Brentwood Care Centre Give Back to their Local Community

Giving Back and Passing It Forward are at the heart of the sentiment behind Brentwood Care Centre’s most recent collaboration with the their local Trussell Trust Food Bank.

The Residential Dementia and Nursing home prides itself on being part of the Brentwood community and is extremely proud of the strong links it has with local businesses and charities.

Always looking for ways of ‘giving back’ or supporting the local community, the care home based in Larchwood Gardens, Pilgrims Hatch, has been involved in a number of initiatives from the annual Easter Egg challenge to being one of the sponsors of Lighting Up Brentwood, to working alongside Brentwood Council to create Virtual Family Fun Days to help keep children entertained during what would have been their summer holidays. Another recent partnership is with tutoring programme Guided Learning: a 6-week pen pal scheme between our residents and the children throughout the Summer Holidays.

Having seen the impact on families and the increased use of food banks in recent months, the residents and staff wanted to help their local community who had been so supportive to them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Each month, the Brentwood Food Bank uploads on their website a wish list of items they are running low on and so the staff and the management team at Brentwood Care Centre set about fulfilling that wish list. Over the last few weeks, they have worked incredibly hard to raise awareness and collect as many donations as possible. The final amount of food and household goods collected was boosted even further with a generous donation from RCH Care Homes

On 17^th July, the home welcomed Bonnie and Jerry Minihane from the Food Bank to collect all of the wonderful donations. Bonnie and Jerry, who oversee the warehouse, thanked the staff for their hard work and explained the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had had on the service, “We have seen a 50 – 70% weekly rise in requests for food parcels in this current climate due to people being furloughed or losing their jobs which is why it is so important that we all work together in this current time that we all find ourselves in”.

Brentwood Care Centre’s Manager Torie Pollard shared the passion behind the project, “RCH and the employees at Brentwood Care Centre have received lots of messages of support from the community as well as wonderful donations to its staff and residents, and we have appreciated the uplifting waves and smiles from those passing by the home. In these hard and challenging times, we wanted to do something for our community, to pass forward help to all those that need support in different ways. The food bank is providing vital resources to the vulnerable people in our community and we recognise the important service they are providing. I am extremely proud of the Brentwood Care Centre team in providing donations and to RCH for supporting us to do this.”

If you are local and would like to find out more about how you can also Pass it Forward by helping or donating, please go to Brentwood Food Bank