Evergreen Care Trust is celebrating 20 years of supporting older people in Stamford with an anniversary ball
It’s tricky to know how old age will treat us.
While we can envisage time spent on hobbies and having fun with friends and family, life can deal out nasty surprises - illness, the loss of loved ones, and family members moving away.
The knock-on effects are something Evergreen Care Trust founder Louise Marsh saw a lot of when she worked in a social services older persons’ team.
“We would go into people’s homes with our remit, but it made me wonder who was helping with laundry, cleaning and tidying.
“I would visit widowers who had lived good lives but they would be wearing a soup-stained shirt and have net curtains that needed a wash - they were aware of these things and it affected them.
“We saw so many people who had no one - no family living nearby to visit and no kind of support.
“They had no one to take them to health appointments, and if they were admitted to hospital, no one was putting the heating on or food in their fridge or for their return home.
“We saw a terrible amount of loneliness and, due to societal changes and covid, in the last couple of decades that has only increased.”
Fortunately for people growing older in the Stamford area, Louise has been countering this trend, having set up Evergreen Care Trust 20 years ago.
The foundations were laid after an appeal to local churches for volunteers to plug the gap left by healthcare and social services. A dozen people came forward, initially supporting older people returning home from hospital. The volunteers removed spoiled food from their fridges and left a hamper of bread, milk, cheese and cold meat. They also made up the bed with clean sheets, made sure the room temperature was right, and made them a cup of tea while they settled back in.
Word spread and Evergreen began to enlist the help of more people, and Stamford Schools embarked on a long-standing relationship by donating bed linen from its stock for boarders.
A couple of years into this, Louise decided it was time to leave her social services role and develop Evergreen by providing home support services, shopping for older people and doing their laundry for a small charge.
Around that time ‘befriending’ was formalised, pairing a volunteer with an older person to form a trusting relationship to reduce loneliness, and in the autumn of 2005, when meals on wheels was withdrawn, Evergreen stepped in by preparing food in the kitchens of council-owned sheltered housing complexes in Stamford.
Once they had prepared the meals, volunteers served them on tables decorated with cloth and vases of flowers, and often ate together with the people they supported.
“Our ethos values and honours old age,” said Louise.
“We provided special meals and decor for Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day and St George’s, and our members would dress up, putting on a jacket, or lippy.
“Friendships were formed around the tables and lunch brought people out of their homes to spend time with others.People eat better when they are together, and we would see them regularly, meaning we could notice if something wasn’t right.”
Sadly, the kitchens in the council-owned sheltered complexes were closed in 2014, but Evergreen volunteers switched to delivering lunches five days a week, which included nutritious soups, a roll, fruit selected to suit those receiving it, and a piece of home baking. They do this in partnership with Second Helpings, the Stamford-based group that tries to eliminate food waste.
Having greater contact with members put volunteers in touch with their concerns, and from this developed Evergreen’s advocacy service. Volunteers help people apply for pension credit and winter fuel payments, sort out utility contracts, and avoid potential scams.
Evergreen also has volunteers who do DIY tasks, clean and declutter, give hand and nail care, and who organise regular activities, such as a monthly lunch at Birch Tree Cafe in Easton-on-the-Hill, and the Friends Together Group, which meets for games, crafts, singing and gentle exercise.
It is this model - a combination of paid-for domestic support and free help and friendship - that Evergreen continues today.
“We started without a bean, and our Friends of Evergreen supporters are really important for funding the services that are free to our members,” said Louise, who uses the word ‘members’ rather than customers or clients because she feels they should be regarded as members of a family.
An Australian by birth, Louise says the way she regards older people was shaped by a geriatrician who worked with her when she was a community health nurse in the Outback.
Louise came to the UK for her sister’s wedding initially, and aged 22 ended up working at the old Lincoln County Hospital.
She too married, adopting twin girls, but the death of her husband soon afterwards brought huge changes to her life.
“The girls were three and I couldn’t go back to nursing easily because of the shifts, so I did an Open University course and cleaned for older people in my village.”
This led to her job with Lincolnshire social services, which in turn gave Louise the idea for Evergreen’s care.
These days Louise has taken a step back from the day-to-day running of the trust, and for the past three years she has assisted a social care research project at the University of Lincoln.
“The Government will not change social care without research evidence, and so that’s why I see it as vitally important,” she said.
She still volunteers one day a week at Evergreen and says the highlight for her over the past 20 years has been the ‘amazing volunteers and staff’.
“I’ve been supported by a fantastic team,” she added. “A team is crucial, and seeing them care and make a difference to people’s lives, well, it’s a joy.”
Ed Bailey has managed volunteer services at Evergreen for the past two years, co-ordinating befriending, cleaning and decluttering, giving lifts, and advocacy.
Referrals can arrive in several ways, including from GPs and social services, and Ed holds regular meetings with them to discuss the support volunteers can give individuals, filling the gaps if family is unable, or unavailable.
“GPs can’t fix situations that cause people poor health and anxiety, but we can carry the worry for them, provide the physical ability to get jobs done, and quite often take away the cost,” said Ed.
“But what our volunteers do has to be based on trust.”
A GP might tell Evergreen that their patient needs their home decluttering, or that the bed needs moving downstairs. Volunteers might build up a relationship with the patient, helping them to declutter little by little so as not to cause anxiety, or might have their immediate blessing to rearrange furniture to suit new health circumstances.
A benefit of Evergreen is that there is no paperwork or financial transaction for members to worry about. And volunteers’ contact with vulnerable older people acts as an early warning system to problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The practical help, care and friendship of Evergreen volunteers means people can continue to live independently.
And it’s not just older people who have benefited. Advocacy service volunteers have also helped carers of young people with special needs to gain government-funded respite, allowing them precious time off.
“I was mentally and physically exhausted as a single parent to my son, who is severely disabled,” said one mum, who asked not to be named.
“I was battling with social care to get a respite package, and the advocate from Evergreen helped me put my case to the panel.
“Now I receive one weekend a month respite and it has changed everything. I can meet friends, have a night away and switch off from being a 24/7 carer. It has given me my life back.”
Jean Caisely, 88, has benefited from having a volunteer befriender.
Although she has family locally, a friend who lived close by had died and Jean, who is gregarious by nature, felt “a little bit isolated” because she is less able to get out to meet people these days.
She was matched with the woman she calls ‘Brenda the befriender’ - Brenda Williamson - who comes in regularly for a catch up.
“We talk about family and anything that piques our interest,” said Jean, whose husband died in 1987, when he was 49.
“I really look forward to her coming around and not only do we talk a lot, she also helps take things I have sorted out away, to the jumble sale.
“What they do at Evergreen is marvellous. We need people like them so much.”
Another member, who is the same age as Jean but has no family in the local area, received advocacy to help him complete a ‘daunting form’ relating to his pension allowance, which resulted in a positive outcome for him.
He also uses Evergreen’s paid-for laundry and housekeeping services.
While Evergreen supports people in their own homes and private lives, the Friends Together Group provides a chance for socialising.
Run until recently by Brenda Williamson and now in the hands of Henriett Holzczhauser, the group mixes games, crafts, singing and gentle exercise with cups of tea, cake and biscuits.
Brenda, who has been supporting Evergreen for four-and-a-half years, started as a volunteer befriender before leading the service and group social activities.
Having run a business before retirement, and having worked as a carer, she has been able to offer Evergreen her skills, and remains a volunteer befriender to three members.
Among those enjoying the Friends Together Group at Stamford Free Church in Kesteven Road were Janet and Philip.
School sweethearts 70 years ago, they are now in their eighties and have renewed their friendship thanks to the social side of Evergreen.
June and Barrie, meanwhile, have been together for 20 years, both also having lost their previous spouses. For June, seeing Barrie socialising brings her additional happiness - Alzheimer’s disease has affected his independence but she is keen that he doesn’t just stay at home.
“If he didn’t come here, all he would see is me,” she said.
“I heard about Evergreen four years ago when I needed help getting to a hospital appointment and I’ve become more involved since then. Now we always come along on a Thursday afternoon.”
With a smile, Barrie added: “We come here seeing as I can’t play football any more.”
To mark its 20th anniversary, a celebration ball for Evergreen Care Trust is taking place at Rutland Hall Hotel on Saturday, April 26.
The event is open to all at £43 per place, with individuals, couples and colleagues encouraged to secure places or tables of 10 for a three-course meal, drinks, music and fun.
Evergreen is seeking business sponsors to cover some of the costs of staging the ball, and ticket sales will then raise funds to provide the charity’s ‘free’ services, which are not cost-free to Evergreen.
While Evergreen has an income from its paid-for services, in order to cover other aspects of the support it provides it relies on fundraising and donations.
To secure ball tickets visit tinyurl.com/EvergreenBall
To find out more about the ball or any aspect of Evergreen Care Trust, email reception@evergreen.org.uk or call the office in Barnack Road, Stamford, on 01780 765900.
