It is half term week – an extra chance to get out and see what’s going on! The amount of good work supporting those in most need is phenomenal. A heart felt thank you for all you do!
If you have not been to “No Limits” café, kitchen and hub on Bridge Street in Newton Abbot you should! Not only is it a great café with good coffee and all things tasty, it is the best example I have seen of giving people with additional needs the respect they deserve and the skills they need. At No Limits a raft of skills to be learnt are on offer – Front of House, Customer Services, Barista Skills, Catering Skills and the fundamentals of team working and time management. Young people are offered work experience, apprenticeships and support to transition to a more independent adult life. The employment rate of disabled people is 53% compared to 82% of non-disabled. So, in addition to the café, the founders are working with schools and employers across Devon to provide work opportunities, showing them how to make it work and making it easy and rewarding for everyone.
Many say, ‘I don’t know what I would have done without The Citizen’s Advice Bureau’ (CAB). It is an amazing organisation advising on homelessness and housing, managing living costs and debt, pensions entitlements and benefits which are incredibly complex to navigate – they shouldn’t be but they are. I like to sit down with their team fairly regularly, as I did this week, to keep my finger on the pulse and see what I can do to change the mass of red tape by lobbying government to change things. The current stand-out problem is how to navigate entitlement to Personal Independence Payments. These payments are not benefits per se but payments to help people live independently. As many readers will know the system still doesn’t work. It is complex, the process is long with many cases having to be appealed – and successfully. Wouldn’t it have been better to get it right first time? I shall be raising this with Mel Stride, the Secretary of State, to see what he can do to fix it.
The Buckland Hub at the community centre offers a lifeline to locals. Every Tuesday at 10am a range of advisers - housing and benefits specialists, the police, a green energy company, and the CAB - come to do what they can to sort out local community problems and improve health and wellbeing. Support is offered for homelessness, a neighbourhood dispute and to help better manage energy costs. Or if you just fancy a chat, some company and a cup of coffee that’s on offer there too. Seeing it in action was very powerful. Those who have been helped by the Hub have become volunteer helpers. The initiative stems from the local GP surgery which now partners the Newton Abbot CIC to run the centre and the hub. Projects keep growing!
Sorting out the banking hubs for Dawlish and Teignmouth has been a bit of a roller coaster! It’s still early days and Cash Access are still finding their feet. Finding the permanent hub location has been challenging to say the least. I was therefore very grateful to the Community Engagement leader from Cash Access for spending a day with the local teams involved, first in Teignmouth and then in Dawlish. We will get there! We made the case that communication with the community about what was going on and when was very important! This was taken seriously. We were able, between us, to identify a few more options for a location be that as the long-term hub or the short-term temporary site. Have a look at the Cash Access website. This shows each of the main clearing banks participating, what they will each be offering in the Hub.
We have upcoming surgeries in Dawlish on the 1st of March, Kingsteignton on the 8th and Newton Abbot on the 5th of April. These will be by appointment only. If you would like to book a surgery appointment, please call my office on 01626 368277 or email annemarie.morris.mp@parliament.uk to arrange an appointment.