Lincolnshire Seniors Forum
 Lincs Seniors Forum - the voice of older people in Lincolnshire
Holbeach Seniors' Link: Who are we ? What’s in a Name ?
When we first came together to set up a forum to represent older people’s interests in the eastern half of South Holland we considered several possibilities for a group name, it had to say, briefly and clearly, who, where and what we were. The words “old and elderly” have a negative sound so we went for “Senior”, a senior is some one who has experience, someone who is respected and looked up to. “Holbeach” had to be included as this is the centre of our area, but it is vital to remember that we stretch all the way from Moulton to the Norfolk border and from the Wash to the Cambridgeshire border. We are a very big region and we represent everyone in it, not just the “townies”. Forum has many meanings but we wanted to make it clear from the start that we were not just a talk shop, we wanted to link up organisations and individuals and so we chose “Link”. This also meant that we could play around with ideas such as “linking up in Lincs” and the like.
Sue Mac
One of the first things we became involved with was the appointment of a Community Involvement Worker for Older People in South Holland. Ray Pacey, our treasurer and chairman, David Roberts, together with a representative from the Spalding forum joined three “professionals”, from Social Services, the Primary Care Trust and Age Concern, and spent two days interviewing candidates for the post. The function of the “CIW” is to support the work of the forums in South Holland and to get out and about meeting individuals and organisations in the area and locating suitable speakers. We chose Mrs Susan McLaughlin from Boston, known to us now as Sue Mac. Sue’s input has been invaluable and it is with great pleasure that we announce that her one-year appointment has been extended for at least another year.

3, 2 or 1

The original plan was to set up individual forums in Holbeach, Long Sutton and Sutton Bridge but this was very soon reduced to just Holbeach and Sutton Bridge. We benefit greatly, here, as Marjorie and Les Hannam came from Long Sutton as did Bill Webb, a member of U3A, who quickly allied himself with our activities. Bill came from Sussex where he had wide experience of both local government and health matters. The partnership continued to try to get a forum off the ground in Sutton Bridge but eventually a small group from there decided to throw in their lot with us. Amongst them was Irene Limbert, who has great experience of voluntary work in the area and she now acts as our press officer. With hindsight our area, although large, does not have enough people in it to support more than one group, and so this coming together was, perhaps, inevitable. So like the United States of America we are “E Pluribus Unum, Out of Many, One”

Open Meetings

As we represent so many towns and villages we wanted our bi-monthly to visit as many venues as possible so that our constituency would get to know about us as soon as possible. So far we have met in nine different halls and there are to be a further two this Spring. Our activities are summarised here

Issues

In addition to arranging the open meetings, our Management Committee also takes up issues, which have been raised either at open meetings or elsewhere. These include: car parking, the “school run”, rural post offices, public toilet provision, doctors’ appointment procedures, local transport issues, pension payment procedures and (this was our very first topic) toenail cutting. After many, many meetings and false starts it now appears that we have a toenail-cutting service, which is free for those who have problems in cutting their own.


Linking Up

The importance of a link is that it works two ways, we not only write letters to people who provide, or fail to provide, services, we are also here to be consulted by these bodies. During the last twelve months various members of HSL have been in five consultations with LCC Social Services. In return a group of their officers have carried out a sponsored mountain climb to raise money for our sister forums and us. Three of our committee are active on the executive of Boston and South Holland Age Concern. We have spoken about our work to the board of the East Lincolnshire Primary Trust. We are represented on SHDC’s Rural Action Zone Steering Group. Our chairman has given addresses on our work to groups in Boston and Lincoln. We have met, not only with representatives of other older people’s forums but also with the newly set up NHS patients’ forums, with whom we shall have many common interests. We are in contact with all our district and county councillors, all our parish councils and at our last meeting, MP John Hayes came along to see what we are getting up to.

Finally we are forging strong links with the groups in Spalding, Boston and Skegness. One or more of us have visited all of these and we are happy to have welcomed them to our meetings too. It is a great pleasure for us to be sharing this website with these groups and we look forward to the formation of further forums in East Lincolnshire in the near future.

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