Tag Archives: carers
Help for pensioners and carers who live in London
A winter warmer for pensioners and their carers
Victoria Borwick, Deputy Mayor and London Assembly member on our new campaign to make sure older Londoners get the benefits they’re entitled to.
It is sad to think in these difficult times that many pensioners in London may be missing out on an extra £35 a week, or £1,800 a year in pension credits. That’s why we’re running a new campaign to raise awareness and remind older people that they are able to claim.
Police help family unpaid carers have a life
Borough carers centre boosted by £1k police cash
12:00pm Sunday 24th March 2013 in News
A BOROUGH care and respite centre has been boosted by a £1,000 donation by West Midlands Police.
Crossroads Care, based in the Pensnett Trading Estate provides free trained carer support and respite for disabled or sensory impaired borough residents, helping over 140 families every week with care facilities in their own home.
Weaving the words of dementia patients into poetry
Words of dementia sufferers woven into poetry by Susanna Howard
Saturday 23 March 2013
A poet is working with dementia patients to
weave their words into poetry. Susanna Howard, sits with them, often in silence,
jotting down whatever words they utter, and then uses only these utterances to
put a poem together for her collections, Living Words.
The results are poignant and profoundly emotional. At times, they also hint at the failings in our care system. “So many people are saying they want to be cared for and how to be cared for, that they are not listened to, that they are not heard. They are saying ‘this is what I want. This is what I need’,” says Howard.
She works with the terminal patients as well as the elderly, and says healing through words can’t be underestimated. Her refreshing approach exposes the lie behind the cliche of dementia as the “silent” living death. “I think we have a wealth of words inside us throughout our lives and when you have dementia, they are still inside you”, she says.
Howard, whose work has been funded by the Arts Council in the past, has created an innovative collection of poetry books in collaboration with dementia suffers, even though with advanced states of the degenerative illness.
Poems from a recent residency, staged in collaboration with EnglishPEN, can be viewed on 9 April at Europe House, in London.
