GO DIGITAL
Monday 19th September Blackfen Library 10am – 2pm
Go Digital Save the Date for Groups
Every Mind Matters
Helping with mental health
https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/
Come and find out about the Bexley Winter Shelter
Please join us for a talk from the Bexley Winter Shelter about the work of this vital provision, 1pm 4th September at St Paulinus Church. Following the presentation there will be refreshments provided, so please join us.
Faith in Later Life
Church Champions Conference on Zoom 18th September 2021 , 9.45am to 3pm.
Anyone is welcome to attend (with £5 entry for non-Church Champions). The keynote speaker is Debbie Thrower, broadcaster and founder of Anna Chaplaincy for Older People, and she will be speaking on ‘Valuing Age – maintaining meaning and purpose in our later years’. Booking form available via the office.
CHRISTIANS AGAINST POVERTY (CAP)
Phone: 01274 760720
CAP is passionate about releasing people from a life sentence of poverty, debt, unemployment and addiction. Partnering with the local churches they bring good news, hope and freedom to people in the UK.
If you are feeling weighed down by debt, then we can help. You may think your situation is impossible, but there is hope. Our friendly team will give you a listening ear in the privacy of your own home and provide a real solution to your debts.
Locally we run:
CAP Debt Help – we give free help to anyone in debt. Thousands of people have already been given hope and a solution. The Erith & Thamesmead CAP Debt Centre is based in Belvedere and serves people in parts of the Bexley & Greenwich borough, to make an appointment contact freephone number 0800 328006 or See www.capuk.org.
CAP Money Course – this is a 3-session course, run daytimes or evenings by local CAP Money Coaches, to help with learning better budgeting skills, and is run at various times around Bexley. For upcoming courses, visit www.capuk.org
CAP Drop In Centre – this is weekly support centre for existing clients to gain support between visits or for those wishing to learn more about what CAP can offer we are open from 10-12pm each Tuesday, please call Jackie 07576 315994 to book an appointment.
CAP Life Skills – Life Skills is an eight-week course that will equip you with tools such as how to eat well on a budget, and how to make your money go further. You’ll meet with a group of likeminded people and learn practical skills from our trained coaches – and have some fun along the way to book onto this free course contact Mick on 07942 678551, visit www.capuk.org
CAP Job Club – There are no CAP Job Clubs in the Borough. If any Church would like to consider this as a new project, then please contact Jackie below, or reply to this mailing.
CAP Fresh Starts (formerly Release Groups) – There are no CAP Fresh Start Groups in Bexley. If any Church would like to consider this as a new project, then please contact Jackie below, or reply to this mailing.
CAP Kick Start – This is a new CAP project starting as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Three Churches in Welling are starting to work together on this project and would like to hear from any other churches interested in this. Please contact Jackie below, or reply to this mailing.
Jackie Lyon
Centre Manager – Erith and Thamesmead
Christians Against Poverty
M: 07576 315994
Working Hours Tuesday & Wednesday 10-4pm
Bexley Churches Youth Workers
Background
Bola Ojo, on the TBB Executive (a member of Bexley Christian Life Centre), has been involved in the Home Office Consultation round table discussion on Serious Youth Violence. She is part of Bexley Street Pastors Initiative and sits on behalf of Bexley at the Ascension Trust Synergy Group on youth crime reduction as vice chair, which covers everything to do with serious crime, drugs supply networks, grooming, and protection of young people at the school gates and online.
New Outline Project
TBB, in association with PL9 (https://www.bexleylife.co.uk/pl9) has begun a discussion around beginning a new phase of youth worker led informal support for young people exiting secondary schools, piloting in Bexleyheath Broadway. In Churches in Bexley there are a number of full and part time trained and qualified youth workers, who understanding something of youth culture and the pressures on our young people.
An outline project is in discussion with Bexley Police and Bexley Council, and we are looking for Churches who want to participate in a pilot phase by either/both
- Praying
- Offering their youth worker (if trained and qualified) for a total of 2-3 hours a week of face to face community based youth work in a team of 2-4 people twice a week
This project will replicate a ‘detached youth work’ model engaging with young people after school at the clocktower, Bexleyheath.
A prayer from Revd Amanda to support this work:
God of perfect community, look now on us and hear our prayer for the ‘New Outline Project’. May we be faithful followers and open our eyes that they may see the deepest needs of our young people.
We pray for young people under a shadow of loneliness and the pressures of youth culture. Lord, friend of the friendless, we pray that through us you will become the friend to young people who are at risk from serious crime, drugs supply networks, grooming, and pray for the protection of young people at the school gates and online.
Let us sit side by side, then standing together let us share the same spirit that draw us together in friendship and unity and peace. Amen
Community Champions needed! The council is looking for links in local community to feedback to them. They are plotting champions on a map and take receipt of leaflets on street near them to deliver and also to flag up any local need. https://www.bexley.gov.uk/coronavirus-covid-19/community-champions
The Bexley helpline number is 020 3045 5398 and other links to assistance available are on this webpage –https://www.bexley.gov.uk/coronavirus-covid-19
BVSC can help with volunteers or linking with other voluntary services – https://bvsc.co.uk/Covid-19
Finally, Isolation Help Bexley are a good contact, as we discussed –https://isolationhelpbexley.com/
Bexley Voluntary Service Council
Bexley Voluntary Service Council new LaunchPad Volunteering Project is now accepting new registrations!
Life can be tough for all sorts of different reasons – not being able to find a job, redundancy, bereavement, struggling with stress, anxiety or low mood, managing long term health conditions, big life events like retirement or just loss of confidence from being alone for a long time . This project is here to support anyone who feels that their mental health is creating a barrier to getting started. No formal diagnosis is needed. The project is open to any age 18+ who lives in the London Borough of Bexley. Visit https://volunteering.bvsc.co.uk/supported-volunteering/launchpad-volunteering-project or call Sky Crook, Supported Volunteering Co-ordinator 0300 302 0056 / 07307 882 164 for a chat about it.
BWS 2021
Make someone’s day with a letter or card
As part of the #Let’sTalkLoneliness campaign, which launched a year ago, the Minister of Loneliness is encouraging us to write to those who might benefit from a letter. That could be many people at this time of Covid 19, including those who are isolating through health, age or pregnancy. It could also support those who live by themselves and struggling with being unable to see friends and family, or any who may value a letter at this time. Hopefully we will be connecting with many of our congregation.
Writing letters is good way of making sure our friends, family and neighbours know we’re thinking about them.
O God of Compassion,
may each of us
in our desert
detect a sign of your presence.
With you,
may each of us be
for our brothers and sisters
a travelling companion
in the fellowship of the Father
Son and the Spirit.
Amen
Please use these card template if you wish:
Diamond Jubilee Café
This is a social club for the more mature in our community, offering reminiscence therapy through music, chat, tea and cake in normal times.
The Diamond Jubilee Club (or DJ Club) has been able to re-invent itself for the current lockdown.
The DJ Club goes ‘live’ every Thursday afternoon between 3 and 4 pm.
Del and Carol Bearfoot perform songs of the 50’s,60’s,70’s and beyond with reminiscence which, if you are able to access their program by Facebook, can be interactive.
Del and Carol are delighted to include birthday greetings and requests. Their program is mainly secular but usually finishes with a spiritual thought, hymn and blessing/prayer.
This program is ideal for people in residential homes or those who enjoy nostalgic music. There are opportunities to dance and also to singalong.
The link to facebook is www.facebook.com/bexleydjc
This link will take you onto their church site—you will see a keyboard and then just scroll down to see the live stream.
The club can also be accessed via the internet, more complicated but you can get full instructions sent to you via email.
For more info please phone 07814 418042.
The program will remain in place until larger gatherings are permitted.
New Memory Cafe
If anyone in your fellowship, group or church is living with dementia,
you are welcome to invite them to this new Memory Cafe.
Christchurch Erith Memory Cafe
For those living with dementia and their carers
To offer friendship and support
Meetings will take place over Zoom in the current situation
Thursdays 10.45-11.45am
Anyone wishing to join can email for an invitation using the address below.
Re-Instate (https://www.re-instate.co.uk/) began in 1966 by the then vicar of St John’s, Erith in West Street, Rev Basil Huett.
Rev Huett recognised that a number of his parishioners struggled with long-term mental health issues.
To support their recovery, he set up a project called Re-Instate, offering work experience within a friendly and supportive environment.
Re-Instate was re-invented for a new generation in 2012, and is still a community-church partnership with St John’s, Erith.
W-rap™
One of Re-instate’s projects is the W-rap Project (https://www.re-instate.co.uk/w-rap-project/)
W-rap™ stands for Well-being, Recovery, Activity Parcels.
IN NORMAL TIME
Re-Instate is a charity working to improve employment opportunities, quality of life and well-being for disadvantaged people in the London Borough of Bexley including people experiencing mental ill-health, people with learning disabilities and young people.
A key part of the vision for Re-Instate is the provision of employment services that build sustainable recovery for people experiencing mental ill-health.
W-rap™ parcels provide items associated with The New Economics Foundations’ Five Ways to Well-being (Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give) to encourage people to incorporate these five actions into their lives. You can learn more here.
DURING THE PANDEMIC
The W-rap™ project has continued to work hard, supplying packs to lots of disadvantaged people across Bexley, Greenwich and Lewisham boroughs. In May, this has included 100 activity packs delivered to Oxleas Home Treatment Team in Greenwich, helping to support the mental health and well-being of their service users, 66 boxes to Heathfield Care Home in Northumberland Heath, boxes to support St John’s Church (Erith) stay-at-home congregation during lockdown, Evergreen Care and their Elderberries and Isolation Bexley. We are currently preparing 50 mixed boxes for Carer’s Support for the start of June.
Given the present state of affairs in relation to COVID-19 and social isolation, we are adapting our packages and would like to offer them to older people within Bexley Borough, and different categories of people isolated in their homes at the moment, including parents continuing to home school their children and young people. The packages are geared towards maintaining and improving people’s mental health and well-being within Bexley, and link into the New Economics Foundation’s five ways to well-being above. We cover the whole spectrum from younger – older people; working on incorporating young people’s involvement in the project and specifically targeting older people in Bexley.
I will be interested in hearing from any group who feel that W-rap could help. Please E-mail me: Margaret or phone me on 01322 438155 if these packs would be helpful to support the mental well-being of your service users as an organisation, or as an individual.
See here for other projects run by Re-Instate
St. John’s Church Community Hall
194 West Street, Erith DA8 1AN
Belvedere Community Centre
Mitchell Close, Belvedere DA17 6AA
MONEY WORRIES
For those who have money worries during this time, please check out the document below that gives some advice to us all:
2020-05-22 – cesa money worries_2
SAFE HAVEN
As well as the charities listed below, people are seeking help and a safe haven during this time.
Please checkout the link below offering help for those that need this.
HOWBURY FRIENDS FOOD BANK
Operating from St Augustine’s Church Hall, Slade Green