A heartfelt “Thank you” from Angie Southcott
Dear Friends,
It’s that time of year again and in the of blink of an eye, we’re in December.
And what a year it’s been, with so much activity and collaborative working. We’ve hosted 10 LinkUps throughout the UK supporting 156 individuals. We have more planned for the first half of 2024 including Northern Ireland.
We’ll have run nearly 100 community days by the year end, with 30 of those focused on welcoming new potential beneficiaries to come along and learn more about hearing loss and the support available, most of which have had peer support volunteer attendance.
We’ve together run two flagship information days in both Yorkshire and Buckinghamshire welcoming more than 160 people to our sites and we’ve received some excellent feedback from attendees:
“We were both very impressed by the day and the very helpful and lovely people who were there as helpers. Such a wonderfully peaceful and beautiful setting at The Grange…it was good to be there.”
“I was very impressed with the breadth of information available. It was nice to see other parts of the centre we don’t normally visit.”
“Can’t think of any improvement. It was excellent.”
Our community hearing support sessions continue to go from strength to strength with two new locations established across the UK, as well as continuing to commit to the existing sites.
And I cannot let this year come and go without mentioning the highly successful development, launch and establishment of the new service, Helpful Hours! The first in our planned series of bite size learning sessions, based this time on maximising the potential from your audiology appointment, has already seen 117 attendees over 6 sessions including three live events. Huge thanks go to the project team made up of staff and peer support volunteers for making this a reality.
There’s always more, and I could talk for an age on the impact of our collective work and the incredible dedication shown by you, our volunteers. From supporting us to prepare for events with hundreds of information packs created, attending community days, facilitating LinkUps, preparing reviews for our news pages to being in constant readiness to reply to our Helpdesk queries.
So, I just wanted to say a huge heartfelt thank you. You improve the lives of people affected by hearing loss through your small and large gifts of time and support.
Wishing you all a very happy Christmas on behalf of myself and the whole of the Hearing Loss Services team and I very much look forward to seeing some of you in the New Year.
Best wishes,
Angie Southcott
Director of Hearing Loss Services