Age Scotland awards for two Sutherland groups
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Two North Sutherland organisations are amongst the winners at Age Scotland’s Annual Awards ceremony at Edinburgh’s City Chambers.
North Coast Connection, a registered charity formed in Sutherland in 2011, and Transport for Tongue, a local community transport initiative, received the Patrick Brooks award for Partnership Working, which was presented by the capital’s Depute Lord Provost, Elaine Aitken.
North Coast Connection runs a day care centre in Tongue, which offers a lunch club three days a week for local older people, and Transport for Tongue helps those with no transport to access important local services and amenities such as shops, the bank, the health centre, the lunch club and to visit friends.
When Highland Council decided to withdraw its transport service from the area, the two groups formed a partnership which resulted in an affordable, accessible and sustainable transport service to the Kyle Centre, where the lunch club is situated, for all those who wished to attend it.
The club is usually full every day it is open and now most clients use Transport for Tongue, which in September alone benefited from 197 volunteer hours and covered 882 miles to take clients to the centre, to get there.
Receiving the award at the Age Scotland AGM in Edinburgh recently, Sarah Beveridge, manager of the Kyle Centre, said: “Particularly in rural areas such as ours, it is important that older people have access to services and amenities and do not become isolated and, as a result, depressed and lonely. Our partnership has gone some way to ensuring that this remains the case and we are grateful to Age Scotland for the recognition.”
Age Scotland Chair, James Wright, said: “This is a wonderful example of the results that can be achieved through partnership working. Many local older people are now benefiting from the fact that the two organisations decided to co-operate and that’s one of the reasons why we acknowledged their achievement and adjudged them worthy recipients of the Patrick Brooks award.”
