Our Christmas Message from the Chair of the Trustees

Christmas Message from Berenice Groves, Chair of the Trustees

“This month I’ve spent a festively fabulous Saturday evening at the Corbridge Parish Hall at the Corbridge Big Night Out. I can confirm that a great time was had by all, the band was amazing and Bill Cunningham’s quiz was slightly less fiendish than 2021! Events like these take so much planning and it’s heart-warming to see the local community gathering together to produce such a successful event.

Looking back over the last 12 months, 2022 has been another challenging year and the pandemic has continued to impact every part of Charlotte Straker House. However as always, our amazing staff team continues to provide our much-loved residents with a happy home from home and the very best in high quality care.

Over the last year the community respite care bed service has provided an essential lifeline to many families. We have helped 23 families and we have received 100% excellent feedback from respite residents and their families about our services.

Fundraising is extremely difficult in the economic current climate, and we know we will face future challenges in this area, but we managed to secure enough financial support to keep our respite care bed open over the past twelve months. I’m grateful that we have succeeded, despite considerable challenges, to keep the care of the local community at the heart of our service.

The fundraising group has been working extremely hard to raise funds to fund our respite service, help meet any shortfall in fees and to support requirements for increased infection control measures that we needed to implement. This year we enjoyed a wide variety of fundraising events including a Craft Fair, Summer Fete, a Family Fun Day, the Christmas Big Night Out, a Quiz at the Angel in Corbridge and a first for us – the Crafty Women manned a stall at the Northumberland County Show.

We have also worked in partnership with other local charities, producing a charity “Better Together” Beer and a delicious Corbridge Lightly Sparkling Apple Juice – both still on sale in various shops in Corbridge Village.

Our supporters have also stepped up to raise money for our charity, including our Deputy Manager running the Great North Run and a local supporter attempting a sponsored swim at Lake Windermere.

With the easing of restrictions, we have been able to resume social activities including daily coffee mornings, exercise classes, crafting activities, reading afternoons, games sessions and visits from therapy animals, coffee shops, local museums, taken walks to beauty spots and even tried trout fishing, supported by our staff and several local volunteers. Thank you to those who help us with our social activities – we couldn’t manage outings and visits without you!

As with many in the care sector, we have faced enormous difficulties in employing suitable care and nursing staff and have had to set aside a large proportion of our budget on recruitment costs. We’ve been trialling new projects such as the Recruitment Morning in Corbridge Parish Hall and advertising on the Indeed app.

We’ve also implemented a much-needed new computerised care planning system to enable staff at all grades to have access to resident information at the point of care. As well as these major projects we’ve continued to take additional steps to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the continuation of stringent infection control policies, strict visiting procedures plus regular Covid Management Group meetings.

It has been yet another challenging year. However, the Charlotte Straker Project has continued to address every adverse situation and it is extremely positive to see that community support has remained at a high level during the last 12 months.

Our staff and volunteers have been a true inspiration to us this year and we would not exist without you. Thank you to everyone for their patience, determination and resilience. It has been fantastic working with you this year and I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a happy new year and all the best for 2023.

Berenice Groves
Chair of the Trustees