As we approach the festive break, we send you our best wishes and season’s greetings.
Well what a difficult year we have had, and we are certain it wasn’t at all what any of us wanted. We’ve lived through sad and troubling times, but we have also made new friends and found out just how kind people can be when help and support is really needed.
We send our thanks to our fantastic volunteers who pulled out all the stops to help us this year.
- Our wonderful Sandwell Talking News volunteers, who made sure that not one single week has been missed.
- Our fantastic befriending volunteers who have been phoning people to chat and make sure people are keeping safe and well.
- Our kind and willing helpers who came to the rescue with shopping deliveries, dog walking and kept us in contact by running activities on Facebook and organising virtual groups.
- Our volunteer mask makers who used their creative skills to get sewing to make sure that all of our members got a mask in the post.
- Our dedicated staff team, who have volunteered their time over and above their working hours to ensure that members received the support they needed and to keep the service operational.
We are sincerely thankful to all who took the time to volunteer and appreciate all you have done for SVI.
We send kind thoughts to our members and friends; we have missed seeing you this year. We had so many plans for activities and trips out which we couldn’t do. These are on hold and will happen as soon as they can. We have however made new friends, as we have spoken to each and every member through our safe and well calls and now have closer links with SVI’s more isolated members.
We will do our best to resume our group activities next year and get back to our health and fitness activities as soon as it is safe to start them again. We also want to build on the vitally important one-to-one befriending support that this year has helped us to get started – we hope to reach even more people next year.
We know you will all realise that it’s very difficult to make plans right now, but please keep an ear out for our ‘Doing Things Differently’ programme, which will help people to get back out and doing things as soon as we can. We also plan to start a walking group in the New Year.
We sincerely hope we can now start to look forward to more positive times and wish you all a peaceful, safe and well Christmas and a happy 2021.
Office Christmas closure
Please note that the SVI Office will close for the Christmas break on Friday 18 December and reopen on Monday 4 January. If you need help relating to adult social care while we are closed, please call Sandwell Enquiries on 0121 569 2266. If your call is urgent you can call the adult social care emergency duty officer on 0121 569 2355 out of hours.
