Our first blog post for a good while, due to covid ( which seems like a bit of distant memory in some ways), moving offices, working from home and some changes in what we are doing. Our first and foremost priority is to always be the independent voice of older people living on Wirral. Enhancing life, signposting and now referring for further help are all regular aspects to our work. Our committee meetings have seen some changes with the way we work and sadly some losses of members in recent years. Most notably we have said goodbye to Jack Cuffe our founding member and very proactive member of Wirral society, especially within the probation service.
As a result of covid practices our Older People’s Hubs were born to support older people navigate the new digital aspects of life, we worked to reduce isolation and access the help they may need from others. We were able to partner with Liscard Community Links and develop a hub in the Cherry Tree shopping centre and a wonderful source of support and community emerged from this since 2023. We were able to creative fridays as part of creative aging workshops, christmas workshops with guest facilitators, a weekly writing group helped by the lovely Wendy from LifeLonglearning. This has now ended and OPP are not able to be involved wth the current offer they have. We were also able to to offer a hub at Wirral advice Centre in Birkenhead, which was very successful for 4 years supporting older people with accessing pension credit, attendance allowance, PIP forms, housing issues.
This partnership ended when the centre had to close due to lack of funding. However now in September 2025 we are working collaboratively with Number Seven Cafe in Grange Precinct, Birkenhead to offer support appointments on a Thursday each week. These are by appointment only and can be booked by contacting Julie on 07587167098.
Our other exciting development is our Manager becoming the Chair of the Independent Lives group , which is part of the All Age Disability Strategy at Wirral Council. This ia dynamic set of groups all working towards creating an inclusive Wirral, across Employment, Independence and Wellbeing. I am hoping to get some great guest blog posts from these groups!
As always we work very closely with the Involve Connectors to help people needing referring or signposting who are not sure where to turn.
with regards and kindness to all
Julie