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What you think of childcare in H&F?

Welcome to our biggest ever consultation on childcare in Hammersmith & Fulham. We want to hear from everyone using childcare for under 12s in H&F. As well as having your say, you’ll be entered into a draw to win a £500 John Lewis voucher. What’s more the five runners-up will each win a £100 voucher. People tell us they love our 16 children’s centres and the many fantastic projects run by schools, charities and private organisations but we know more can be done.

What do you think? What would you like to see more of? What would you like to see less of? Do you get what you need when you need it? Are services and activities close enough? This is your chance to tell us. Join our Big Childcare Conversation. It will only take a few moments and then you’ll be in the running to win that £500 John Lewis voucher. The childcare consultation is for parents and guardians of children aged 11 and under and people will be entered into a draw to win a £500 John Lewis voucher.

Deadline: 18th December

Click here to take the survey

 

 

 

 

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Mental Health conditions in the workplace

Stress, anxiety and depression are the biggest cause of sickness absence in our society. In fact, work related stress accounted for 45% of all working days lost to ill health in the UK in 2015/16.

Mental health related absences cost UK employers an estimated £26 billion per year – over £1,000 per employee – on top of the value of lost productivity. It is estimated that by taking a few simple steps to improve the management of mental health in the workplace, UK employers could save 30% or more of these losses – at least £8 billion a year.

Visit our website to find out more about the importance of Mental Health First Aid training and to view the courses we have available.

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Kick It

Kick It is the stop smoking service for the London boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Kingston upon Thames. Kick It delivers a high quality, evidence based community service and by seeing one of our specialist advisors you are 4x more likely to quit for good. The service is funded by Public Health and provided through Thrive Tribe.

What the service provides…

  1. Get up to £100 worth of free quit medication
  2. See an advisor at your local GP or pharmacy, or even at the local mobile quit van or other locations.
  3. We can tailor our service for young people.
  4. Attend a Kick It programme for 6 weeks and you could be smoke free for a lifetime.

If you are keen to know more about the service and how your service users could benefit from Kick-it then check out our website www.healthyhearts.org.uk or email us at arnas.stuksys@thrivetribe.org.uk or call on 07595 454 010.

 

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Healthy Hearts

Healthy Hearts is the new Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Service for the London Boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. The Healthy Hearts service provides people at risk of Cardiovascular Disease with a one hour face-to-face assessment near to your home. During this session, a number of measurements are taken, including cholesterol, BMI and blood pressure, along with an assessment of risk factors such as a poor diet and low levels of physical activity.
You will come away with a personalised Healthy Heart Plan which opens the door to a range of FREE programmes designed to reduce your risk of CVD; these programmes include.
Weight Management Groups – Our ten week Lose Weight with Healthy Hearts programme combines theory and practical elements, where we help you lose 5% of your bodyweight. Healthy Cookery Classes – Our six week Cook & Eat classes are designed to teach you how to cook healthy, simple meals on a budget; before enjoying what you make with the group. Physical Activity Clubs – Our Healthy Hearts Active Clubs provide up to six free sessions giving you the opportunity to try new things like walking football, aqua aerobics and chair based exercise. If you are keen to know more about the service and how your service users could benefit from Healthy Hearts then check out our website www.healthyhearts.org.uk or email us at arnas.stuksys@thrivetribe.org.uk or call on 07595 454 010.

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Making your community project ideas come alive on the H&F Hive

Hammersmith & Fulham Council has set up the H&F Hive to help local groups and individuals raise funds for community projects. It’s part of crowdfunding platform, Spacehive. In addition to raising money from friends and neighbours, projects can make a pitch for a share of the £200,000 which H&F Council has made available to support great initiatives. The H&F Hive opens up opportunities to anyone in the borough who has an idea that could make a real difference to the local community.

Projects must fit into one of six categories:

  • Sport and play
  • Parks and gardens
  • Art and culture
  • Buildings
  • Food and farming
  • Streets and infrastructure.

If you have ideas for a community garden, an art project with local children, a community café in the disused hut in the local park, an outing for elderly residents, or bringing people from different cultures or age groups together through poetry or sport, take a look at the H&F Hive to see how you could make it happen.

If you want to talk through your idea first, contact Cat Priddey, Community Engagement Officer at H&F Council. Tel: 020 8753 1770, email: cat.priddey@lbf.gov.uk

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Vision Care for Homeless People

Vision Care for Homeless People is holding a Dinner on 23rd November at the Lansdowne Club and your colleagues may wish to attend.

For those who are yet to hear about Vision Care for Homeless People, we run opticians clinics for homeless people in London (3 clinics), Brighton, Birmingham Manchester, Exeter and Leeds. Using optometrists, dispensing opticians and eye care assistants, most of them volunteers, we provide glasses free of charge to 1,800 homeless people each year. Of those, only a third are eligible for NHS funding, so we make up the difference by using volunteers, through gifts in kind and with charity fundraising.

Homeless people are particularly disadvantaged when it comes to obtaining sight tests, glasses and eye care. They suffer a higher level of eye problems than the general population. They also find high street opticians difficult to access and are prone to losing or breaking their glasses.

We are proud of what we do but are keen to do more because our research suggests that nearly 20,000 homeless people are in need of glasses each year. We want to reach more homeless people, so have embarked on an ambitious expansion programme – we have launched two new clinics so far this year.

We are holding a Dinner in support of the charity at the Lansdowne Club, on Thursday 23 November. Guests will hear from our founder about why the charity’s work is so vitally important and get a preview of our exciting plans for the future.

Enjoy a fine three course dinner with wine, friends and colleagues and the opportunity to make new ones in a relaxed setting with live music.

Tickets are priced at £50. Tickets can be booked here until 7th November.

If you have any questions about the event or would like to book a table please email harry.todd@vchp.org.uk or 02032864186.

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Hammersmith and Fulham: London Borough of Culture

In June, the Mayor of London formally announced a competition for a new ‘London Borough of Culture’. In it’s bid to be London Borough of Culture for either 2019 or 2020, Hammersmith & Fulham recently created an arts strategy aimed at bolstering cultural provision in the borough, and ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, has access to the arts.

How Can You Help?
Hammersmith & Fulham will go live with their bid on Friday 3 November and you can help in the following ways:

  1. Share your ideas
    From 3 November, go online at www.hfculture.london and answer our questionnaires
    Come to one of our consultation events (dates on www.lbhf.gov.uk)
    Email us at arts@lbhf.gov.uk
  2. Back the Bid – From 3 November
    Register your support at www.hfculture.london
    Share on social media, using the hashtags
    #mylocalculture and
    #hfculture
    Request a poster from info@hfculture.london
  3. Share With Your Networks
    Use the H&F Culture brand on your communications
    Encourage others to back the bid

For more information please click here

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Acknowledging Youths

Press Releas
Flyer

Danny Barnes, the Chief Executive of Acknowledging Youths has been using the services of Sobus for the last two years developing his network across H&F. Danny says, “We are a pioneer socially responsible recruitment service that bridges the gap between ethical companies with strong corporate responsibility concerns and motivated, trained young professionals coming from a disadvantaged background.
We are focused on candidates coming from a disadvantaged background that have already started their journey into employability by completing the training and mentoring programmes at Acknowledging Youths CIC – an award-winning Community Interest Company (CIC) founded on 2012 and focused on delivering high-quality professional training, coaching and mentoring programmes to young people and adults coming from disadvantage background. AY Group –  the “one stop shop” place when you think of reducing unemployment among young people and adults.” Sobus has recently supported Danny with his mentoring project Time for Change.

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CQC’s new strategy for engaging with the public up to 2021

We have today published a new strategy for how we’ll engage with the public to help make us a strong, independent regulator that is always on the side of people using care services.
We engaged lots of people, including people who use services, organisations that represent them and our staff in its creation.

We heard the following challenges:

  • CQC can’t do this alone and in some cases, are not best placed to do so – we should leverage what others do well in the system.
  • People, and organisations, do not always know what happens when they share views and experiences of care with us.
  • The public struggle to find the information they need about care services. They are not always seeing our ratings.
  • People do not always know what changes their feedback or participation has led to.
  • The “public” are not a homogeneous group – they are diverse and have many needs. Over the next five years, these needs and the way people use health and care services will change.

We will address these challenges by:

  • Working with organisations that represent people who use services to help improve the quality of care.
  • Encouraging people to share their views and experiences of care with us, improving the way we use this information and reporting on the action we take.
  • Producing and promoting simple, clear and concise information for the public that explains what good care looks like and supports people to make decisions about services.
  • Improving the way we work by involving and engaging the public in our policies, plans and processes.

Thank you to those who helped us to develop our new strategy. We look forward to working with you to turn it into reality over the coming years.

You can download the summary version of the strategy here.

The strategy is also available in Easy Read and Large Print.

You can also read the strategy in Bengali, Chinese, Gujurati, Polish, Punjabi and Urdu..

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Fundraising Regulator: Registration For Third-Parties

We have now formally launched registration for commercial fundraising businesses, Commercial Participators and Community Interest Companies (CICs), as part of our wider commitment to ensuring high standards across the fundraising community.

The voluntary registration scheme particularly encourages the following third party organisations involved in charitable fundraising to sign up to good fundraising practice:

  • Agencies offering telemarketing or face to face fundraising services;
  • Direct marketing agencies
  • Online donation sites and fundraising platforms
  • Payroll giving services
  • Commercial clothing collectors
  • Companies exclusively offering fundraising products e.g. charity Christmas cards, affinity sites for purchases

Third party organisations that apply for registration will be invoiced according to their annual turnover, using the same bandings that are applied for the fundraising levy.

Once registered, these organisations will also be able to use the ‘Registered With’ logo on all fundraising materials to demonstrate commitment to high fundraising standards, and to the Fundraising Regulator’s Fundraising Promise.

Third-party organisations can apply for registration using the online form found here. Access details for the Registration Pack will be sent out within 7 working days of payment being processed. Organisations will also appear on the Public Register once registered.

If you have further questions, please email us at registration@fundraisingregulator.org.uk  or call us on 0300 999 3407.

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