A look back at the past year

Our 23rd annual general meeting was held on Wednesday 20th November.

An invited audience, that included the Deputy Mayor of Northampton Cllr Brian Sargeant and Deputy Mayoress Ray Kelly-Sargeant, the Mayor of Corby Cllr Ray Beeby, the Mayor of Daventry Cllr Mike Arnold and Mayoress Sheryl Arnold, and Chairman of South Northamptonshire Council Cllr Rosie Herring, heard reports from our Chairman Julia Faulkner, Chief Executive Chris Duff and Honorary Treasurer Andrew Rees at the Moulton Community Centre in Northampton.

Presentations by Age UK Northamptonshire managers provided an overview of how our services have expanded over the past year, including the Support Service at Kettering General Hospital that began as a five month pilot and has blossomed into a longer term, substantial service.  There was mention of the threat to our funding posed by the withdrawal of the Social Wellbeing contract which could affect our ability to provide day care for older people in the county.  We are asking people to sign the petition to ask Northamptonshire County Council to reconsider their decision.

In the past year we have seen and helped more people than ever before.  We now have over 15,000 clients on our database, 4,100 of them are people who used our services for the first time this year.  Our Information & Advice Service continues to help older people in Northamptonshire claim the welfare benefits they are entitled to and successful benefit claims represent over £3m being brought into the economy of the county. 

Our AGM was also attended by Bruce Bedford of Handicare and Kevin Oaten of Dignity who work in partnership with Age UK Northamptonshire to provide products that improve later life for Northamptonshire residents.

Funding by the NHS CCG enables us to expand our social prescribing services (Collaborative Care and PIC) which provide non medical interventions that improve a person's quality of life and prevent unnecessary admission to hospital and repeat visits to the GP. 

During the presentations we learnt that 79% of clients who attend our day centres say they feel socially isolated and that without the visit to the day centre they probably would not speak to anyone during the week.  People say they enjoy their time at our day centres because it gives them the opportunity to chat to other people with similar interests and life experience. 

We say a huge thank you to Barry Lilley who is stepping down as seven years as our trustee.  We now have several trustee vacancies so please get in touch if you are interested.

A huge thank you to everyone who attended our AGM.  We are proud to work with organisations and elected representatives from across the county.  With your support we can continue to make a positive difference to thousands of vulnerable older people in our community.

Our audited accounts and annual report will be available shortly.