Welcome
First of all, a welcome to all the new folk who have joined P3 this week. There’s Jordan Jones, now working with Jane Bellamy’s crew on Be Well Derbyshire and Helen Evans, who joins Kat Brocklehurst in Derbyshire Homeless Support Service. I know Laura Baldwin and the team are extending a warm welcome to Charlotte Swift on the Derbyshire Triage Service. We also welcome the team joining the supporting older people in Cambridgeshire: Carol McCabe, Caroline Wheelan, Christine Nicholls, Clare Henson, Julie Roitman, Kathy Davey, Leanne Whitcombe, Nicky Findlay, Richard Brochu–Williams and Thuli Khoza. And last but by no means least, the awesome Joanne Collins, joining Steve Powers’ team in Halton.
I’m looking forward to meeting you all at Induction soon.
Congratulations
Congratulations to the ever–youthful Sean Wimhurst who has become a grandad to a handsome baby called Luka this week.
Also congratulations to Alex Hill who’s “finally found the bottle” (his words, not mine) to propose to his girlfriend (and she said yes of course).
Cost of Living Information Resource
We’ve quickly developed a resource that all colleagues can access to help navigate some of the issues around the cost of living crisis.
It has most of the national advice and information services on there, but if you have more or better resources that we can use across the country thenplease drop Jack Buckler an email on jack.buckler@p3charity.org and he will update the information. I know many of you will have loads more local resources; I’m sure many of you spend many hours navigating the complex systems of support. We have developed this resource for everyone to access,including people who do not work in support roles (so don’t come for me, saying that you know this stuff already!).
Here it is. I’m sure now that we have the whole of the P3 brain on the case we can improve it… just drop Jack a line if you’ve got stuff to share.
https://p3charitygroup.sharepoint.com/sites/Social/SitePages/National-Sources-of-Support.aspx
Progress on Climate Action
P3 has been a growing force for good for over 40 years. Society has changed dramatically since our early days as a newly formed organisation. We’ve grown substantially, achieved so much and touched thousands of lives throughout our time.
Our services are varied. They include supported accommodation, providing homes and support to people as they transition to independent living, street outreach services supporting people sleeping on the street to find somewhere to live and tenancy support services providing support to people in their own homes to prevent them from becoming homeless. Measuring and reducing our impact on the environment across this wide range of services, is an enormous challenge.
We’ve helped people when they needed it most. Today we help more people than ever before and we deliver our services in more areas than ever before. However,our charity and the way we operate were created in a time when there were different expectations on the role of an organisation in taking climate action. It was a fringe movement, a niche.
Climate action was something that we all saw on television through images of protestors chained to the gates of power stations or around trees.
That context has changed, and today we are clear there is a very real Climate Emergency which will require immediate and radical action by everyone. Our charity is not exempt from this. We believe, based on the facts we know today alongside the overwhelming and growing evidence provided by modern science, that it would be a breach of our duties as directors of the charity and citizens of the earth to continue as though there is not a Climate Emergency.
It is the responsibility of all of us to act in the interest of our stakeholders: the people we work alongside, our colleagues, our volunteers, and every single person in the communities we serve, to take action starting now.
We don’t have the expertise to do this work alone, so we have commissioned Auditel to help us measure and drive our progress towards becoming Net Zero.
Auditel Carbon Specialist Alan Ford said: “It has been a pleasure to have worked with P3 over the years managing the energy tendering for their expanding property portfolio. Now, with their goal of becoming Net Zero, the emphasis is moving towards energy management, reducing consumption, renewable energy and improved monitoring and control.
“With such a diverse portfolio there will be many challenges along the way but with the dedicated team at P3 and the expertise of Auditel, I am sure we can meet these challenges head on. P3 do a huge amount of good work within local communities and now we are working with them to ensure this good work continues with minimal impact on our planet.”
You’ll hear lots more on this vital initiative over the coming months, any questions drop @Jonny Goldsmith a line.
A Plea
I know things are tough and times are hard but if you can spare a few quid, please consider supporting the people of Pakistan who really need help right now:
https://www.dec.org.uk/appeal/pakistan-floods-appeal
The UK Government will match any donations up to £5million.
Mark