Tel: 01473 836777
Fax: 01473 836778
Textphone: 01473 836779
Email enquiries@optua.org.uk
Tel: 01473 836777
Fax: 01473 836778
Textphone: 01473 836779
Email enquiries@optua.org.uk
Our Showcase Days Receive 2012 Inspire Mark!
Optua is celebrating after our Disability Sport Showcase Days received the official London 2012 Inspire Mark. The Inspire Mark is only given to the most accessible, participative, inspiring and stimulating projects and events which have been inspired by the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012. This is the first disability sport project in the region to get an Inspire Mark.
We've run seven Showcase Days across Suffolk with the 8th taking place this Saturday in Ipswich as part of London 2012 Open Weekend. The events have allowed hundreds of people with disabilities to try a huge range of disability and Paralympic Sports. The Showcase Days are part of our
"This is the first disability-sport Inspire project in our region and the Disability Showcase Days demonstrate Optua's great work in increasing and promoting participation in sport and physical activity, whilst strongly contributing to London 2012's vision of inclusivity," said Joseph Ballard, London 2012 Inspire Programmer for the East of England.
Adam Baker, Suffolk Project Manager for the 2012 Games, added: "The award of a London 2012 Inspire Mark is well deserved. Optua has consistently and imaginatively used the inspiration of London 2012 Paralympic Games to encourage more disabled people to become more active and to provide more disability sport opportunities in Suffolk. Their work is helping to create a meaningful legacy for Suffolk from the Games."
News and Views Summer newsletter
Our latest newsletter is now available to download. To download the summer newsletter please click here. Please note that this is a large file. If you'd like the newsletter by post please call 01473 836777.
New Big Splash sessions in Ipswich, Bungay and Newmarket
We launched our new Big Splash swimming sessions at Crown Pools in Ipswich on 10th June. The sessions will now run every Thursday from 10am to 11.30pm and are open to anyone with a disability or health condition who would appreciate a quiet session in the pool with volunteers on hand to support them.
New sessions also recently started at Newmarket Leisure Centre and will run from 2pm to 3.30pm. We've also relaunched our Bungay sessions every Sunday from 6pm to 7pm. For more information about Big Splash click here.
How should Suffolk celebrate the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games?
Suffolk County Council is carrying out a survey to ask people how Suffolk can make the most of the opportunity that the Olympic and Paralympic Games presents our county and involve local people.
Optua is very involved in promoting Paralympic and disability sport in Suffolk so we want as many of our members and customers to fill in this survey to let the council know what you think. So please take a couple of minutes to complete the survey via this link.
We need your views on public buses
As part of our project to set up an 'online panel' and ask the views of disabled people on a variety of subjects, we are now conducting our next online survey. We're looking for the views of disabled people about public buses.
To take part in a quick and anonymous survey please follow this link.
If you want to take part in these on a regular basis please let us know by emailing survey@optua.org.uk.
New online access guide to healthcare facilities in Suffolk
NHS Suffolk have launched a new Disability Access Guide to Suffolk. This is a new online guide which enables disabled people to view information about disability access at over 600 healthcare facilities in Suffolk.
The guide includes information for people with physical and sensory disabilities. It covers areas such as wheelchair access, accessible parking, accessible toilets, large print information, hearing loops, sign language provision and whether the premises are accessible by public transport.
The guide has been compiled by DisabledGo, in conjunction with Suffolk Mental Health Partnership and Suffolk Community Healthcare. Optua has also been consulted on the project. To access the guide please click on this link.
Time for Carers website launched
Suffolk County Council has launched a new website to help family carers get a much needed break.
The time for carers website will be packed with details about breaks and activities as well as useful information about finding and taking breaks. The website has been set up to help any family carers aged over 18 who care for someone living in Suffolk.
Lots of Optua's services and activities will also soon be listed on the site. To visit the site go to www.timeforcarers.info.
Get into disability sport in Suffolk Coastal!
Optua's Disability Sport Academy project is running two new disability sport sessions in the Suffolk Coastal area.
New tennis sessions are running at Saxmundham Tennis Club every third Wednesday of the month. The sessions are aimed at anyone with a disability aged 16 and over and cover wheelchair and regular tennis. They run from 11am to 1pm and cost £2 per person/per session.
We have also teamed up with Woodbridge Town Football Club to provide disability football sessions. The sessions cost £2 and are open to anyone with a disability.
David Finn, Optua's Leisure Services Manager, said: "These new sessions are a great way to try out a new sport and take part on a regular basis. You don't need any experience or to be good at sport - just come along and be prepared to have a go and have fun! It's the perfect time of year to get into sport with the weather improving so why not give tennis or football a try!" For more information about these sessions call Optua Leisure on 01473 836770 or email sdsa@optua.org.uk.
Report available from Members Forum in November
The report from our Members Forum in November is now available. This meeting was the third Members Forum we have organised to enable members, family carers and representatives of voluntary organisations to discuss Self Directed Support with representatives from the county council.
It was also an opportunity for us to discuss and contribute a response to the 'Shaping the Future of Care Together' consultation on the future of care services. To download a copy of the report click here.
Social care watchdog says Optua's care service is excellent!
Optua is celebrating again after another of its services was found to be excellent. The Care Quality Commission (CQC) which inspects all social care related services, has recently given our Care Division its top rating of 'excellent'.
Optua Care runs three supported housing schemes for disabled people and a registered care home. The care home - Hope House in Kesgrave - has already got an 'excellent' status in its own right, after a glowing report earlier in 2009. Two of Optua's other services - Optua Homecare and Optua UK Community Brain Injury Services, also have 'excellent' ratings.
The CQC report into Optua Care covered several different criteria and for every single one reported that: "people using this service experience excellent quality outcomes in this area."
Have your say on disability issues in Mid Suffolk
A Mid Suffolk Disability Forum has recently been set up and we would like to hear from anyone with a learning, physical or sensory disability or mental health issue who is interested in getting involved.
The aim was to set up a group to represent the interests of all disabled people living in the Mid Suffolk area and enable them to talk about the issues they face. It will also provide an opportunity for Mid Suffolk District Council to consult with disabled people on any issues which directly affect them. Anyone with a disability or those representing disability organisations are welcome to take part. The next meeting is on Wednesday 14th July at 10.30am. The venue will be Stowmarket Rugby Club (Chilton Field Social Club).
Anyone interested in the Mid Suffolk Disability Forum or in attending the next meeting can contact Optua on 01473 836777 or email feedback@optua.org.uk. Mid Suffolk District Council may be able to assist with travel arrangements to enable people to attend the forum meetings.
Optua's Chairman to receive an MBE
We were delighted to hear that our Chairman, Linda Hoggarth was named in the New Year's Honours list. Linda is receiving an MBE for her lifetime of service enabling disabled people to achieve their goals. Linda was one of the founder members of Optua 29 years ago.
Linda said: "It is a great honour to be awarded in this way and I had no idea whatsoever that I was in anyone's sights for an honour. Although the honour comes to me, it is recognition of the huge contribution Optua has made to the lives of disabled people in Suffolk. It's making a difference to the lives of disabled people which matters. This is also an acknowledgement of the work of our staff and volunteers and the many disabled people who use our services."
There is a feature the New Year honours for Linda and other people from Suffolk on the BBC Suffolk website at via this link.
£5.2million generated by Disability Advice Services in Suffolk
Recent figures show that Suffolk's Advice Services for disabled people are helping to bring over £5 million into the local economy every year.
Figures for 2008/09 show that the four voluntary sector organisations, including Optua, which provide advice on disability benefits and other related issues, helped their clients to claim benefits worth a total of £5.2million. Most of this money represents disability or incapacity benefit which they were not already receiving or had been previously denied.
It's good news for the local economy as well, as national surveys show that disabled people spend more of their income in their hometown or village than people without disabilities.
Suffolk's Disability Advice Services deal with nearly 32,000 enquiries every year. These figures are all the more impressive when you consider that the resources to run them are always under pressure and they are underfunded when compared, for example, to other advice-giving services.
Many people also still feel a stigma about claiming benefits and still aren't claiming what they are entitled to. It has been estimated that 40-60% of older people with disabilities do not claim all the benefits they can. For more information about your nearest Disability Advice Service, please contact:
Cathy Churchyard wins Disability Sport Award
The winner of the Contribution to Disability Sport Award at the Suffolk Sports Awards ceremony on 18 October was Cathy Churchyard.
Cathy is a teacher at Thomas Wolsey School but also contributes a greal deal of time out of school to help her students take part in sports activities. She is very involved in the sport of boccia and runs regular weekly sessions in Ipswich which are enjoyed by many disabled people.
Optua has supported the Contribution to Disability Sport Award for the past two years and our Chief Executive Colin Poole presented Cathy with her award. The picture below shows Colin with all this year's nominees: (left to right) Cathy Churchyard, Colin Poole, Claire O'Brien-Ellington (wheelchair football), Bill Smith (sailing).
We again collected over a tonne of second hand clothes with our most recent clothing collection on 08 October 2009.
This has helped us raise nearly £600 which is a great amount and we are incredibly grateful to everyone who donated items for the collection.
Earlier in the year we raised nearly £1000 with our first collection and we'll be having another one in 2010.
Bank staff invest time in the garden!
Staff from Barclays Bank Commercial Banking Team in Martlesham have helped to transform the garden at our Wainwright Lodge supported housing scheme this week as part of a community volunteering project.
In the tradition of garden makeover programmes like 'Ground Force', the staff from Barclays descended on Wainwright Lodge on 16 and 17 September to help provide a new wheechair accessible path, add a raised flower bed, add many new plants and paint the fence.
Wainwright Lodge is a supported housing scheme in Kesgrave which promotes independence for people with learning disabilities. Orwell Housing Association owns the building and Optua provides the care and day to day support. The new and improved garden will help to open up the garden for the tenants to enjoy and we are very grateful to the Barclays staff for their hard work!
The new garden has had other support from the community with Howard Construction Anglia Ltd providing a digger and two men to lay the new path for no charge. Collier and Catchpole provided slabs and materials and S. Sacker (Claydon) Limited provided a skip.
There are many more photos on our facebook site. If you are on facebook you can become a fan of Optua and see more of our photos and events.
Big Splash gets funding boost as Suffolk counts down to Paralympics!
Bury St Edmunds-based Paralympian Brian Alldis recently helped Optua celebrate the start of the three-year countdown to the 2012 Paralympics.
The weekend of 28/29 August marked the three year countdown to the start of the London Paralympic Games and Brian came along to meet and inspire disabled people at Bury Leisure Centre who'd been taking part in our Big Splash swimming sessions.
Brian also helped us to launch a new £27,000 project to get more disabled people into swimming across the county with the exciting news that Suffolk County Council's Aiming High project is to fund an extension to our Big Splash sessions. The sessions already run at several locations with over 4,500 attendances every year and Optua will be using the funding to expand the sessions to Newmarket, Felixstowe and Lowestoft and attract more disabled swimmers and volunteers.
Optua launched the Suffolk Disability Sport Academy in 2005 and along with partner organisations has already achieved a great deal:
Funding boost to recruit more Learning through Leisure volunteers
We are hoping that some recent fundraising success will help us to recruit new volunteers for our Learning through Leisure service.
We have received £1,500 from the Ipswich Community Fund, £500 from the Bury Free Press Helping Hands Fund (supported by the St Edmunds Wheel Trust) and £350 from Woodbridge Town Council. This money will enable Optua to attract new volunteers and provide them with training, cover the travel costs of day trips and increase awareness of the service in the Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds and Woodbridge areas.
Learning through Leisure matches people with learning disabilities (known as Explorers) with volunteers who help them plan fun activities, trips and short breaks. The service helps to increase Explorers' confidence and encourages them to take part in social activities. The service also runs a monthly club where Explorers can come along and take part in a wide range of activities.
The service also covers most areas of Suffolk including Ipswich, Saxmundham, Lowestoft, Bury St Edmunds, Stowmarket, Felixstowe, Sudbury, Woodbridge and Haverhill. More volunteers would enable us to help more people across Suffolk. We currently have 275 Explorers and 90 Companions. Volunteering is very rewarding and you don't need any prior experience. Optua provides CRB checks for you and you can give as many hours of your time as you are able to. It's very social and many people build up strong friendships with the people they are working with. For more information about joining in, whether as a new volunteer or to take part in activities, please call 01473 836770, email ltl@optua.org.uk or go to www.learningthroughleisure.org.uk.
Hope House in Kesgrave, Optua's care home for young disabled people, has recently been given a rating of excellent!
Hope House is a care home for young people with profound disabilities and has received a top rating of 'excellent' from the Care Quality Commission, the independent health and social care regulator.
Hope House was opened seven years ago thanks to the efforts of the parents of the original residents who are all still living there. They raised £150,000 over two years to help build the care home, after realising there was a lack of specialist care homes for young people with severe disabilities. The building itself is owned by Orbit Housing Association and Optua provides the care for its residents. The main aim of the home is to provide an environment which caters for the specialised needs of the residents and allows them to live a life which is as full and as happy as possible.
Janine Davey is the mother of Thomas who is one of the four residents of Hope House. She says: "As a parent I'm delighted that Hope House has received the rating of excellent. The staff are always welcoming and dedicated and we're very pleased with how our son is looked after. We feel very lucky to have a facility like Hope House in Suffolk and it's just a shame there aren't more of them."
Colin Poole, Chief Executive of Optua, said: "This report and excellent rating is a tribute to our dedicated and professional staff who provide a very high level of care to the residents of Hope House. It's part of Optua's ethos to treat all disabled people as individuals and this is very much in evidence at Hope House."
Our annual fun sports event at the Royal Hospital School near Holbrook took place on Thursday 25 June and we had a fantastic day in the sunshine.
A record 170 disabled people in 16 teams took park in the event. Each team competed in various games including welly-wanging, netball and ball games. The two teams with the most points then played each other in a penalty shoot-out after lunch where the Magicians narrowly beat the Stow Marvels with the winning team taking a trophy and both teams receiving medals.
The RHS Optua Games was organised in partnership with teamipswich who helped to fund the event. The event has also been supported by the PJK Charitable Trust and Suffolk County Councillor David Wood's locality budget. As always we are very grateful to everyone who helped to run or support the event which provided a great deal of enjoyment to everyone who took part.
Cleaning up for Community Transport
A fundraising charity car-wash was held in Stowmarket recently to help raise funds for our Community Transport Services.
The car wash was kindly organised by Andrew Bingham Independent Funeral Services in Stowmarket on 20 June and raised over £400! We are very grateful to everyone who volunteered to help wash cars or who came along to get theirs washed. The money raised will help to support our vital accessible transport services which help many people get from A to B in Mid Suffolk.
Optua welcomes review of Blue Badge system
Optua has welcomed the news that the Government is to launch a crackdown on the abuse of blue badges and the misuse of parking spaces for blue badge holders.
Linda Hoggarth, chairman of Optua and herself a blue badge holder, said: "Obviously we don't have the full details of what is being proposed, but Optua is very supportive of action to cut down the abuse of the blue badge system in order to help genuine blue badge holders. Disabled people in Suffolk are constantly telling us that people who are not disabled are parking in bays reserved for people who are. They often also tell us of instances where blue badges are being used illegally, for example when someone parks using another persons' blue badge."
"Anything that strengthens the eligibility criteria for getting a blue badge and the enforcement of the law when the blue badge system is being abused would be a positive move. Parking spaces for blue badge holders are provided to help disabled people who really need them and people who park in them illegally or use someone else's blue badge are making life more difficult for disabled people. There is not enough enforcement in respect of the legal use of blue badges and parking spaces for blue badge holders, so we hope that the proposals will reduce illegal use of blue badges and will act as a deterrent to those attempting to abuse the use of blue badges."
"We also welcome the news that the eligibility criteria for blue badges are being extended to include people with temporary disabilities, disabled ex-service men and young children with disabilities."
Disability sport coaching bursary scheme
A new Disability Sport Coaching Bursary scheme is now being run by a partnership of Suffolk County Council, Optua and Suffolk Sport.
For more information click here.
Optua Homecare gets excellent rating!
In 2008 Optua Homecare received a rating of 'excellent' following an inspection by the Care Quality Commission. The report gave Optua Homecare a 'three star excellent service', the highest rating given.
At the time Optua Homecare was only in its second full year of operation after being set up to provide a care service for disabled and older people in their own homes. The inspection asked some of Optua Homecare's clients for their personal opinion on the service and their comments included:
Optua Homecare now has over 75 clients. The service is based in Woodbridge and provides a service to Ipswich, Woodbridge, Felixstowe and the surrounding rural and coastal areas, including Aldeburgh, Leiston and Saxmundham. The service is constantly on the look out for new homecarers so if you are interested please visit our vacancies page for more details or call 01394 388588. The full inspection report and more information about CQC can be found via this link.
