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Essential Sefton

Sons and Daughters Month and our Fostering Family

15 October 2021
Charlene Smith
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Categories: Essential Sefton, Front Page, Latest News, Uncategorized, Your Sefton

This October Sefton has been celebrating Sons and Daughter’s month. This is an annual campaign to recognise how children of foster carers play a vital role in helping young people in care feel welcomed and part of their family.

Paul is one of our dedicated foster carers. Him and his wife Angela have three children, work full time and have been fostering for Sefton for three years. Paul wanted to share his heart-warming experience about how his children have really embraced foster care.

“When we were considering fostering, one of the main things we wanted to ensure was that it was going to be the right thing for our own children as well as any children we looked after.

“We have 3 birth children, boys aged 7, 13 and 15.

“We involved them at every stage of the assessment process and still continue to. Before we take on any new children we sit down as a family and discuss the who might be coming to or home. To us we are not just foster parents we are a Foster Family.

“Here we are now, 3 years in and I can honestly say that all of the children we have looked after have enhanced our family and that is by a large part due to our sons welcoming new children into our home and looking after them in their own small ways that have made such a huge difference. Our older children play football in the garden and our younger child plays with them with his toys and games. This really has helped the fostered children settle in much quicker. It has also helped our sons too, with their confidence and sense of pride, particularly our youngest who is proud to say he is a foster family.

“It so important to involve your birth children as it affects them in a huge way too. They do sacrifice a lot sharing not only their toys, but their parents too. For this reason, Sons and Daughters week is one of the biggest weeks in the year for Foster families.

“Thank you to all of the Sons and daughters of all of the foster families for the fantastic work and sacrifice you make.”

Sefton’s Foster Carers receive full training and support, plus payments for their skills and allowances. Anyone who is thinking about fostering can find out more by speaking to one of the team. Get in touch on our freephone number 0800 923 2777

People can also find out more on our dedicated website https://seftonfostering.co.uk/ 

 

Cllrs told to expect ‘surprising’ results of Southport Cycle Lane consultation

15 October 2021
Ollie Cowan
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Categories: Borough Of Culture, Essential Sefton, Latest News, Southport

The results of the recent Southport Active Travel Cycle Lane consultation will be presented to the November 9th Overview and Scrutiny committee (O&S), fulfilling the promises Sefton Council has continually made to ward councillors.

This decision preceded a formal request which has been made by five ward councillors to call an Extraordinary General Meeting of the council to discuss the same report.

At a meeting of full council in July, Cllr John Fairclough, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Locality Services, guaranteed that an Overview and Scrutiny committee made up of cross-party councillors will be able to take a detailed look into the results of the much publicised consultation.

Ahead of the meeting Cllr Fairclough warned committee members may be very surprised at the picture painted by the feedback of residents and campaigners.

Cllr John Fairclough, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Locality Services said: “As promised we will make the full results of this consultation public and subject it to cross-party scrutiny to ensure complete fairness and transparency.

“Those who take a look at the reports findings will see some unusual outcomes including multiple, and in one case 19, submissions from a single IP address and people responding to every single question with ‘strongly disagree’.

“I can understand there are people who do not agree with our proposals and there has been some high-profile opposition expressed.

“However, I have never known people to be so adamantly against plans to introduce crossing points that would improve road safety for pedestrians.

“My concern is that the genuine views of the people of Southport might have been hijacked in a coordinated response by people who don’t want to see these walking and cycling schemes go ahead and I look forward to hearing the views of the Overview & Scrutiny Panel.”

Common concerns expressed included the loss of street on-street parking for some residents and its possible impact on local businesses, the effect on journey times for Birkdale residents and the people driving to rugby tournaments and school events having to park further away.

Cllr Fairclough added: “As the report says, the Council put a lot of effort into encouraging people to take part in the consultation but it seems to have been mainly people who fit a certain profile who have responded in large numbers so we need to look at how we can try to get broader responses in the future.

“And, given the multiple submissions identified, we are going to need to build in ways of detecting this into future consultations, to ensure the outcomes are truly representative of a community’s views.”

A full report of the consultation’s feedback and comments will be publicly published on November 1st before being presented to an Overview & Scrutiny Committee on November 9th for a comprehensive analysis and consideration.

In order to ensure maximum transparency, Sefton Council’s Overview & Scrutiny committees are responsible for scrutinising a whole range of local authority functions and responsibilities and the impact those works may have on the local community.

/Ends

Sefton teams up with partners to provide FREE swimming lessons for disadvantaged children

12 October 2021
Ollie Cowan
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Categories: Active Sefton, Essential Sefton, Front Page, Latest News, Your Sefton

Sefton Council is helping to provide free swimming lessons for children in care, thanks to generous funding from one of the local authority’s contractors.

CRL Concrete Repairs Ltd and its suppliers, who are working with Sefton Council on the refurbishment of Dunes Splash World, have teamed up to kindly donate funding to the Sefton Active Aquatics team.

This has allowed the service to provide a brand new ‘Access To Swimming’ programme designed to help disadvantaged children and children in care to swim.

Through the funding, Sefton’s Aquatics Team have been able to put together a completely free ten week course of swimming lessons.

Cllr Ian Moncur, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Health & Wellbeing, said: “We recognise that throughout the country there are a lot of children who do not have the opportunity or means to take part in any formal swimming lessons.

“That is why we are delighted that, thanks to the generous and kind hearted donation of CRL Concrete Repairs Ltd and partners, we are able to provide a dedicated Access to Swimming scheme to help children in care have the opportunity to learn how to swim, enjoy being in a pool and making many happy memories.

“The opportunity to provide these lessons for disadvantaged children in care who have not had the opportunity to attend anything like this before is invaluable and I would like to say a massive thank you to CRL and their suppliers for their philanthropy.”

Daren King, CRL’S Northern Regional Director, added: “CRL have a longstanding history of working collaboratively with our clients and supply chain to support the communities in which we work. We are very proud to be working alongside Sefton Council to set up the Access to Swimming Programme which will give many disadvantaged children and children in care the opportunity to learn an important life skill and have fun in the process.

We are very thankful to Mapei, AMB Technical Ltd, VI Distribution, Industrial Coating Services, QED Scaffolding and Prema Energy Ltd who have generously supported our programme and made it possible.

We hope all the children enjoy their swimming lessons at this excellent facility.”

/Ends

Mersey Care gets animated in its support for World Mental Health Day

8 October 2021
Martin Driver
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Categories: Essential Sefton, Front Page, Latest News

Mersey Care is supporting this year’s World Mental Health Day, on Sunday 10th October by launching two new animations to help guide people to services if they are concerned by their mental health.

This year’s theme for World Mental Health Day is mental health in an unequal world, which was chosen as inequalities impact negatively on people’s mental health.

The two short animations aims to help support people after the challenge of the past 18 months.

The first animation talks about what you can expect if you,  or someone you know, might be experiencing a mental health crisis.

The second animation is to help support your mental wellbeing by talking about the NHS’s 5 Steps to Wellbeing.

The 5 Steps to Wellbeing are a set of five activities that have been proven to help boost our mental wellbeing if we practice them regularly. they are:

  1. Keep learning
  2. Take notice
  3. Connect
  4. Give
  5. Be active.

Mersey Care also has a range of self help guides on and apps which cover a wide range of topics.

Find out more.

Dr Noir Thomas, Mersey Care’s Medical Director said “While it’s important to remember mental health issues need to be addressed all year around, events like World Mental Health Day do raise awareness and give us the chance to highlight some of the help, advice and services we offer.

“We hope everyone enjoys the animations but realises they are sharing important messages to help those who need it.”

Sefton revamps cycling & green travel infrastructure in Southport

30 September 2021
Ollie Cowan
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Categories: Business and Economy, Essential Sefton, Front Page, Latest News, Southport

Work has now begun to repair and refurbish cycling and green transport provisions in Southport Town Centre.

Hundreds of thousands of cycle journeys have been made on the town centre cycle scheme, which was introduced in the town as part of Central Government’s mandated Emergency Active Travel Scheme.

Now Sefton Council’s Active Travel team have commissioned contractors to begin works to refurbish road markings, signage and replace vandalised traffic bollards along both Hoghton Street and Queen’s Road.

These works will ultimately improve the facilities available to cyclists and other road users

Refurbishment works include:

  • Amended and retouched road markings
  • Changes to cycle lane width where space permits
  • Enhanced junction marking
  • Installation of permanent separation wands
  • Implementation of additional signage

Cllr John Fairclough, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Locality Services, said: “We are all too aware that Sefton, like many other councils, were told by the Government to quickly implement strict active travel schemes.

“Owing to the timescales set to us by Central Government, there was relatively little time to develop the Hoghton Street project fully and this was further compounded by a national shortage of materials available to our contractors.

“Now following a detailed series of independent reviews, we have identified and implemented a series of modifications which we feel are necessary to ensure this scheme is as effective as possible.

“Once these modifications have been implemented, we remain fully committed to reviewing the scheme after six months

“Neither the Department for Transport nor the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority have provided definite criteria on which to judge the successes of such a scheme.

“As such our teams will use detailed and publicly available cycle usage data, along with further survey work, to inform future decisions over whether this scheme becomes permanent, modified further or is ultimately removed.”

For more information about Active Travel schemes and provision across Sefton, visit www.sefton.gov.uk/parking-roads-travel/transport-policy/your-streets-your-say/

 

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