The Norwich bus service that provides vital help for disabled people
The Norwich Door To Door community mobility bus, which transports the elderly and disabled to the supermarket.
Picture: DENISE BRADLEY
Catherine Morris-Gretton Wednesday, September 10, 2014
1:26 PM
Norwich Door to Door community bus provides a vital service for disabled people. As part of a series of features about the organisation, reporter Catherine Morris-Gretton went out on one of the buses to meet the people who rely on the service.
It may only be early September, but a group of friends who met on the Norwich Door to Door bus has already booked a Christmas meal.
Passengers also arrange their own monthly meet-ups and pass on jigsaw puzzles to each other, seeing the service as much more than just a mode of transport.
Betty Williams, 81, who lives in Norwich, uses the bus every Tuesday and Thursday for shopping and once a fortnight to go and have her hair done.
“I wouldn’t be without Door to Door,” she said. “If I didn’t have it I wouldn’t go out at all. Not with my arthritis.
Volunteer Liz Rankine’s story
Liz Rankine is a passenger assistant with Norwich Door to Door.
She said: “I was a carer for my father for seven years. When he passed away, I was looking for some voluntary work. Norwich Door to Door used to help my father and it made it so much easier to get out to the doctors and the opticians with him.
“I decided to join and help other people. This is the fifth year I have been with Door to Door.
“If the supermarket is just down the road and someone can’t get to it, it might as well be 100 miles away.
“I came across one lady who lived on the ring road and she hadn’t been into the city for 16 years.
“And having us visit is extra safety for people, someone walking past a house wouldn’t notice if curtains weren’t drawn and wouldn’t think something might be wrong, but in this job you do – you develop a sixth sense.”
“I have been using the service for more than three years and I think they should be more donations for it.
“Local businesses should do more to help. If it wasn’t for Door to Door, I would have to get a taxi. I don’t have any family who can take me out. I only have a sister and she is in Wymondham.”
On a Thursday morning, the bus takes people to Morrisons supermarket at Riverside in Norwich and then goes to Sainsbury’s in Pound Lane, Thorpe St Andrew.
It takes passengers of any age with a disability, picking people up from their homes and taking them on their weekly shop, to appointments and offering a school service.
Joan Williams, 76, calls herself “the baby of the bus family” which makes the Thursday trip to Sainsbury’s. “I don’t think we would be able to get out if it wasn’t for these buses,” she said.
“Gone are the days when we could walk down to the shops or get the bus. We’d be pretty much housebound.”
Richard Forster, 51, from Sprowston, is blind and uses the bus two or three times a week.
He feels strongly that more people should help fund Norwich Door to Door.
“I think companies and supermarkets should make a donation every year,” he said. “More people ought to come and see what it does and realise how important it is.”
It is not just the passengers who sing the praises of the buses, which operate each day during the week.
Volunteer driver, Ian Brown, said the service helps people live a more normal life.
He knows there are people who, without the bus, would not be able to leave their homes.
Mr Brown said there is also a safety element to having a bus call regularly for people who live on their own.
“I went to get a gentleman from his home, but when I rang the doorbell there was no answer,” he said.
“I shouted through the letterbox and I could hear ‘help, help’. He had fallen over and couldn’t get up.”
