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HOLIDAY CHEER FOR DISABLED
ALL the delights of Southport are
to be opened up to more disabled holidaymakers thanks to leading
northern brewer Thwaites.
A donation from Lancashire based Thwaites’ renowned Charitable Trust
will help provide accommodation at Sandpipers, the holiday complex
in the resort run by Vitalise, a leading UK charity which provides
breaks for physically disabled people and their carers.
Sandpipers, on Fairway, is one of five Vitalise centres across the
country and manager Darren Holloran said:- “The support of
companies likes Thwaites Brewery is invaluable as we look to make
our centres open to more and more people. We cannot thank Thwaites
enough for the backing.”
Virtually helping the planet!
MERSEYSIDE businesses are saving
money and helping the environment, thanks to an online resource
efficiency toolkit by ENWORKS. This bespoke toolkit helps to
encourage and assist businesses in the North West to adopt more
efficient production and consumption patterns and to quantify the
economic and environmental outcomes of improvements made.
Such is the success of this initiative, that it has been shortlisted
in the national eWell-Being Awards. The Awards are run by Sustain
IT, supported by BT, and seek to uncover pioneering projects that
identify and promote the benefits of Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT).
Research carried out by ENWORKS shows that an average company can
save 4% of its annual turnover by addressing simple processes such
as waste, energy use and raw materials, many companies can save much
more! The toolkit allows companies to log individual opportunities
for resource efficiency, including any capital implementation costs,
then calculates the cost savings, payback periods and environmental
benefits that each opportunity will bring. Each opportunity has a
‘status’ so its progress can be tracked and companies can view
all opportunities together in order to prioritise action and
track/manage the implementation process. The average saving on the
Resource Efficiency Programme is £21,000 per business.
To date, over 470 companies, working on 1480 separate resource
efficiency strategies have signed up to the toolkit and so far it
has helped achieve over £9.4 million in annual savings.
Samantha Nicholson, Programme Manager at ENWORKS explains how their
initiative benefits everyone:- “We are not here to tell people
how to run their businesses; but what we do know is how to manage
and reduce their impact on the environment. With the online toolkit
we help them manage that process and save not only the environment,
but also significant sums of money in the process.” More
info. see:-
www.sustainit.org. |
Patients being seen
sooner and going home earlier
LISTENING to patients, who were
anxious to return home as soon as possible, has meant a reduction in
the length of stay in hospital for those having hip or knee
replacement surgery and as a result patients can now been seen
sooner according to Southport & Ormskirk Hospital.
"Over the last two years we have halved the length of stay
from between 10 and 14 days to between 5 and 7 days (assuming no
complications). We have managed to achieve this by the introduction
of a Planned Discharge Team of occupational and physiotherapists.
This team will actually take the patient home and make sure
everything is in place for them and follow up patient care out in
the community.
Cutting the length of time patients stay in hospital has cut the
waiting times for hip and knee replacement surgery. At the moment
there are 162 patients waiting an average of 2 months with a longest
wait of 6 months, compared to 386 patients waiting an average of
over 3 months with the longest wait being 9 months in January 2005.
Patients are contacted well in advance of their operation to assess
any special needs they may have once their operation has taken
place. For example, they may need special equipment at home, or help
with social care once they are discharged. Any healthcare problems
such as high blood pressure are also assessed at that stage.
At that time the patients are given a care plan which details not
only what they can expect from the hospital, but also what the
hospital expects from them. We believe patients are more
psychologically prepared for the operation as they know what support
is available to them afterwards and they can see the various steps
on the road to recovery.
Most patients then come in to hospital on the day of their
operation, rather than the night before. After the operation they
come under the care of the multidisciplinary team of surgeons,
nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists. Because
patients know what their role is in their recovery, they become part
of the team as well." said Pat Keeley, sister on the
orthopaedic ward at the Ormskirk Hospital.
It is planned to extend pre-operative assessments making them far
more comprehensive, so reducing potential post-operative
complications and in as a result the length of stay. Then two weeks
before their operation, most patients are seen to make sure they are
well enough for the operation.
New local Website for
the Wirral
THE Wirral has become one of the
first communities in the UK to have access to a new online service,
with the same ideas as ourselves, that is providing a low cost,
highly effective tool to reach potential customers, via the web.
The website is part of an online service called, thebestof.co.uk.
Ok, this is a national idea, not 100% like ours, but still worth a
note. Other sites like the Post Office's
ukvillages.co.uk have
been operating for years and we have all been behind the scenes in
close contact. What makes this one different is that the service is
run by local people, like just we are!
The
thebestof.co.uk/wirral
franchise has been set up by husband and wife team, Greg and Sarah
McTear Smith. Sarah said:- "More people than ever
are using the web and it’s only going to be bigger. Currently UK
online retail is growing 31 times faster than the High Street. You
only need to think about how many people you know that did their
Christmas shopping on the internet
When people have needed to find a local company or service in the
past, they often used a traditional directory such as the Yellow
Pages. But with continuous access to broadband Internet both at work
and in the home, online searches for local services are growing at
an exponential rate. The Kelsey Group, leading global business
commentators, expects 20% of Internet searches to be local in nature
in 06 and predicts that within three years a third of the total
directory market spend will be on the Internet.
This growth of the internet and the knowledge that people
overwhelmingly prefer ‘local’ providers of goods and services gives
us the confidence that ‘thebestof’ will provide all the information
needed by the residents of the Wirral."
Good luck to them and we look forward to hearing more from you all.
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