6
Issue 1015
Call 0114 283 11 00
28th June 2018
www.looklocal.org.uk
Local News
Last chance to buy bargain tickets for festival NOW is your last chance to buy discount tickets to the Sheffield Family Music Festival in Oughtibridge on June 30. You can buy the tickets online at OWMSC.CO.UK, this Saturday at Oughtibridge Gala or from Oughtibridge Kitchens. Killer Queen appeared at the last Sheffield Family Music Festival in 2015, when over 2,000 attended. Organisers are looking forward to another successful festival and tickets now on sale for the second event with Secret Police – a tribute to The Police headlining.
Young rock band Wharf from London, former front man of the Monday Club Paul Hawsworth, blues band 20 Foot Squid and three other bands covering all genres will also play. Stancil Brewery will be there along with a prosecco bar, fun fair, stalls, face painters, food court and a DJ playing requests booked by you when purchasing a ticket. Tickets are just £5 for concessions and £12 for adults when purchased this week.
PUPILS TACKLE PARENTS HEAD ON ABOUT PARKING PUPILS aged five to 11 at a primary school in Burncross have come up with a novel way to solve the parking problems blighting their school – they have become the parking patrol! On selected mornings and afternoons, so that the culprits don’t know when to expect it, the pupils themselves are donning high visibility vests and taking to the streets outside school holding up posters saying ‘Think before you park’ and ‘Please don’t pull-up here’, supported by the school’s head teacher and learning mentor. Head teacher Joanne Grantham said: “I don’t think the problem at Windmill Hill is any different to that experienced at any other school. Modern lives are so busy that sometimes common sense goes out of the window and they park or drive in a way that isn’t safe for our pupils. “However it’s an issue that’s constantly raised as a concern by parents in our parent surveys, it worries staff and clearly it
worries the pupils themselves too. They came up with the Parking Patrol idea and I’m very pleased to support them. “We’ve had a fantastic response from most parents who’ve been walking past the children praising them for taking action.” Members of the School Council for Windmill Hill Primary School, which includes two elected representatives from each of the school’s classes, have long worried about the parking outside school at the beginning and end of the day. Last year they persuaded the school’s parent-teacher association to pay for banners for the school fence, and plastic figures of school children to put outside the school, but more than six months on they’re still concerned about the issue. Emily Care, aged 10, who is the chair of the School Council said: “It’s improved a lot since we’ve been going out on parking
patrol because it’s helping children cross the road safely. “Lots of people were parking on double yellow lines, the zigzags outside of school and on the corners of the roads which meant it was very dangerous to cross. This is because it wasn’t possible to see cars coming and children had to cross the road between cars or step out into the road to get past them.” In 2017 a newspaper investigation named Sheffield drivers as the worst in Yorkshire for parking dangerously and illegally outside schools. Drivers in the city were charged for a catalogue of parking failures near schools, including parking on a pedestrian crossing, and parking on double and single yellow lines. Sheffield council revealed that 113 primary school children had been injured – 32 seriously –in crashes across the city occurring at school pick-up and drop off times over the last five years.
9,107 socially isolated older people in Sheffield - and you can help THE people of Sheffield are being called on by Contact the Elderly, the national charity working to end loneliness and social isolation amongst older people, to step forward and help the 9,107 socially isolated older people living in Sheffield. Contact the Elderly, supported by partners like People’s Postcode Lottery, provides social connections for isolated older people, helping them reconnect with their community. The charity, supported by a nationwide network of 11,000 volunteers, work with thousands
of the most socially isolated older people across the UK. Research by Age UK [1] has shown that there are 9017 isolated older people living in Rotherham. This number will only rise as the Sheffield community, along with much of the UK, ages. According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of older people in the UK will rise by over two and a half million by 2026. As the UK ages [2], increasing numbers of older people are living alone. Currently, 3.6 million older people in the
UK live alone, with 2 million of these aged 75 or older. 1.9 million older people have said they often feel ignored or invisible, and two fifths of all older people say that the television is their main source of company.
community. Supported by partners like People’s Postcode Lottery, we want to extend our service in Sheffield to reach as many of these isolated older people as possible.”
Contact the Elderly is committed to reaching as many of these socially isolated older people as possible. The charity’s Head of Service for Yorkshire, Pamela Walker, said:
Contact the Elderly needs members of the Sheffield community to step forward and help the charity reach the thousands of isolated older people living in Sheffield. Pamela Walker continued:
“We all need to help our older neighbours and ensure that all of them have the opportunity to reconnect with their
“To extend our service, we need help. We need the people of Sheffield to step forward and volunteer a bit of their time
to help us empower their isolated older neighbours to break out of the cycle of social isolation.” The power of Contact the Elderly’s service is revealed by surveying of the older people the charity works with. 95% told the charity that their events “give them something to look forward to” and 90% said they’d made new friends through the charity’s service. If you’re interested in volunteering for Contact the Elderly, visit the charity’s website www.contact-the-elderly.org. uk, or Freephone 0800 716 543.
