A Hampshire town is arming itself with the life-saving equipment and skills needed to see its residents safely through an emergency situation, with help from Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) funding.
The Whitchurch Association - a charity benefitting the inhabitants of Whitchurch and the surrounding hamlets of Litchfield, Woodcott, Tufton, Dunley and Hurstbourne Priors, was awarded over £1,375 through SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund (RCF), a scheme set up to help charities and groups across its central southern England patch to boost their resilience and tackle areas of vulnerability in their communities with awards of up to £20,000.
With their focus on building a stronger emergency rest centre at their base in the Gill Netherton Community Centre, the charity organisation used the funding to invest in various pieces of equipment, including sleeping bags and foil rescue blankets, and a mannequin and defibrillator trainer to help them boost the numbers of their community already trained in defibrillator use.
Dr Morwenna Collins from the Whitchurch Association explains how the kit is helping boost their town's resilience: "The award from SSEN's Resilient Communities Fund has enabled us to equip the centre with 20 emergency sleeping bags, a self-heating sleeping bag, which is especially useful for the elderly or immobile - and grab bags with 100 foil rescue blankets. That in itself has been a great boost to our town, but we also invested some of the money awarded to us to buy a resuscitation mannequin and defibrillator trainer.
"For the last few years we've campaigned to get all of Whitchurch within 300 metres of a cardiac defibrillator; we now have around three-quarters of the town covered and provide regular free training, but in the past we've had to borrow equipment to carry out this life-saving training. Having our own means we can be far more flexible with training times and we've already used the equipment bought through the Resilient Communities Fund to train over 150 people."
"Having the money has made a real difference to our community and we would very much like to thank Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks for their generosity."
Set up in 2014 as a two-year pilot scheme, SSEN has pledged to extend the Resilient Communities Found to 2023 using a proportion of the income it receives from the industry regulator Ofgem in relation to its stakeholder engagement performance.
In addition to the Resilient Communities Fund, SSEN has been working closely with local communities in the south east of England, helping them create resilience plans for emergencies, such as adverse weather and possible power disruption during winter storms.
Funds for the next round of applications in central southern England are now open, with the closing date for applications is 23 May 2019. Decisions on awards to be made by September 2019.
Guidelines and applications forms are available on SSEN's website: www.ssen.co.uk/RCF/England/ with a full report on the fund available here - https://www.ssen.co.uk/RCF/.