Sticking Together Southmead

We understand how worrying it is to constantly hear in the news that another national crisis is upon us and that we’re going to struggle even more to afford to feed ourselves and our families, to pay bills, or to keep the cold out this winter.

As you may have seen, the new Prime Minister has announced an ‘energy price guarantee’ limiting the annual bill of a household, with typical electricity and gas usage, to £2,500 from October. This is welcome, and although helpful is not going to be enough for many of us.

Here at the Trust we’re looking at ways to support residents to get through the Cost of Living Crisis.   We want to stick together to keep our community as strong as possible.  Please do pop into the Greenway Centre, call us on 0117 950 3335, or email us on info@southmead.org and we can let you know what advice or support is available locally.

If you would like to work with a professional to help manage your rising energy bill, then come to one of our Energy Help Hubs at the Greenway Centre.  The next one is on Tuesday 27th September, from 1:30pm to 3pm (see below).  Topics discussed will be: how to reduce our energy home use; how to communicate with your energy company; and what help is available.

Please join us at the free family event ‘Charge the Earth Summit’ organised by MP Darren Jones at the Greenway Centre, on Saturday 1st October, from 10:00 am to 4:00pm.  On offer will be advice from charities, tradespeople, live demonstrations and talks about how to how to handle the crisis.

Meanwhile we are growing all our free or low cost community programmes here at the Southmead Development Trust; there are walking, creative writing, art and knitting groups to join at the Greenway Centre.  Our Link Workers, who are connected to all GP surgeries across North Bristol, are already responding to concerns about the coming crisis and are looking to find out what other help groups are needed.   We also offer open access youth and play sessions at The Ranch; this summer hundreds of local children and young people enjoyed these sessions taking part in sports, arts, cycling, and nature activities, along with freshly cooked hot meals.  Remember the café at the Greenway Centre is open every week-day with free Wi-Fi and hot drinks from 50p, and our affordable gym has a great fitness programme and discounts for those on low incomes.

We’d love to know if you have any other ideas about how we can all support each other at this time.  Thoughts so far include clothes and gift swap events, batch cooking, and low cost winter family events.  Do let us know if you have any ideas you’d like to make happen and if you can volunteer to help. Please get in touch with Lucille from our Community Development team.

We really want to hear how the crisis is affecting you and what else the Trust and the community could do to help.  Please let us know by filling in the ‘Living in Southmead’ questions – see details in the next news item or in the printed edition of The Mead.

As a community we have amazing strength and resilience and by working together we can help each other through this time to make sure that everyone has something to look forward to.