PIPPA Post Online

The PIPPA Post is our regular newsletter which comes out three times a year. Besides news and information relating to disability, it also contains puzzles, quizzes, gadgets, recipes, jokes, and other things we've enjoyed. If you'd like to receive it, please let us know your name and either home or e-mail address (e-mail is preferred, if possible). Scroll down for more news!

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Christmas P.I.P.P.A. Post Down load

Summer 2011 Issue of Pippa_Post out!

Download Summer 2011 PIPPA Post here

Older editions of Pippa_Post you can download:

(More to come . . .)

A note on links

A link is where you can download a document or go to another web page just by clicking on a word of a different colour to the main text. To download the above or go to any links, move your mouse over the light blue font and you will see it change colour or suddenly become underlined - this means it's a link. Then click!

If you would like to receive this newsletter, please e-mail us at pippapembs@btconnect.com and tell us your name and e-mail or address (e-mail is preferred) and we will add you to our list of recipients.

July 2011: Strawberry Tea on 9th July

Please pop along to our Strawberry Tea at the Picton Centre, Freemans Way, Haverfordwest, from 2-4.30pm.

Have some strawberries, scones and a cup of tea or coffee, pick up some bits of information and free copies of "A Guide to Pembrokeshire for People with Disabilities" and have a look at the equipment we're selling and hiring.

Also have a chat with us about our work and how we might be able to help you or anyone you know!

£5 per head, no booking required, all proceeds to PIPPA.

April 2011: Chunky Chips & Chunky Handles

P.I.P.P.A. encourages all cafes, bars, restaurants, B&Bs, etc, to purchase just a few sets of cutlery with chunky handles. And if you do, we'll list your establishment in our Information area, just as we list accessible beaches and taxis.

Why?

Because many people with dexterity problems (whose hands don't move or grip easily) find it difficult to dine in establishments whose cutlery is very slim - because thin knives and forks are very hard to hold. This means that even though parking, toilets and so many better-publicised issues have been dealt with, one's food can go cold while one struggles.

"We don't mean that you provide cutlery with those unhygienic foam handles, just with thicker, more cylindrical handles that offer better grip," explains Nikki, the Information Manager. "All we would ask is that you keep 2 or 3 sets of cutlery with chunky handles and perhaps note on your menus that sets are available on request. You can ask your equipment suppliers if they carry such stock or even contact your local mobility shops, chemists and pharmacists."

She has produced a leaflet about our mini-campaign - you can download it here (a JPEG file, 1/3 of an A4 page). Do please give one to your local eating establishments; you can drop by P.I.P.P.A.'s office or our stand at public events to pick up some paper copies.

April 2011: P.I.P.P.A. has a web forum!

Nikki had the idea that it would be wonderful to get the whole county talking about what disabled people need in Pembrokeshire, what should change, what we want to know, where we can find this and that equipment or information, things we can all do.

So we have set up a discussion forum (click to take a look!).

To join in any discussions, all you need to do is click "register" and choose yourself a username and password. (At the moment you'll have to wait for one of us to approve you to keep the spammers out, but you shouldn't have to wait too long.) We hope that anyone with, or interested in, any disability will join - we also ask any related charity to join in too, so we can all share lots of information. We will be looking after the forum to ensure it is a pleasant and useful place for people to be.

We know it is not everyone's cup of tea but everybody on the Internet was a beginner once, so please have a go. If you are totally new to such things there are lots of instructions and we will be happy to help you with it!

November 2010: Christmas Song & Supper - cancelled

Very sadly we have been forced to cancel this event. However, we hope to run a similar one in the spring or towards next Christmas so we're leaving the details up - have a read and let us know if this sounds good, or if you have more ideas for such an event!

Please come along to an evening of supper, raffle and Christmas carols with the Friends in Harmony Choir on Tuesday November 30th, 7 for 7:30 p.m. at the Picton Centre, Freemans Way, Haverfordwest.

Menu choices will be vegetable goulash and rice or spaghetti bolognese; bring your own wine. There will also be gateau, coffee and mince pies.

Nikki, our Information Manager, is in the Friends in Harmony Choir and can tell us that they do a great variety of songs!

Tickets are £7.50 each; all profits go to P.I.P.P.A. Please pop into our office to buy a ticket, or call 01437 760 665 to book one. Let us know which of the main courses you'd like to eat.

Download our poster here. We hope to see you there!

October 2010: Astronomy lecture series in aid of PIPPA

An astronomy lecture series has been launched by Alice Sheppard of PIPPA and Tony Malone of the Pembrokeshire Tea Company. It's in aid of local charities, and all profits will go to PIPPA between now and Christmas.

It started on Thursday 30th September on the subject of Galaxy Zoo, an online astronomy project which anyone can participate in and which Alice has been helping with for over 3 years. Future topics will include Cassini, the probe orbiting Saturn; telescope history and design; black holes; new cosmological theories such as dark matter and non-standard cosmology; and historical topics such as artists' representation of space and how spectra (patterns of light from stars) were discovered. They'll be aimed at beginners, so you don't need to study if you want to attend!

They will take place on alternate Thursday nights at 7.30 p.m. at Nant-y-Coy Mill, on the A40 between Haverfordwest and Treffgarne. If the weather is clear, the talks will be followed by looking through Tony's telescopes.

The gallery where the lectures are held does not yet have disabled access, but the Pembrokeshire Tea Company are doing their best to get planning permission. Perhaps this lecture series will help the cause, because Tony and the other staff are extremely keen for Nant-y-Coy Mill to be accessible to everybody.

Here's the flyer about the lectures with the exact dates, and here is how to get to Nant-y-Coy Mill. We hope to see you there!

Image credit: "Iguaçu Starry Night" by Babak Tafreshi. From the Astronomy Picture of the Day website (always worth a browse . . .).

August 2010: Thank you Pembrokeshire Mobility Centre!

Pembrokeshire Care and Mobility has just become Pembrokeshire Care - the mobility people have had to close. On their last day, Friday 27th August, they invited us to come and see if we'd like to take any equipment they hadn't been able to sell.

Alice travelled up at 5pm, to give everything a chance to sell off, and Stephanie showed her what remained. It took two car journeys to get it all to the PIPPA office! We now have a new wheelchair, walking frame, bath lift, raised toilet seats, and other handy bits and bobs such as ferrules (the rubber "feet" for walking sticks) . . .

And now we have some new stock for our inventory, including:

Perching chairs
Transfer boards and banana boards (for sliding from one seat to another)
Bath chairs
Trolley walker with 2 trays
Transfer turntables
Wheelchair lap tray
Crutch bags to put on scooters

A massive thank you to Stephanie and all the rest of the staff at Pembrokeshire Mobility for this wonderful generosity. We're bound to find lots of use for all of them!

Here is just some of our new stock out in the sun! Also admired by Gareth:

August 2010: PIPPA office burgled

Recently the PIPPA office was burgled. We arrived one morning to find our front door kicked in. The office was OK and the computers hadn't been touched - but we lost our safe; our paying-in book; our donation boxes, hire fees and deposits; all our stamps; several of our scooter keys; and guess what - Valerie's biscuit tin!

Sadly, this means that if you handed us a cash deposit, we won't be able to give it straight back to you, but we will post you a cheque.

We've got a new, much tougher front door and our cupboard (which was broken so the safe could be removed) has been mended.

If our burglers are reading this, please know that you have not only stolen from a small local charity (a low act in itself), but that you have put back our plans to renew our wheelchairs for some considerable time.

If you have any information please contact the police by dialling 101.

August 2010 Pembrokeshire County Show

We set up our tent at the County Show between Entrances B and C, between the food court and the disabled entrance. Nikki, David, Margaret, Gareth, Paul and Alice all took turns manning our tent, and were very excited to set up our new banners:

Alice and Paul, with the new banners, leaflets and equipment on display

Alice and Gareth inside our tent. Sadly it got a bit too wet and windy for the banners . . .

But we had lots of information in the tent, too, for people to browse; and we also had some cards to sell, which our volunteer Paul has been making.

Tuesday and Thursday gave us the usual Pembrokeshire weather so we didn't get much custom. Wednesday, however, was beautiful and we hired out 8 wheelchairs and sold a walking frame. (There are more of those and other items for sale in the marketplace if you're interested!)

Lots of people wanted to hire a scooter, but sadly we can't bring these or electric wheelchairs to the County Show any more. The ground there is rough and often wet and muddy, which invariably results in the scooters actually needing our engineer to repair them rather than a simple cleaning job.

The Church of Wales, whose tent was next to ours, were as kind as ever in keeping us supplied with tea and coffee. This was especially appreciated on Thursday, when the rain was so torrential that when Nikki went off to get a pasty, she called over her shoulder, "If I'm not back in half an hour, send a rowing boat!!"

Donations

We would like to thank all those recipients of the latest edition of the P.I.P.P.A. Post for their kind donations, we appreciate your kind thoughts very much.

County Show News - Electric Scooter Hire

We are sorry to announce that we will not be hiring out electric scooters this year. The weather during the last 2 years of the County Show has been appalling and has resulted in a lot of damage to our scooter fleet. The costs of having a stand at the show and the repair bills have risen so much in the last few years that it cannot be sustained or justified. We have also had problems charging the batteries at the end of each day.

We will have manual and self propelled wheelchairs and wheeled walkers for hire at the Show ground for hire.

Blue Badge News

NB: Sorry, PIPPA can no longer supply you with blue badges - the Council will now do this. Please see here and scroll down to "Blue Badge Scheme" for more details.

Applicants for Blue Badges - the scheme which provides a range of parking concessions for people with severe mobility problems are to be asked for more details in a bid to combat fraud.

In line with other local authorities in Wales, Pembrokeshire County Council will require the extra information when a new application or a renewal application is made for a Blue Badge. In addition to individual details already requested, the following details will also be required from applicants

1. A National Insurance Number - this can be found on all Department of Work and Pensions correspondence. The Inland Revenue will also be able to provide this information. For those in employment, the employer will be able to supply the number.

2. A main vehicle registration number. Customers will be asked to provide the registration of the vehicle that is their main source of transport.

Explained Councilor Ken Rowlands, Cabinet Member for Environmental and Regulatory Services: "We have to ask these questions because the Wales Audit Office and The National Fraud Initiative have powers to demand information from public bodies - such as ourselves - to data match for the purpose of preventing and detecting fraud."

"We would also like to remind users that their Blue Badges are kept up to date with a recent photograph, are otherwise valid and for their sole use only."

"The Council has already started to apply more stringent checks on the use of Blue Badges across the County in order to prevent fraudulent use."

For more information on the National Fraud Initiative and the details the Auditor General requires, log on to the Wales Audit Office web site www.wao.gov.uk or contact Wales Audit Office on 029 2032 0616.

Volunteer News

We are delighted that Gareth Bevans has been awarded 2 Highly Commended places in the Pembrokeshire Volunteer of the Year Awards organised by PAVS and Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA). Gareth was runner-up in the under 25 years category and a runner-up in the Mary Sigely award. We nominated Gareth for these awards as over the past year he has worked very hard and has progressed both professionally and personally. Well done Gareth, we are all very proud of you!

If you have any time to spare and would like to volunteer call us on 01437 760665. We can offer you a warm welcome, no pay!, but there is always plenty of tea, coffee, biscuits and fun on offer!

Beryl, Gareth, and Margaret - three of our volunteers