NEW Travel Buddies Project

We are partnering with SCiA to offer transport to some local events and also to run one-off outings for service users as part of our Travel Buddy Project. The idea is to help reduce isolation by using community transport such as SCiA’s fleet of accessible minibuses. We hope that using the SCiA buses to get to events will also help service users feel more confident in using ‘Dial a ride’ or regular bus routes to get out more. We also hope that group activities will help reduce our waiting lists if some service users who were referred to us for one to one befriending find that they can take part in group activities instead.

So far we have taken people to the Haven Lunch Club and Communitea in Weston. On Monday we will be taking a group to Cafe Revive at Colne Avenue Baptist Church. We are also running the first of our group outings this week – a minibus trip to Milestones Museum in Basingstoke. 

We are looking for volunteers to join our team of ‘travel buddies‘. This could include going on one of the minibus journeys, visiting service users at home beforehand to do a short questionnaire, going to a session to help with follow up questionnaires or helping people develop the confidence to keep going to a group by using a public bus. Please let the office team know if you are interested in helping in this way.