Free Meals on Wheels provided by LifeCare Edinburgh are available for people aged 50 and over, with health and/or support needs, living in North Edinburgh/Leith who are eligible for Pension Credit or Universal Credit.
Contact@LifeCare_ to sign up on 0131 343 0940
Come along to LifeCare to meet people & play games over a coffee & cake!
We have a selection of games to choose from including puzzles if you fancy a solo activity whilst relaxing in our café, as well as multiplayer games.
Starting on the 10th of August from 1:30pm
Val McDermid has officially reopened the revamped CafeLife community cafe on Cheyne Street. Dubbed the Queen of Crime, the author has sold over 17 million books to date across the globe and is translated into more than 40 languages. Val met with café customers and fans to sign copies of her books brought along on the day.
CafeLife is run by renowned local charity LifeCare Edinburgh and all proceeds from café sales go towards the organisation’s vital care services for older people living across Edinburgh.
Val said: “Every community should have a resource like CafeLife. We’re lucky to have it. The LifeCare centre, and all the vital services provided by the charity, help support serious issues such as isolation and loneliness.
“I’m proud to be supporting LifeCare in its important work.”
The pandemic forced the café to close its doors to its loyal sit-in customers in March 2020. The closure was a real loss to the area as CafeLife is the only fully-accessible community café around, offering good value food and drink appealing to all generations and with lots of space for buggies and wheelchairs.
Opened nearly ten years ago, the team took the opportunity to upgrade the café through the covid-closure. The charity secured emergency funding to revamp CafeLife’s interiors and the kitchen team have spent time creating a new and improved menu to appeal to all tastes and dietary needs.
CaféLife will be running a series of promotions throughout the coming months to celebrate the reopening and to welcome everyone back.
For more information about LifeCare visit https://www.lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk/
And for Val McDermid visit https://www.valmcdermid.com/
TUESDAY 29th MARCH 3pm
Join us on Zoom for a 45 minute talk followed by Q&A on “The Royal Company of Merchants of Edinburgh” with Vince Mason, Chair of the Charities Committee at the Company.
Tueday 29th March 15:00 – 16:15
Contact alekspacula@lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk or 0131 343 0940 to book.
LifeCare’s monthly History Talk is about ‘Stockbridge through the archives of Historic Environment Scotland’ @HistEnvScot by Jackie Sangster.
On Tues 22nd Feb at 15:00 – 16:15 on Zoom.
If you would like to attend please contact us at alekspacula@lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk for the code.
Muirhouse Millennium Centre is among twenty-seven community groups across Edinburgh are sharing in a £717,108 cash boost from The National Lottery Community Fund today.
The Millennium Centre receives £97,000 to ‘provide a range of community activities within Muirhouse Millennium Centre engaging approximately 150 local community members and four volunteers.’
Muirhouse Millennium Centre is also the base of LIFT (Low Income Families Together), who run a range of services from the Millennium Centre.
Thanks to an award of £53,463, Leith-based Fast Forward (Positive Lifestyles) Ltd will be able to continue their ‘Ask Dad’ project – a health education and training programme for dads and male carers across Edinburgh and the Lothians -for another three years.
Mark Hunter, Project Officer, Ask Dad, said: “Thanks to this support from The National Lottery Community Fund our ‘Ask Dad’ programme will be able to continue to support dads whose families are going through a period of difficulty.
“We’re looking forward to developing our work to date, including our Good Conversations programme, supporting parents to have what they perceive as awkward, difficult, or embarrassing conversations with their children.
“We are looking forward to working on our new programme, ‘Dad: The Invisible Parent’ which will support better awareness and understanding by practitioners of the challenges faced by dads, to improve their engagement and communication with dads, towards better outcomes for their children.
“In addition, by working with parents who feel ignored or unwelcome by service providers, we aim to improve their ability to communicate with services and to understand a service provider’s role and their limitations.”
Better informed, more confident dads improve the wellbeing of the whole family. They also improve their children’s educational attainment. These impacts are even more profound in the communities affected by poverty and inequality.
An award of £114,344 means that Craigmillar Literacy Trust will continue to provide their support to local families with babies and children up to nine years of age for the next three years.
They will also be able to run their new ‘Express Yourself’ programme for older children and young people aged up to the age of sixteen using digital media and performance to support them to connect with literacy in a way that is more relevant to them.
Kara Whelan, Project Manager, Craigmillar Literacy Trust, said: “This grant will support our work with babies, children, young people, and families in Craigmillar though our early literacy, family literacy and young people’s projects.
“Our work is relationship based and embedded in our community. We are looking forward to building on the strengths we have and to developing new and innovating approaches to supporting literacy in our community.”
Edinburgh Tool Library receives £9,500 to help with the costs of a Volunteer Co-ordinator who will deliver a bespoke training programme for volunteers as well as making links with other third sector organisations in Edinburgh and will help the group engage with new communities and neighbourhoods across the city.
Chris Hellawell, Founder and Director, Edinburgh Tool Library, said: “This support will allow us to reach communities that we haven’t yet spoken to before, help us enhance the support we give to our community and to produce materials to share with other organisations like ours across Scotland so we can amplify the impart of all the hard work or our volunteers in Edinburgh. Thank you so much.”
More Edinburgh projects celebrating today include Ama-zing Harmonies, Big Hearts Community Trust, Leith Community Centre, LifeCare and St Columba’s Hospice.
Across Scotland 179 projects are sharing in £5,752,948 today. Announcing the funding, The National Lottery Community Fund’s Scotland Chair, Kate Still, said: “Local community groups bring people together to support one another through difficult times.
“Sometimes this is as simple as providing a listening ear and other times it can be a real lifeline connecting people who might otherwise be lonely and isolated. Each of the projects receiving funding today in Edinburgh remind us of the power of social connections and the difference that community projects can make to people’s lives.
“National Lottery players can be proud to know that the money they raise is helping to support this vital work.”
The National Lottery Community Fund distributes money raised by National Lottery players for good causes and more than £30 million a week is raised for good causes across the UK.
Thanks to National Lottery players, last year we awarded over half a billion pounds (£588.2 million) of life-changing funding to communities across the UK. Over eight in ten (83%) of our grants are for under £10,000 – going to grassroots groups and charities across the UK that are bringing to life amazing ideas that matter to their communities.
LifeCare, the older person’s charity based in Stockbridge, is pleased to announce October’s installment of its very popular monthly History Talks which cover local history and are delivered by local people and organisations.
In the year that we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott, October’s topic is “The Building of the Scott Monument”.
This talk will be delivered by Jackie Sangster, Learning Manager at Historic Environment Scotland and it will take place online using Zoom on Tuesday 26th October from 15.00 till 16.00.
Spaces are limited so to reserve a place please contact LifeCare’s Community Engagement Facilitator, Aleks Pacula alekspacula@lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk or call LifeCare on 0131 343 0940
SoundSational East’s first session will be held on Monday 27 September from 7 – 9pm at LifeCare in Cheyne Street.
No experience required – for further information email:
LifeCare Edinburgh has received £1,000 from Arnold Clark’s Community Fund to help the charity deliver its essential care to hundreds of older people living across the North of the city.
The renowned local charity offers registered care, outreach activities and help at home services for older people. Established in 1941, the organisation supports elderly clients suffering with dementia, mobility issues, those experiencing isolation and loneliness, food poverty, mental health problems and offers dedicated support for carers.
LifeCare’s vital services have not stopped through the pandemic. Since March 2020, the charity has supported over 770 elderly individuals with vital positive support designed to protect and maintain the physical and mental health needs of some of the most isolated older members of the community.
The committed team has worked tirelessly to safely deliver essential care, practical help and companionship activities to ensure older people received the support they needed to stay well. The charity also launched several important new initiatives, such as their hugely successful meals on wheels service, specifically designed to help support the most isolated and vulnerable.
Margaret Stewart, Care Service Manager at LifeCare said: “Throughout LifeCare, we have worked tirelessly to ensure no client in need went without our dedicated support and contact.
“We have delivered over 7,500 hours of registered care through the crisis to date, over 10,000 hours of help within the home, made over 4,300 calls to carers most in need and served up over 10,000 hot nutritious meals to doorsteps.
“We simply could not deliver this vital care without the generous support from our funders. A huge thank you to Arnold Clark for this recent award which will help us to continue to care for those who need our help.”
Chief Executive and Group Managing Director Eddie Hawthorne said: “The Arnold Clark Community Fund is here to connect us with our local communities, and we’re delighted that we’ve been able to help LifeCare with this grant.
“The past year has been challenging for so many of us, which is why it’s important that organisations like LifeCare, who work so hard improve the lives of others, continue to get the support they need.
“We hope this grant will make a difference and help them continue to provide essential care to the elderly living in Edinburgh.”
For more information visit https://www.lifecare-edinburgh.org.uk/
Barratt Developments East Scotland, which includes both Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes, has donated £5,000 to local elderly care charity, LifeCare.
Following its success in Barratt Developments’ company-wide virtual 500k challenge for the Prince’s Trust, the Barratt East Scotland team, which walked a combined total of 1,721km, was awarded £5,000 to donate to a charity of its choice.
It selected LifeCare, a renowned local charity which offers registered care, outreach activities and help at home services for older people living across the North of the city.
Established in 1941, the organisation supports hundreds of elderly clients a year, including those suffering with dementia, mobility issues, those experiencing isolation and loneliness, food poverty and mental health problems, and offers dedicated support for carers.
The charity also runs the successful community café, CafeLife on Cheyne Street.
The donation from Barratt East Scotland will help LifeCare’s ongoing efforts to support those who have shielded during the duration of the pandemic to return to life beyond their own four walls and back to the communities they hold dear.
Alison Condie, managing director at Barratt East Scotland, said: “LifeCare carry out incredible work supporting those vulnerable and in need of care.
“We’re pleased that our employees nominated the charity and we hope that our donation will help them to continue to provide these crucial and important services.”
Claire Montgomery, LifeCare’s Trusts Fundraising and Communications Manager added: “A huge thanks to everyone at Barratt East Scotland for this terrific award – it’s truly appreciated. As a registered charity, LifeCare is reliant on the generosity of our funders to enable us to deliver quality care that our older population deserve.
“We have supported over 770 local older people through the pandemic, many of whom had no other available support. We have offered safely delivered care in the home, remote support by phone and doorstep visit, shopping and prescription deliveries, and we have set up our brand new meals on wheels service which has already served up over 9,000 hot meals to doorsteps.
“Our continued care has supported isolation issues and enabled people to remain living independently in their own homes. We look forward to fully opening all services again as soon as we are safely able.”
As part of its community benefits programme, the five-star housebuilder works with a wide range of local causes, and has continued to step up its efforts through the Barratt and David Wilson Community Fund.
Now in its third year, the Community Fund pledges to donate £1,000 each month to a charity or organisation in the east of Scotland. Charities are nominated by and voted for by employees of Barratt Homes and the focus for the fund continues to be on organisations that improve the quality of life for those living in the area.
The team is also committed to providing assistance to groups that contribute to the communities it serves in many other ways. A recent benefactor was Rosslyn Bowling Club, which Barratt East Scotland supported with the donation of a new notice board.
Jim Hiddleston, Club President of Rosslyn Bowling Club said: “We’ve been working towards a new noticeboard for quite some time as our location is quite hidden, so we are delighted with our new signage kindly donated by our new neighbours, David Wilson Homes.”
Interested charities can enquire about donation opportunities at charity.eastscotland@barratthomes.co.uk
Visit the Barratt Homes and David Wilson Homes websites for more information.
