Last year the EYE Project (Eco, Young & Engaged) which I founded in 2008 was honoured to be given a Green Heart Hero Award at a national awards ceremony held at the House of Commons. This year we have gone one better and I am delighted to report that the Eye Project took the Gold prize at the ‘Connecting People in the Countryside’ category in the environmental awards organised by the Sussex branch of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.
We were recognised for our active approach to education for 5-16-year olds in West Sussex with Eco awareness and positive action to preserve and care for our environment. EYE has come a long way since our first event when over 200 eager eco-warriors first crammed into the Worthing Town Hall council chamber and drew up a 28 point Environmental charter and I am grateful to all the schools and staff who have made it possible, especially Worthing High School which has hosted our project coordinator. Incidentally we are looking for a new part-time project coordinator to take over from Kate who leaves on an award winning high, so if anyone is interested please let me know.
Apart from voting against the Government this week in the Immigration Bill on the issue of a replacement for the Dublin 3 scheme which has successfully reunited asylum seeking children with family members in the UK, I also took up the issue of care homes in the Commons with the Health Secretary. Having spoken to several care managers recently and visited several homes, from the outside, the common theme is that staff are pretty ‘knackered.’ I got away with using that term in the Commons so apparently it does qualify as Parliamentary language!
Staff are under huge pressure working extra shifts to cover colleagues who are quarantining or have childcare and other problems caused by the pandemic. They are also having to deal with GP appointments over phone and video because some GPs are not making house calls whilst also having to deal with angry relatives not able to see frail loved ones face to face. Whilst we have rightly recognised the pressures on NHS staff I asked what more we can do to make life easier for our care home staff and perhaps permit some of the army of volunteers who have registered to help to take on some of the workload.
I am delighted to report that the Invicta catch-up lessons in English and Maths which were made available to Sussex children over the Summer are back for half-term. They are offering free and heavily subsidised live, interactive, Maths, and English lessons every day across all five key stages from Monday, 26th until Friday, 30th October. For more details see my Facebook page.