Improving the life of Melksham Seniors

MELKSHAM Seniors Forum is celebrating the success of its recent events as the organisation looks forward to another busy month, and an ongoing drive to improve the quality of life for local older people.

Chairman Brian Warwick reports, “A key ethos of the seniors is to endeavour to improve the quality of life and well-being of seniors in the Melksham area.  We believe we are gradually achieving  that aim but there is still a great deal more that can be done. To that extent we need the help of the community, the commercial and retail business and the public sector.

“Unlike the youth sector, our local older people organisations receive very little funding from the public sector, we received a grant from Melksham Town Council (£1,500) and Melksham Without (£100).

“Thanks to a donation from Melksham Rotary we have managed, by hard fundraising and support from our members, to keep in the black.  Unfortunately, those constraints have prevented the Seniors from extending their health and wellbeing activities, which are aimed at reducing the numbers of falls older people tend to have and, of course, helping to reduce the need for hospital and care support along with the heavy cost to the NHS and Wiltshire Council.

“It is now becoming a rather uphill battle to identify new sources of funding as the government cuts grow deeper.

“However, it is not all doom and gloom as our Community Day on the 30th June proved. It was a fantastic event extremely well supported by over 40 local organisations and an incredibly high number of the public. In the coming weeks we shall be striving hard to build on this new partnership working.

“It was delightful to see the ranges of activities and in particular the walking netball exhibition, we even had enough ladies signing up to create a Melksham Seniors Ladies Walking Netball team; well done ladies!

“June in fact was an extremely busy month, starting with our Activity Club meeting on the first Monday at the Forest Community Centre. Then Melksham Seniors was well represented by 42 members enjoying excellent entertainment and an afternoon tea at County Hall, hosted by Baroness Jane Scott, the council leader.

“That was followed a few days later by our own delightful tea party at the Assembly Hall, held also to celebrate the Queens birthday. That event was most enjoyable, but extremely hard work for our few volunteers, once again they were rewarded by such an excellent high turnout.

“Then of course we held the highly successful community day event with the excellent support of over 40 organisations. It was fantastic to have over 300 local seniors attending the event.

“We were most grateful for the help and often guidance of several younger volunteers that did an excellent job, I would like to publicly give a special thanks to particularly three of those younger individuals, for without the help of individuals such as Rhys Schell, Teresa Strange and Miriam Zaccarelli, the event would not have been the success it achieved. Thank you to all three and also great thanks to every one else who supported us.

“In particular the local businesses Sainsbury’s, Britannia Marquee’s, Signmarketing in Melksham, Melksham Rotary Club and Melksham Independent News.

“Our July programme is not quite as hectic, yet we still have a busy month, with the activity club, the film club on the 18th when we are showing the most enjoyable  light-hearted ‘Dads Army’ film.

“Then on the 28th July we have a very important and special public meeting at 2pm in the Council Room at Melksham Town Council the our key speaker will be our local MP Michelle Donelan. I am looking forward to hearing about a new MP’s learning curve in getting to know Parliamentary procedures, and possible pitfalls that could happen without a good mentor.

“It is also of course an opportunity to question Michelle on key issues and to let her know your own views around older peoples issues and other matters of equal importance here in Melksham. I hope to see many seniors joining us on the day.”