Fundraising for our residents and supporting St David's Hospice
Supporting our residents is something we are very passionate about at Melin Homes. Our staff were asked to vote for who they would like to raise money for this year. The votes are in and verified and we are proud to announce staff will be taking part in events organised by St David’s Hospice and fundraising for our Resident Support Fund. This way we are supporting the wider community and the fantastic work of St David’s Hospice whilst fundraising and supplementing our Resident Support Fund – a fund residents can access through our Melin Advice Team.
Written by Fiona
—03 Mar, 2023
From April 2021 to March 2022, 682 of our Melin households benefitted from over £20k in supermarket vouchers and 467 households received over £24k in energy vouchers. By staff supporting the Resident Support Fund we are able to help more people within our Melin communities.
Our Melin Advice service is one of the most important things we provide our residents – an impartial, friendly and confidential team of experts who can help residents with the challenges they may face in their daily lives.
Melin Advice can assist with budgeting, benefits, energy bills, work, training, getting online and so much more. We’re also here to help you pick up the pieces when things go wrong, maybe due to ill health, or redundancy at work.
We’ve set up a cost-of-living group
Staff members from teams across Melin formed a Cost-of-living group to look at ways of mitigating the effects of the current crisis for residents.
To date the group has;
- Agreed that food and fuel insecurity are two of the biggest challenges our residents face at present, and through our Advice Team, we will continue to support residents by utilising our own food and fuel bank. Funding for this has been received through our; community benefit programme, our Melin Voices and reducing our events budget.
- £15,000 was reclaimed from the feed in tariff on existing solar PV panels. This has meant that we can fix some that weren’t working well and make others operate even more efficiently. This will, in turn generate more money from the feed in tariff.
- LED lighting is being installed in the communal areas in the remaining six sheltered schemes, which didn’t already have it. They will all be completed by the end of March, before energy prices rise again in April. This should save residents and some leaseholders money on their communal energy bills.
- £510 has been raised through our cost-of-living raffle and staff can now choose to donate their Diolch reward to support our Resident Support Fund.
- With several new tenders on the horizon, we will be organising a tour of the sheltered schemes beginning this month, followed by a tour of general needs schemes on the Melin bus. This will help residents understand and have their say in our tender process. Some of the Melin Voices will feature in a video to advertise the tour.
- We’ve created a clothing donation point. All clothing will be given to local community groups.
- We held a cost-of-living café on social media, giving residents the chance to ask us for money, energy, and employment advice.
- Our Melin Advice team held a series of very effective cost-of-living advice surgeries at our sheltered schemes, answering residents' money and energy questions and giving them tips to save money or access benefits that will help.
- We have produced a budget planner and cost of living leaflet to inform staff and residents what help is available.
