acknowledgement of this fruit. It was as every year very moving and a privilege to be part of. All in all with the ‘yummy’ food on offer it was a good AGM and reminded us all of the multi-faceted achievements of Ben’s. The feedback from the clients has been so positive and was obviously very important to them too showing their achievements and the value of their lives to us and many more.