Events 🥳
Our stand at the New Forest Show this year was a fabulous success, even with the weather being pretty grim – but the crowds came, nevertheless. We hosted a quiz to raise awareness of the effect of mental illness on our communities, and it garnered a great deal of interest – particularly with a week of indulgence at a fully-staffed Riad in Morocco as the tempting prize to enter our quiz draw! Our stand was manned by our staff and some of our loyal volunteers, and it was good to have the chance to spend some time together. We handed quiz leaflets around to visitors to the show, which encouraged a lot of visits to our stand. As well as that, our new office manager, Joanne, brought a glitter tattoo set to our stand, and was giving free glitter tattoos to children while other staff talked to their parents and encouraged more quiz entries. We talked and talked for 3 days, and there is no doubt that we succeeded in raising interest in and awareness of the misery of mental illness, and its effect on our communities. So, we’ll be doing The New Forest Show again next year, all being well.
After the excitement of the New Forest Show, we were delighted to be invited to exhibit at the Lymington Rotary Club “Summer Spectacular” on 6th August – a fun family day out, with car-boot sale, funfair, dog show, live music, birds of prey, Punch & Judy, and the most wonderful display of classic cars! The weather held out until late afternoon when we all got drenched, but it didn’t seem to deter anyone from enjoying a really great day – huge crowds came! We hope we can participate again next year. It’s always the first Saturday of August, so put it in your diaries now!
My Giving Circle
We have a profile page on My Giving Circle and we need YOUR VOTE, please! It costs nothing other than a few moments of your time and would mean a great deal to us. You can vote for us once a week, and we need as many votes as possible to help us get into the top 10 of their list of charities, to be eligible for a share in their generous regular grants round.
PLEASE vote for us as often as you can remember to, and even better – spread the word!
As well as this, we also have our very own ONE LOTTERY!
There are winners every week, and right now, as well as the chance of winning £25,000 there is an opportunity to win a £500 John Lewis shopping voucher!
In the News
Sadly, we have seen more tragic cases of our Mental Health systems failing vulnerable people and those around them. We advocate for more support at ground level to prevent these crises and our Hammersley Homes Project aims to take a step in this direction. By providing those suffering from long-term mental illness with a safe and secure place to stay, we can allow them to focus their energy on improving their well-being and living their lives to the fullest.
The BBC have highlighted failures in mental health care across the country. We are glad to see this issue being raised and hope that support is provided to these institutions to allow them to improve their care and the lives of the patients that depend on it.
In better news, these investigations are taking place and beginning to gain momentum. In Essex, an inquiry investigating deaths in mental health care has been given further legal powers in a bid to give answers to families and make important changes to mental health care in the future.
We are hiring!
Thanks to the wonderful Lottery Community Fund Award which we received earlier this year, we are looking to hire more Outreach Home Visitors. We have hired 3 new Outreach staff so far this year, but are still looking for someone to work with us in the New Forest area. If you’re interested in rewarding role, click here to find out more.
We are also looking to hire a Volunteer Coordinator so if you like working with people and think you have some great ideas to share, click here for further details. If you know of anyone who might be interested in joining our team, please do spread the word about these vacancies. Thank you!
Our team is growing! 🌿
We are delighted to welcome Joanne Cox to manage our Lymington office. She joined us at the end of July and has already shown us terrific initiative in her first week, helping us on our stand at the New Forest Show, with her glitter tattoos!
Meet the Team: Heather Giin - Outreach Home Officer
You joined us earlier in the year to join our team of Outreach Home Visitors, a consequence of our wonderful Lottery Community Fund Award – can you tell us what attracted you to our project?
I joined Hammersley Homes April this year, having previously worked with a Housing association for 21 years.I felt it was time for a change. I have always enjoyed listening and talking to people and the opportunity to be involved with people struggling with day-to-day challenges with mental health issues, really interested me.
Can you tell us a little about the work that you do with us and the experiences you have had, visiting some of our Outreach Members? What sort of support have you been providing to our Members?
I visit for a 2 hour visit fortnightly and all our Members have their own mental health challenges, all very different. The main part of being an Outreach Home visitor is to be a really good listener, as every visit will be different, depending especially how that person may be feeling on the day. Some of them are wanting to go out, maybe shopping or just for a cuppa and chat, but being in different surroundings seems always to help if only just for those few hours.
We are always looking for more volunteers to work with our Outreach Team – how might you encourage people to join us in this work?
I would say to anyone considering joining our team of Outreach visitors, do not feel you have to know all about Mental Health; there is plenty of training support. It is completely different to anything I would have thought I’d be part of – but when I leave an Outreach Member’s home and they say “thank you, you have lifted my mood”, it truly is very fulfilling and rewarding. You may be the only person they see that day.
Support our work
If you are able to make regular donations to Hammersley Homes, be that £1 or £10, the progress that we can make would be enormous. If you’re considering regular donations, please click the donate button below. As always, thank you for all of your support! We really couldn’t do it without you.
Please spread the word about our vital work OR DONATE just £3 a month to change a life, by texting 3HOMES to 70580.
Texts cost £3 plus two standard rate messages and you’ll be opting in to hear more about our work and fundraising via telephone and SMS. If you’d like to give £3 but do not wish to receive marketing communications, text 3HOMESNOINFO to 70580.
Hammersley Homes – Registered Charity Number 1180673
