Meg is the Centre Manager at Fearon Hall. Sarah is Mental Health Neighbourhood Lead – Charnwood for Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust. Together they make the Hello Help Hub at Fearon Hall tick. Hear them talk a little bit about what goes on.
Sarah: Hi Meg, can you just introduce yourself and explain a little bit about Fearon Hall?
Meg: Yes, I’m Meg Bezzano-Griffiths and I am Centre Manager of Fearon Community Association, Fearon Hall. We’re a community building in the East of Loughborough.
Sarah: And can you tell us a bit about what goes on at Fearon Hall?
Meg: What doesn’t happen at the Hall! The main thing that we offer really is our community café which is Tuesday to Friday, nine till two. It’s the heartbeat of the Hall. It’s a place of safety, friendship, good food and we run a lot of different activities from the café. So arts, crafts, wellbeing sessions. But we’re more than that. We have a host of different agencies that work from the Hall. Loughborough College run their ESOL community provision. We have sewing classes, we have recovery groups, we have exercise classes. So it’s all about wellbeing, looking after the individual. We have gardening and growing. We partner with Incredible Edible and our wonderful Fearon in Bloom group. So yeah, looking after people, our planet around us to create a sense of wellbeing in the community.
Sarah: Thank you. And what makes Fearon Hall so magical?
Meg: It’s the people. It’s the building, it’s the people, it’s the partnerships. It’s the fact that we all work together with the one common goal of really just trying to support our community to live their best, healthy, happy lives.
Meg: So, Sarah, it’s your turn. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and in particular, the Hello Help Hub here at Fearon Hall.
Sarah: So, I am Sarah Jones. I work for Leicestershire Partnership HNS Trust. I’m the Mental Health Neighbourhood Lead for Charnwood. The Hello Help Hub is a really exciting project that we set up back in October and it was after seeing people coming in to Fearon Hall who were really struggling with different issues. So we wanted to think about how we could help them in one place at one time. So we set up a drop in on a Wednesday afternoon, bringing together all different partners and organisations. So we have our Social Prescribing Team, Local Area Coordinators, Community Mental Health Team, the Police, Loughborough Town of Sanctuary, Work Well Coaches, and we’re all here on a Wednesday afternoon so people can come in and get that support in one place.
Meg: So how many people have we supported since we started in October, do you think?
Sarah: So, we’re seeing between 40 and 70 people who drop in on a Wednesday afternoon. And just looking at the last couple of months, we saw around 400 people since Christmas.
Meg: And is there any particular sort of support that sticks out in your mind with how to prove the success of or the impact of the Hello Help Hub?
Sarah: Er, yes, there’s a few instances where we’ve had people come in quite distressed with different things going on. There was a lady who came in who was unable to speak English, but had had a letter from the GP surgery, and the only word she had been able to translate was cancer. So she thought she had cancer and she’d been living with this fear of having cancer for a few months. And when we explained to her it was actually a letter to ask her to go down to the GP surgery for a routine examination, smear test, you just saw the relief on her face, and the Social Prescribers were able to just walk her down the road straight away with her and get her booked in. So, it’s able to offer that immediate support to people. We’ve also had people come in who are going to be homeless that evening. We’ve been able to make sure they have got tents, sleeping bags, the food they need and also sort out appointments with our housing colleagues the following day to help them with those issues. So it’s that ability to react immediately to what’s going on.
Meg: So, it really does make a difference. So what times does it run on a Wednesday?
Sarah: Wednesday is two to five each week.
Meg: Thank you.
