The Birchwood Centre: A lifeline for our community during one of the UK’s toughest challenges…

The Birchwood Ennerdale, based in Tanhouse, has been one of most important assets to Skelmersdale both before, during, and after the lockdown due to the Covid outbreak. In fact, it is one of the only local services of its kind that operated throughout the entire lockdown.

You may remember the Junk Food Cafe, a service created to help reduce food waste and an opportunity for the community to benefit from healthy, freshly cooked meals on a pay as you feel basis. However, when lockdown hit, this service was paused, and instead The Birchwood decided to create hampers and have them delivered to residents who needed them. This was made possible by the generosity of both large and small local independent businesses. The organisation was later given funding to help support a greater number of people in need for an extended 8-week period. This allowed The Birchwood to create bulkier weekly food hampers with enough essentials to support households of various sizes for one week at a time.

The food packages contained three meals a day, per household member, and were delivered to over 80 families within the local area. These food packages were a lifeline for so many people that struggled to get out due to shielding, and for those who struggled to afford food and necessities during that time. They also created toy, toiletry and sweet hampers, to help cheer up those who were particularly struggling emotionally and mentally. During this time, there was also support and thanks shown to some of our local key workers in the way of cupcakes and gift bags, given to help show appreciation for their hard work and dedication.

Since there was no scope to reopen holiday club over the summer, The Birchwood decided to operate a packed lunch scheme for children, again supported by the generosity of local businesses. This was a great success and they managed to give out over 2500 packed lunches to those who needed it most.

The Birchwood was eager to reopen their community shop once lockdown restrictions were eased, it had been such a valued service in the community pre-lockdown, and post lockdown people were needing it more than ever. Once reopened, it became apparent that the circumstances people were faced with was really affecting their mental wellbeing. Whilst the emotional support team were still actively working throughout lockdown, the reopening of the community shop allowed for the social inclusion team to work much closer with the emotional support team in order to support the community on a much deeper level.

The Birchwood offers so much support to our local community and is one of our most valued assets within the town. We owe a huge thank you to all those involved in this fantastic organisation for everything they do!

Meet the Social Inclusion Team:

David Scott: David oversees all aspects of the social inclusion team. He communicates with local businesses and shareholders, as well as local community groups and churches. David also manages the website and social media side of the organisation, and heads the employability and volunteering aspects of the social inclusion team; which is aimed to help give people skills and experience to ease them into employment.

Emma: Emma works closely with David within the employability and volunteering aspects, specifically in the language development of communities within the area, such as the Syrian community. Emma heads up the befriending services, offering one to one calls, as well as meets and greets. Emma also runs some online cooking lessons (previously face to face). Emma’s role is extensive in the support of the mental wellbeing of the community.

Callum: Callum oversees the community shop, which includes working with the volunteers to sort through the food when it arrives at the shop and making it look presentable for when service users arrive. Callum also heads up the Cooking club based at the Birchwood Centre. Callum works with our residents offering them practical cookery sessions based of recipes that the residents have chosen themselves. the goal with these sessions is to provide our residents with key skills.

Ian: Ian offers huge value to the social inclusion team. He not only manages the media aspects, but also creates and hosts the sessions for the community. Ian is currently introducing many new sessions, including Tea and Me, Yoga, Meditation and many more (see weekly schedule, and don’t forget check the Facebook page regularly to keep up to date).

Schedule of FREE sessions:

To contact The Birchwood Ennerdale call: 01695 713248

The Community Shop is open Monday – Friday, 12 – 2pm at Ennerdale House.

Great News! The Birchwood Centre will be offering their Christmas Eve hampers again this year, plus the community shop will also be open on Christmas Eve, so make sure you get down early!