Centre Update March 2021

1. Introduction – Jacquie Winning MBE, CEO

Hi everyone. Apart from never ever using Zoom again, what’s the first thing you’re
going to do when this is all over?

No doubt, we will all struggle to adjust to the fact that this is all over! Our worlds have
shrunk, and we have all been learning to appreciate small things that we once took
for granted. Hopefully not for too much longer, as more and more people get
vaccinated. Here at the Sensory Centre we have adapted our services to enable us
to continue to provide a range of different activities for people with sensory loss.
Whilst essential NHS services such as Audiology, Interpreting and Child
Immunisation have continued in the Centre, the building remains closed to the
general public, and as a result we have moved some of our popular groups online
and added some new activities to the list. We fully accept that online activities are
not for everyone and so we have continued to provide telephone befriending calls for
those of you who would like us to keep in touch.

As a result of the Pandemic many charities have faced major difficulties, and some
have even closed. While we are not in that position, we have had to review our
finances, our structure and our staffing and make some very tough decisions. Our
Receptionist and Caretaker staff, Alison and David, two of our longest serving team
members, returned to Falkirk Council at the end of December and we wish them all
the very best as they consider redeployment options. The funding for our Climate
Challenge Project ends this month and we must also bid farewell to Kirsty, our
Energy Saving Project Manager, who many of you have got to know over the last 2
years. We have drawn up a new Fundraising Plan and arrangements to get the
Centre back up and running smoothly when it is safe to do so later this year.

This is likely to require some changes in the way we operate in the future and we
really hope that you understand and bear with us until things become more settled.
Something that has definately not changed is our resolve to continue to work with all
our Centre Partners to provide an excellent range of services for our Centre Users
across Forth Valley.

I hope you enjoy reading the latest updates provided by FVSC Team members.

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2. Centre Groups and Activities – Linsey Stocks, Activities Co-ordinator

It has been another busy month for us in February with our groups and activities. As
well as our regular online activities, which I will come back to in a moment, we have
had the successful roll out of our much anticipated Lip-reading packs to our Talk and
Sign and Lip-reading groups. Alongside this we also provided an afternoon tea to our
BSL OAP group to let them know that we are thinking of them.

We embarked upon a new endeavour with our Talk and Sign Group which is
practising BSL! After a discussion last month whereby Laura Stewart, our volunteer,
felt that she (like many of us!) could brush up on our BSL, we decided that we could
all practise together. This group will take place every four weeks, and is open to
anyone who would like to polish up those rusty BSL skills.

The Talk and Sign group will also continue to have their four weekly social group as
well. In January we welcomed Emma from Police Scotland who told us about a
range of scams, including the Covid Scams to be aware of as the vaccines are being
rolled out. This was a great session and our group thoroughly enjoyed it. In March
we will be having a visit from Kirsty for a ‘Green Café’ session with the group for all
of those energy saving tips!

Our book group came together on the 16th February to discuss ‘Corrag’ by Susan
Fletcher, some of the group had read this before a few years ago but they were keen
to revisit. We are now also keeping track of the ratings, so check out our social
media and webpage to see what our group thought! For March we will be moving
onto ‘This is Going to Hurt’ by Adam Kay. The book group happily welcomes anyone
who would like to join, we get our Talking Books from RNIB and will send out
memory sticks for those who need them.

The history group had a very informative session with Adrian Cox from Historic
Environment Scotland on the 17th as he told us all about the Borders Abbeys. This
month we will be welcoming back Kate Stephenson from National Trust Scotland
who will be talking to us about the Gladstone Land Project. An interpreter is available
for this group.

On the back of our success with our Youth Group in January when we invited along
‘Orbit of the Moon’ a local theatre company. We are now embarking on another new
project with Falkirk Community Learning and Development. This project aims to
create a new art installation at Forth Valley Sensory Centre. The group is due to
meet on Friday 26th at 7pm. New members welcome.

Together with our RNIB Connect partners, we held a monthly Music Quiz during
February and we plan to hold another in March. This group is on Microsoft Teams
and is open to anyone who would like to test out their musical prowess!

As well as our groups we also post accessible videos on our website each month.
We have a monthly cookery video, and we also have our weekly Bite sized Fitness

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 videos with David Black and the Scottish Centre for Personal Safety. Check out our
Facebook Page and Website to view our videos.

We also produce two podcasts; a weekly news podcast, covering in part for
Newsline Talking News whilst they are temporarily unable to operate due to Covid.
This is available on our social media and website, and can also be posted out on
memory stick, on request.

Our second podcast is ‘Live with Laura’ , where Trustee and volunteer Laura Cluxton
invites a new guest to join her for a friendly chat each month. February’s guest was
Gavin Neate of Neatebox. Gavin spoke about his origins with Guide Dogs, how he
came to be the founder of Neatebox, and what we can all do to help make life more
accessible. The podcast is available on our website and facebook with BSL
translation. Its also available on audio only format as well. Look out for Laura’s next
special guest, Jon Attenborough in March!

3. Publicity - Martin Allen, Fundraising and Publicity Manager

Savvy Tesco shoppers might have noticed that your very own Sensory Centre is
featured in the latest copy of Tesco Magazine. The feature, which starts on page 45,
covers the redevelopment of the Sensory Garden which was partially funded by the
Bags of Help scheme (the money you pay for your carrier bags from the
supermarket). The pictures are great and it is national exposure for our charity. Do
pick up a copy available at all good retailers called Tesco while stocks last.

As well as featuring in national magazines we have continued to drive forward the

development and accessibility of our new website. If you haven’t checked our
website yet, please do visit us at www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org

Our Energy Saving page now has BSL translation on all content and we regularly
upload new videos. A lovely feature recently was an interview with Margaret Howie,
one of our volunteers. It is a really nice and happy interview so do have a look.

Please give us your feedback on the website and support us by liking and sharing
our content on social media. The more people know about our work the better!

4. Fundraising

As we near the end of the longest year ever we have derived some income from
grant and trust funding to help cover our core costs whilst we have been unable to
generate income from our café and room hire.

It has also allowed us to make some significant changes to our ways of working.
With everyone in lockdown we have had to move so many things online and have

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 received lots of help to do that. Most recently we were awarded £4800 from the
Digital Boost programme to get new laptops for our staff. This will help our Team to
stay online with more flexible and remote working anticipated for some time to come.

We recently received £1500 from Foundation Scotland to renew our Cyber

Essentials accreditation. This makes sure all our IT systems are as secure as we
can possibly make them, providing peace of mind to our Centre Users that we take
guarding their information and data very seriously indeed.

We are awaiting the outcome of a number of bids which are in the pipeline. Most
significantly we would be delighted to continue our energy saving work if we are
successful with our Energy Redress Fund application. We are also awaiting the
result of two other bids to support a new employability project which will be starting
later in the spring. We have drawn up a fundraising strategy for 2021/22 to
compliment our Covid Exit plan and budget forecast.

5. Volunteering – Caroline Storey, Volunteer Co-ordinator

Our last volunteer zoom session in January attracted 16 volunteers which was a very
healthy attendance. We discussed using the zoom session as a way of ongoing
engagement and building connections with our volunteer team. I asked volunteers
for ideas for future zoom sessions which we plan to host monthly and the feedback
was that they would like more training and especially refresher training and BSL but
also wider training on things like LGBTQ+ awareness. Having taken this on board
the next zoom session on 25 February will cover the impacts of COVID on people
with sensory loss - two of our volunteers with sensory loss will outline their
experiences and how we can mitigate some of the new barriers that people face.
We will provide hints and tips on zoom in particular as this is the main focus of
Centre and volunteer activity at present.

Two further ipads issued to Deaf families who are benefitting greatly from this.
Another two ipads are to be issued to people with Sight Loss as part of the
Government's Connecting Scotland project.

All volunteer policies and procedures are being reviewed to bring them into line with
staff policies and a new volunteer handbook is being developed.

We want to highlight the wonderful work of volunteers in more detail and managed to
persuade one of our long standing volunteers Margaret Howie to be interviewed on
Zoom. Look out for this and for more volunteer interviews over the coming months.

As ever, volunteers have been involved in various activities this month including
supporting the book group, history group, music quiz, green cafe, talk and sign,
youth group, guide dog walking and digital filming.

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 I am keeping my knowledge updated and have recently attended two webinars - one
on volunteer policies and restarting volunteering and another on COVID safe
inspections.

6. Climate Challenge Fund – Kirsty Banks, Energy Project Manager

As the project comes to an end I am very proud to have been able to leave a legacy
for the future. Having accessible information available on the Centre website, films
about ways to save energy in the home and information available in hard copy
format ensure people with sensory loss, not only in the Forth Valley area, are able to
make informed choices about their carbon footprint long after the end of this
particular project.

The project pages on Forth Valley Sensory Centre’s website are packed full of
information on how to reduce energy in the home, food waste and climate change.
All this information is compatible with e-readers and has a BSL translation available.

John McNally MP commented:

“I have been impressed by this project as it tackles two of the big issues in modern
society, inclusion and climate change. I have always been a big advocate of the
move to net zero but to do that we need to make everyone is part of that journey.
That means making information accessible and supporting those in society who are
not able to afford energy efficient heating or other measures, trapping them in a
cycle of big bills and high energy usage.”

Janis McDonald, Chief Executive of Deafscotland commented:

“The team at Deafscotland, which includes a number of member bodies, supports

the climate challenge work of FVSC. It is critical on a number of levels such as
providing accessible information in British Sign Language with subtitles and voice
over. It is allowing discussion and engagement in various strands of relevant process
such as growing, recycling and eating. Furthermore, it is enabling those affected by
deafness to connect with other groups and be active participants within their
localities. Excellent work done in a very human way.”

The project exceeded its objectives by engaging with over 3 times the number of
people we were hoping to reach. The figure of 1786 engagements relates to
Facebook, E-zine, Films and radio interviews and is a conservative estimate. Each
film received an average of 300 views and of course they will remain on our website
as a resource for people to continue to access.

I am in the process of writing the final report for the project. This will be sent to the
Climate Challenge Fund Government Board as well as Keep Scotland Beautiful.

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Once complete a copy will be made available on the website for the wider public to
view.

I have also commissioned Third Sector Lab to create an animated short film clip that
celebrates the success of the project. This should be completed by the end of March
and will also be available on the website.

To conclude the project a competition to name a hand knitted caterpillar draught

excluder is running on our website. This helps promote the project and direct people
to other information available on our website. The lucky winner will be revealed on
the 24th March 11am at the final Green Café, to which you are all welcome. It is
hoped that if further funding becomes available then the popular Green Café will
continue in the future.

7.Summary

Thanks for reading our report. I hope you agree, despite difficult circumstances and
change, we still have lots of positive things happening at Forth Valley Sensory
Centre and we have more opportunities to look forward to. We aim to provide a
warm welcome to anyone in the local area living with a Sensory Loss, even if that
has to be virtual at present. If you have any questions, suggestions or requests for
please get in touch to let me know.

Stay safe.

Jacquie

8 March 2021

e-mail: jacquiewinning@forthvalleysensorycentre.org

www.forthvalleysensorycentre.org

@FVSensoryCentre