Community Integrated Care Tour Blackburn with One Voice!

Community Integrated Care spent a day with One Voice in Blackburn, visiting and consulting with key local South Asian organisations, as part of our community engagement efforts for EachStep Blackburn.

EachStep Blackburn is a pioneering £5m dementia care service that will provide specialist respite, residential, nursing and end of life care. It is set to open in May 2016.

Our charity has partnered with One Voice, who are a leading community development charity that promotes greater engagement and social cohesion amongst the most deprived and disadvantaged people of Blackburn. One Voice have strong links with the local South Asian community, and are supporting us to ensure that our service is inclusive of the entire local community.

The day began with a meeting with One Voice Director, Ehsan Raja, and their Baiter Sehat (Better Health) Lead, Zaheer Mahmud. Community Integrated Care representatives included Phil Benson, the new Manager of EachStep Blackburn; Tina Pye, HR Business Partner for North West England, and John Hughes, Head of Communications and Marketing for the charity.

This followed with a visit to Tauheedul Islamic Girl’s School where our team were warmly met by the talented Sixth Form students, who took part in a question and answer session on dementia care.  

“The feedback from students was very positive and they were highly impressed with the developments in Blackburn.  They would also like to get more involved” said Deeba Ahmed, Teacher of BTEC Health and Social Care, who arranged the visit with One Voice.

The day continued at key organisations in Blackburn including Bangor Street Community Centre, Khadijah Social Group, Jamia Ghosia Mosque on Chester Street.

It concluded with a meeting in Bukhara Restaurant to discuss Indian food provision for EachStep residents. Bukhara Restaurant has kindly pledged their support for the service and one of their award-winning chefs will be consulting on the home’s menu and food preparation.

Ehsan Raja of One Voice said, “This is the first step in our engagement between Community Integrated Care and our communities. What was really evident in these day-long meetings was the passion and enthusiasm shown by both the groups we visited and Community Integrated Care.”

John Hughes, Head of Communications and Marketing at Community Integrated Care, says: “One Voice are key partners of ours in our plans for EachStep Blackburn. We will be working with them to ensure that our support is inclusive and culturally appropriate, as well as to involve the talents and skills of local people.”

He continues, “In this visit, we were thrilled to meet so many members of the local community – discussing key things like job opportunities, care and support, and our food provision. We left the session full of ideas and inspired by the passion of the people we met. On behalf of our charity, I would like to thank One Voice and their partner organisations for their consideration and hospitality.”