Many people are unaware that healthy children under the age of five are more likely to have to be admitted to hospital with flu than any other age group. In addition children can spread flu to vulnerable adults especially over the festive period. This is why the children’s flu vaccine is offered as a free yearly nasal spray to young children to help prevent them against flu.

Flu can be a very unpleasant illness for children causing a number of problems and this in turn can lead to missed school days.

In areas where primary school age children were given the nasal spray vaccine Public Health England found:

  • A&E respiratory attendances were 74% lower
  • Hospital admissions due to confirmed influenza were 93% lower

 

Children aged 2,3 and 4 (reception years) on 1 September 2016 will be offered flu immunisation in GP surgeries.  Children in years 1,2 and 3 will be offered immunisation at school.  If a child misses the school immunisation it should be noted that they would not routinely be eligible to have this undertaken at their GP practice.  When a child in years 1,2 and 3 misses the school immunisation session parents will need to liaise with their GP practice individually.  

Vanessa Andreae Vice Chair of Hammersmith and Fulham CCG said:

“It’s really important that children get the flu vaccine and I would strongly encourage all parents and carers to make sure they do.  As well as protecting the child from illness they should know that children are the most likely to spread flu across the community. Vaccinating them works towards keeping the community safe.

“The nasal spray is simple and painless, and I urge all parents to take advantage of this free vaccine and protect their child from flu.”

 

Sobus is working in partnership with Works4U to help you find trustees with a range of skills in areas such as finance, marketing, business planning, personnel and law to join your board. The Sobus newsletter goes out to over 1000 people locally and the Works4U mailing goes out to a range of businesses based in the area including the BBC, Coca-Cola, Disney,  Ernst & Young, Mercedes, L’Oreal,  Sky and many more.

If you would like to advertise a trustee vacancy in our upcoming mailing then please send us the following information:

  • a short description of your charity’s work,
  • the type of skills you are looking for,
  • contact details for who interested candidates get in touch with
  • your charity logo

Send the information to news@sobus.org.uk by Friday 25th November

 

 

 

 

Win £5K for your charity!

Charity Governance Awards 2017 are now open for entry. The Charity Governance Awards 2017 are the UK awards that recognise and reward good charity governance in charities both large and small.

By shining a spotlight on the best of the sector, the awards will demonstrate how effective governance can transform a charity and even more, the lives of its beneficiaries.

Entry to the awards is free. Each of the seven categories offers a £5000 cash prize.

Categories
The award categories are:

  • Board Diversity & Inclusivity
  • Embracing Digital
    Embracing Opportunity & Harnessing Risk
  • Improving Impact – charities with 3 paid staff or fewer (including charities with no paid staff)
  • Improving Impact – charities with 4–25 paid staff
  • Improving Impact – charities with 26 paid staff or more
  • Managing Turnaround

How to enter
You can enter online for free until 23.59 on 13th January 2017. The winners will be announced at the free awards ceremony drinks reception on 24th May 2017. You can follow the conversation via #charitygov17 .

Looking for inspiration for your entry?
Hear from the winners of the 2016 awards in our podcast interviews, with representatives from the winning charities talking about governance at their organisation and what it meant to win an award. You can also read about all the 2016 shortlisted charities.

About the organisers
The Charity Governance Awards are organised by The Clothworkers’ Company– a City Livery company that supports trusteeship initiatives – in partnership with charity think tank and consultancy NPC (New Philanthropy Capital), charity recruitment specialists Prospectus and volunteer matching charity Reach.

 

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Worried about Radicalisation? Attend a Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent

Worried about Radicalisation? Attend a Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP)

What is WRAP?

The Workshop to Raise Awareness of Prevent (WRAP) is a free, 90-minute workshop designed to improve awareness
of the Prevent strategy: the strand of the government’s national Counter-Terrorism Strategy which seeks to offer safeguarding support to vulnerable individuals at risk of radicalisation. Training sessions explore topics such as radicalisation and vulnerability, how some people are able to influence others, a discussion around how to spot the signs that someone might need some form of safeguarding help and support, how to safely refer an individual for specialised support and the forms of support that can be provided once this has occurred.

We encourage and welcome all individuals who work or volunteer in a frontline role to attend one of our WRAP training sessions. It is also worth noting that the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, passed by Parliament in February 2015, places a statutory requirement on the Council (and organisations commissioned by the Council) to
“have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.” For organisations commissioned by the Council, ensuring that frontline staff attend an accredited WRAP training session is necessary to ensure that they are compliant with this requirement.
Individuals can either attend one of our regularly booked training sessions (dates provided below) or, for teams
counting 15 or more members of staff, the Bi-Borough Prevent team can also run bespoke sessions on your place of
work in order to minimise any disruption to your activities.
To register for a session or to schedule a bespoke training session please email prevent2@lbhf.gov.uk

Dates of upcoming WRAP training sessions with vacancies remaining are as follows:
· 15th November 2016 (13.30 – 15:00), Hammersmith Town Hall
· 30th November 2016 (10:30 – 12:00), Kensington Town Hall
· 9th December 2016 (10:30 – 12:00), Hammersmith Town Hall
· 9th January 2017 (13:00 – 14:30), Hammersmith Town Hall
· 18th January 2017 (14:30 – 16:00), Kensington Town Hall
· 8th February 2017 (10:30 – 12:00), Hammersmith Town Hall
· 23rd February 2017 (10.30 – 12.00), Kensington Town Hall
· 8th March 2017 (10:30 – 12:00), Hammersmith Town Hall
· 21st March 2017 (10.30 – 12:00), Kensington Town Hall
· 4th April 2017 (13:00 – 14:30), Hammersmith Town Hall

PEACE PROJECT

People, Ethnicity, Age, and Community Engagement

 

After successfully applying to the Big Lottery Fund’s Celebrate programme, The PEACE (People, Ethnicity, Age, and Community Engagement) project; a cross borough partnership between Nubian Life Resource Centre and PLIAS Resettlement has been awarded £10,000 which will be used to create a PEACE Wall to be unveiled in  2017.

The intergenerational project will work with communities from all cultural & faith backgrounds to create a Peace Wall, consisting of Peace Quotes from residents of the two London Boroughs of Hammersmith & Fulham and Brent aimed at reminding, informing, educating and raising awareness about the importance of peace at an individual and community level.

The project is an exciting initiative consisting of;

  • 2 community Peace meals; residents, faith and community groups and prominent figures, will be asked to write a sentence/quote on why peace is important to them and how can it be achieved locally and maintained.
  • An intergenerational Expression of Peace Competition for schools and older people services
  • Unveiling of the PEACE Wall – a collections of all the quotes collected throughout the project

Jazz Browne from Nubian Life Resource Centre & Norma Hoyte from PLIAS Resettlement says: “By creating a Peace Wall where individual statements will be recorded, we hope that many lives will be affected by the creativity of the peace wall with the ability to learn from each other. We will also have discussion topics on how to create peace across the different communities; this will be an interactive session which will be videoed.   We will create an online short tool kit which can be distributed via social media to promote and champion the need for PEACE”.

About Big Lottery Fund

  • *YouGov poll on behalf of the Big Lottery Fund with 2109 respondents, June 2016.
  • The Big Lottery Fund is the largest funder of community activity in the UK. We put people in the lead to improve their lives and communities, often through small, local projects.
  • We are responsible for giving out 40% of the money raised by National Lottery players for good causes. Every year we invest over £650 million and award around 12,000 grants across the UK for health, education, environment and charitable purposes.
  • Since June 2004 we have awarded over £9 billion to projects that change the lives of millions of people. Since the National Lottery began in 1994, £34 billion has been raised and more than 450,000 grants awarded.

 

To be part of this exciting project please contact Sherene Henry

T: 020 8749 8017                                                                                E:sherene.henry@nubianlife.org.uk

Or

Send your PEACE Quote (no more than 25 words) to peaceproject@plias.co.uk

The Upper Room (TUR) is a Charity Organisation working to improve opportunities for disadvantaged people in London. One of TUR’s core projects is UR4Driving, an innovative project which aims to help ex-offenders develop the skills and sense of accountability required to avoid reoffending through the provision of motivational and personal development training, one-to-one peer mentoring, case management, voluntary sector volunteering as a form of the well lauded restorative justice (giving back to society) and helping them develop the requisite employability skills necessary to secure and sustain employment. Those who show the most commitment to positive change are taught to drive and supported to gain a driving licence. Participants’ experiences have revealed that jobs in the transport/warehousing industries are often still open to those with a criminal record, and thus a valid UK driving licence is a de facto vocational qualification for an ex-offender. A driving Licence provides ex-offenders with a strong chance of being gainfully employed and also helps to deliver social benefits to the wider society through reduced victims of crime and reduced financial cost of re-offending to tax payers.

UR4Driving won a Big Society Award in 2013 for its Outstanding Contribution to The Community. Presenting the Award, former Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged the role of the project in helping “ex-offenders secure jobs and turn them away from a life of crime”. UR4Driving project was also Highly Commended under the “Education and Training” category of the Civil Society Charity Awards in 2013. The project was shortlisted for the Charity Times Awards 2013 and the Guardian Charity Awards in 2014.

Read about the Big Society Award on the government’s website, www.gov.uk.

The success of the project is now being undermined by the increasing unsustainability of grant funding which the project has relied upon in the last 6 years, while interest in  the project from ex-offenders and referral agencies continues to rise every year. The challenging and particularly turbulent fundraising landscape for charities now demands that we develop new, innovative and sustainable funding streams. To achieve this, we have developed an innovative plan to translate the organisation’s goodwill within the local communities and our rich experience of helping people with some of the most challenging barriers to learning gain driving licences, into a social business model that will allow profits generated to be reinvested into the organisation’s charitable projects.

We are keen to find out what people think about this idea and have created a simple survey to help us collect this information. We will appreciate it if you could spare a moment to help us by completing the survey.

Please access the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/5V6BDLV.

 

NHS Hammersmith and Fulham Clinical Commissioning Group would like evaluate and, where appropriate, re-design our community Dermatology GP with Special Interest and Minor Surgery service. To support this work we would like to gauge individuals’ experience of the service through their completion of this questionnaire. It is very short and should only take you 10 minutes to complete. The questionnaire is anonymous so your confidentiality is also maintained.

The deadline for providing feedback is 11th November 2016.

Here is the link to the survey in full: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/2KSD8P3

Did you know that each year around 15–20% of people in the UK get infected with the flu virus?

Many people believe that flu is only a bad cold; however, it is associated with significant morbidity and in more unfortunate cases can lead to more serious illnesses, such as bronchitis and pneumonia. It can result in hospitalisation or even death in some cases. In the UK the number of flu-related deaths has reached more than 20,000 in an epidemic year. Flu spreads easily, as the virus can survive in the air or on surfaces such as door handles and telephones for several hours.

To protect yourself get your flu jab today to reduce your chances of catching the flu significantly. By vaccinating yourself, not only are you protecting yourself but also others around you, in whom flu could be harmful.

Free NHS flu jab is offered to:

  • those 65 years old and over (including those becoming 65 by 31st of March 2017)
  • Individuals in clinical risk groups: weakened immune system, asthma, diabetes or heart, chest, liver or kidney problems
  • household contacts of immunocompromised individuals
  • pregnant women
  • carers (whether you receive carer’s allowance or not)
  • people living in long-stay residential care homes
  • front line healthcare workers
  • morbidly obese (defined as BMI 40+)

If you’re not eligible for the free NHS flu vaccine, we can still offer you the premium service for only £10.

Act today call us on 020 8740 9443 to protect yourself and others around you!

 

 

The Caregrange team