We opened our doors at our current location at Church Street, Preston in 2000 – 21 years ago this month! Wow, how time flies!
Church Street Opening Day
Here’s a photo of our opening day VIPs – The older gentlemen in the wheelchair is John Coxhead (sadly deceased) our Chairperson at the time. The other wheelchair user is a local actor, Mayor and Mayoress of the time and the two younger guys are PNE players.
Today’s Church Street Location
And today, we sadly have to socially distance when we stand outside for this photo…
Crikey, what an interesting 12 months it’s been since we wrote our blog about our 20 years at Church Street!
The Past 12 months
Over the past year, we’ve had the big challenge (as we know all of you have too) of Covid 19. Who’d have thought that last year, we were going to be supporting our members though such a global pandemic on that scale.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic started in early 2020 we have supplied Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) packages to over 1,100 Lancashire Independent Living Services clients across the breadth and width of the North West. The PPE is supplied by Lancashire County Council for clients who qualify for the provision through Direct Payments.
The deliveries would not have been possible without the help of the volunteers who have provided transport and their valuable time to help us achieve this. A special thanks goes out to Jamie, Dawn, Alan, Rachel, Sarah, Jack, Penny and Terry. Also a big thank you to LCC Care Providers for their work.
DENW’s Covid Numbers
1,029 PPE deliveries to disabled people
7 new volunteers delivering PPE 30 volunteers supported
33 new disability hate crime reports 450 direct payment enquiries
4,300 ‘safe and well’ client calls
56 emergency funding requests
64 front-line staff trained in disability and hate crime 25 trained Hate Crime Ambassadors
2,600 welfare letters / cards sent out 333 general advice calls
300 enquiries regarding face mask exemptions
511 clients supported to manage their social care budget.
6 Deaf Awareness Training Sessions
We look forward to further celebrations in April, where we will be celebrating 25 years since we started as a group of disabled people providing information and advice to other disabled people in Preston! So watch this space! And if you aren’t already following us on our social media channels click here for Facebook and click here for Twitter.