Flying the Flag for Golden Sands

All of Blackpool’s prestigious beaches have been granted Seaside Awards.

The national awards, announced by Keep Britain Tidy, have rewarded Blackpool South, Blackpool Central, Blackpool North and Bispham for their high standards of beach management, as well as their nearby facilities and water quality.

The four beaches make up the town’s entire stock of bathing water beaches which are currently rated as:

Bispham - Excellent Blackpool South - Good Blackpool Central - Good Blackpool North - Good

Cllr Jim Hobson, Blackpool Council’s Cabinet Member for Climate Change and Environment, said: “This is great news for local residents and visitors to Blackpool. “When people come to visit us, most will make a trip to the beach part of their holiday, so it’s really important that we can welcome them somewhere that is clean and welllooked after.

“Receiving this award proves that, wherever you go on our coastline, you are sure of an award-winning beach.

“We take great pride in keeping our beaches clean and I want to thank everyone who plays their part. From our dedicated Streetscene and Beach Patrol teams, to the many volunteers who litter pick, to every person that does the right thing and disposes of their litter responsibly. “It’s a collective effort and we know how passionately local residents feel about the cleanliness of their beaches.”

Blackpool has more than 800 litter bins, including 250 large capacity bins on the Promenade alone. They are emptied daily under normal conditions, and collections are increased whenever there is good weather and high visitor numbers. Reminders are in place to prompt everyone to get rid of their rubbish in the nearest available bin or take it home with them.

This summer anyone visiting Blackpool will see “Don’t be a scruff, bin your stuff” posters displayed along the Promenade.

Blackpool is part of Turning Tides the cross-agency partnership working together in north west England to do everything possible to improve the quality of our bathing waters.

Through infrastructure, planning, campaigning, volunteering, educating, engaging and hard work, the aim is to make sure everyone enjoys our beaches for generations to come.

To find out more visit www.lovemybeach.org

©Gregg Wolstenholme Photography

Aiming Higher

YOU CAN DONATE TO AIMING HIGHER USING THE FOLLOWING METHODS:

WEBSITE | www.aiminghighercharity.org.uk/donate JUST GIVING | www.justgiving/aiminghigher/donate/ PAYPAL | Found on Aiming Higher website or call to make donations by phone POST | Aiming Higher, 231 – 233 Church Street, Blackpool, Lancashire FY1 3PB. To see more of what we do please visit our website www.aiminghighercharity.org.uk or follow us on facebook @aiminghighercharity.

Please ring us on 01253 206447 for further information.

Helping to make life a little easier at Aiming Higher

In mid-2019, before any of us knew what lockdown or shielding was, Aiming Higher for Disabled Children & their Families, the Blackpool based charity that supports hundreds of local children and their families, received a request for help from a family who were in affect already doing this.

The family’s new baby, Toby was born with Pierre Robin Sequence and a recurrent 16p11.2 microdeletion, rare genetic conditions that cause issues with feeding and breathing. At just 37 hours old he had had a tracheostomy and his parents were watching him 24 hours a day as he was unable to be intubated. The family had not left the house since his birth and were feeling overwhelmed and isolated. Aiming Higher staff hear words like ‘overwhelmed’ and especially ‘isolated’ a lot when first talking to new families. While this is a feeling that lots of people can relate to now having experienced lockdown, for families like Toby’s the challenge has been far greater.

Toby has an older sister Tia, who at just 11 was struggling to adjust to family life with all Toby’s extra needs and requirements. One of the first things Aiming Higher were able to do was to take her out to join in with some activities with her peers, giving mum and dad more time with Toby and allowing big sister the chance to relax and spend time with others her age. Aiming Higher are always very aware that the whole family need to be included in the work they do as brothers and sisters lives and freedoms are often affected by the needs of their disabled sibling. During lockdown, Tia has continued to access online activities through the charity, taking part in baking and craft sessions on Zoom.

Above: Toby’s first birthday celebrations

Since that first call, working closely with their Family Support Worker, Lisa Cassidy, the family have been able to move forward. Mum Kerry says, “Throughout lockdown, the Aiming Higher Team have checked up on us as a family and provided support where possible. They dropped off activities for the children and held zoom sessions to keep people connected. They really have been a lifeline and we can’t thank them enough.”

Above: Toby helping dad unpack his new pushchair The team supported the family in claiming Disability Living Allowance and, because of all the bulky medical equipment that Toby requires, were able to secure a Motability car for the family. This involved applying for a specialist grant as Motability cars are virtually unheard of for children under 3.

Until Toby was 9 months old he was fed via an NG tube. At 9 months he had his cleft palate repaired and a gastrostomy at the same time. Because of the gastrostomy, Toby also needs specialist equipment to process his food, which Lisa was able to help them acquire through a Family Fund application. The family now feel confident to apply to Family Fund again (they Another grant from Freedom for Kids was successfully achieved with Lisa’s help for a specialist push-chair for Toby. This enables the family to get out and access the community in a way they wouldn’t have been able to in a typical buggy purchased from the usual high street stores. The family needed a much stronger, roomier pushchair with lots of storage for his suction machine and other medical equipment for his tube feeds.

Kerry says, “We are so grateful to Lisa and the team at Aiming Higher for all their help and support. Without Lisa we would never have known about the extra help we were able to apply for, or have found the time to complete the forms. Lisa’s help ranged from practical to personal, enabling us to create the amazing memories we had longed for for Toby’s first birthday.”

Family Support Worker Lisa said “Everyone at Aiming Higher was delighted to be able to help the family to celebrate this very special birthday in very strange times! Toby might not have been able to have a party with lots of people due to the restrictions and his need to shield but we made sure that the family were able to create precious memories and enjoy the day. It was lovely to be able to provide his cake and decorations. We all loved seeing the photos of his day and his happy face!”

Above: Toby’s first birthday celebrations with a cake and decorations sourced by the charity

Like all charities, Aiming Higher saw fundraising activity decrease in 2020, so if you can support them in any way possible, be that by volunteering, or by donating, any assistance will be gratefully received. Please send your ideas to: heatherholt@aiminghighercharity.org.uk

The life of Di

A monthly column by Di Wade, the author of ‘A Year In Verse’

Last week was one of them...

It wasn’t as if I’d expected it to be a walk in the park, (Stanley naturally), complete with picnic of beer, skittles, and an enormous piece of cake. But still... It should’ve started with a spot of mental health training - and ended up challenging the mental health of a saint - and that was just after Monday. Undeniably, the prospect of the training, electronic and in the cause of work, was infinitely more palatable linked to the comfort of one’s own kitchen as opposed to an institutional old office, but I’d nonetheless procured a year’s supply of coffee and hobnobs, and hoped it’d be enough. I’d learned the hard way that if a course was supposed to last, as in this case, six hours, it would probably take at least twelve by the time my own peculiar technology had had its say: The specialist software I’m obliged to use in order to read the screen cleverly converts the contents of the said screen into braille, and is brilliant – with Word, Outlook, Internet Explorer, and all your usual suspects. Anything else it MIGHT read seamlessly, but could just as easily reduce it to a snail’s pace, precipitate an uncontrollable fit of the jitters, or render it unable to read anything else on the computer.

In the event however, I’d to phone the doctor’s first thing on Monday – not part of the plan at all. I’d then to wait for an emergency call-back, before phoning my mum, - dragging her away from her 44th spring-clean since lockdown, - and engaging her services to get me to the surgery for half an hour’s time: Fortunately, she lives barely ten minutes off, and it took us only a further ten minutes to walk to the doctors. It was nonetheless a tad annoying that the heavens should have opened as we set off. I always feel they might’ve waited, not least as any rainfall has me hanging onto my hood for dear life - to prevent the inevitably accompanying winds whipping it off within seconds and exposing my hearing-aids to an unhelpful soaking. On the way back however, my prevailing sensation was a flood of relief rather than rainwater, a weekend’s worry and morning’s anxious wait in a fast steaming-up facemask, (which I’d constantly to keep hitching back up again as it kept wanting to escape down my face), evaporating under the influence of a diagnosis exceeding expectations.

It might have occasioned a full-on party mood, except ten minutes after logging onto my computer at last, I was given something else to think about. Not waiting for the excuse of an uncertain training course, my computer’s braille capacity suddenly died. Moreover, though I could think of no reason for this, far less a solution, the onus seemed to be on me to FIND an answer as there seemed no one better placed so to do, most people simply not using computers with dotty extra bits. Thus I diligently pressed buttons, read the manual from cover to cover, (which proved as useful as employing a chocolate teapot), and bombarded Google - for what felt like an eternity. My ideas were definitely dwindling when finally, via means having absolutely nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with bloody-mindedly refusing to be beaten, I hit pay dirt - but with no lie down in a darkened room as a reward. I’d now to turn my attention to the delayed training – which turned out to be a cross between Bullseye and a sadistic roundabout. Having apparently successfully enrolled on it, I then couldn’t get any further than a virtual loop taking me round and round the same unhelpful information, including that I HAD successfully enrolled on the thing, and what it’d likely be teaching me could I only open it – which several hours later it seemed clear I wasn’t going to be able to. Bitterly conceding defeat, I was still seething about the time-wastage affected by technology when the doorbell announced a would-be electricity meter-reader. She was the sixth or seventh recently, despite: A, Covid; B, my only recently supplying a reading; C, my being as blind as a bat, (as must have been inferred from the braille bills I received), so unlikely to be flinging my door wide to anyone unexpected; and D, the fact that my parents, customers of the same company, hadn’t had anyone round to read theirs. So suffice to say, I phoned my electricity providers like the ultimate woman on a mission.

Having been cut off twice, then thrice forced to abandon the call as I could hear the person on the other end like a pin drop in a thunderstorm, it was beginning to seem like mission impossible. However, I did finally reach someone I could hear well enough to hope we understood each other.

The best bit though was my parents’ receipt, two days later, of a letter requesting they supply a meter reading, and advising that the company weren’t themselves carrying out such tasks at the moment due to Covid. Well, you couldn’t make it up – and all I can say is roll on the Olympics as the past couple of weeks have felt like them with knobs on, but in terms of pain rather than any kind of satisfying gain.