Community Care
Community Care is a full day-care service from 10 am to 3:30 pm, with engaging arts activities led by professional artists, including mosaic-making, stained glass, pottery, dance and others. Members’ work is frequently exhibited around the Centre, where it can be viewed by up to 2,000 Centre users and visitors each week, and has been sold at the Centre’s annual art auction and Spitalfields market.
Members’ care needs are fully attended to by a committed and professional, local staff team. Due to a strong culture of volunteering at the Centre, we are able to ensure very high staff ratios in our community care programmes. This means that all members are able to receive individual attention, encouragement and support to create wonderful works of art, and a friendly, welcoming atmosphere is maintained.
The strength of the Centre’s provision is its roots in the community. Hence each member is not only supported in the Centre, but also relationships with families and carers form part of a wider support network. Fellow Centre users and their families assist with members’ needs such as picking up prescriptions at the chemist or assisting with DIY.
Through Working Wonders, members are able to take advantage of the range of services offered at the Bromley by Bow Centre, including healthy lifestyles support, welfare and benefits information, advice and guidance, dance and movement classes, and support into employment.
Members eat lunch every day in the Pie in the Sky healthy living café, run by the Tower Project, whose support staff themselves are people with learning disabilities. In addition, members are integrated into cross-Centre projects, including celebrations for Eid, Passover and Bangladesh Independence Day, as well as a summer 2007 project called “Eat London” where a team from the Centre contributed to building a model of London out of food, in partnership with the London International Festival of Theatre.
The Centre’s day-care service enables members to develop a range of skills, including visual awareness and communication skills. They also learn to show appreciation for others’ work. Members feel pride in their achievements and enjoy seeing their work on display. Joining in at the Centre means that members get out of their homes regularly and meet other people.
“When I first came, I thought it’d be for 6 weeks to do a friend a favour. I’ve stayed for 16 years. Here we do a different activity every day – mosaics, pottery, rug-making, textiles. My body might be going but my mind’s still there. I’d like to keep it going and the activities help. You see the end product. You sit back and think, ‘I’ve done that.’ I feel proud and each time it’s something I’ve achieved. I’d do anything to help the Centre.”
"Relations [between the members] are very good. Not just the staff, we all confer. Not everyone can talk like me, but we all help out. If I drop anything, little L.. will pick it up in a flash; in the ambulance someone’ll do my seatbelt up for me. With R... we have a laugh and a joke. We all confer in our own way.”
“We get a lot of commissions. When the workmen were here, one of them commissioned Sheenagh and me to do a mermaid for his bathroom as a surprise for his wife. We’ve been in the paper and all.”
Maureen, 62.
