We’ve had a hectic few months at the project, expanding our team and getting set up to extend Relative Experience far and wide across the North East.
Kim and Vicky remain with the scale up project but sadly Project Worker Jenny decided to move on to enjoy retirement and spend more time with her own lovely granddaughter. She will be greatly missed by the team but hasn’t been allowed to escape completely – she will keep in touch as part of the project advisory group.
New additions to the team are Project Manager Cath, Administrator Yvonne, Project Workers Dawn and Ray, and Volunteer Development Officers Sue and Julie. All are based at the Meadows Community Centre apart from Sue, our first member of staff in Middlesbrough. See contact us for info on how to get in touch and the photo below to see who’s who.
The new team. From left: Dawn, Julie, Ray, Vicky, Sue, Yvonne, Kim and Cath
With the team in place, Kim and Vicky delivered the first new training course in September and we now have seven new volunteers ready to support kinship carers as befrienders – well done to them all!
Well done to all of our new volunteers!
As well as our befriending service we will also be helping kinship carers set up their own support groups in the region. In Middlesbrough a new Kinkids group has been formed which Relative Experience is supporting and in Newcastle a new fortnightly group is up and running in Byker, run together with local charity PROPS. In Wallsend we are supporting kinship carer Alice, who has been befriended through our project, to set up a new group. And in Gateshead we’re working with social services – an open meeting for kinship carers has been organised for Thursday 20 November to check out the interest in a support group there.
So there’s a lot going on! We’ll be working with local authorities to raise the profile of kinship carers and improve services and will keep you updated on progress through our blog.
Posted by Cath Halse
Relative Experience Project 