Written by Paulette Suban – Support Manager at Cape Community Day Centre, Smethwick

At Cape Community Day Centre we provide services for elderly people, predominantly with an Afro-Caribbean background. We currently have around 35 clients who visit the centre to enjoy brunch and take part in various activities.

This can be anything from craft sessions, exercise classes, health and wellbeing sessions and games – chess and dominoes are particular favourites! We also link up with other local community groups to offer social activities.

Our clients range from 75 to 95-years old. As you can imagine, not everyone is as active as they used to be, so we also offer a visiting service for those who are housebound. This means that even those who can’t come to us have regular visits from a friendly face.

The centre is run by a small team of volunteers and our passion is to make sure clients enjoy their golden years. But with rising overheads and a diminishing amount of funding available to us, it’s very difficult to survive. And as demand for the centre rises, it will only get worse.

This is why amazing grants such as the £1,999 we received from the Heart of England Community Foundation are so important.

We used part of our grant to fund a day trip to Llandudno this summer. Some of the seniors had never even been to a beach before, so there were a few teary eyes as they stood on the sand for the very first time! We had beautiful weather and the day was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone.

We will be using the rest of the money to fund general running costs at the centre, something that is always increasing. The price of our exercise class has recently risen from £15 to £30 – it’s really important for our clients to keep active and this is not a service we would want to lose, so the grant will help pay for this.

So many of our clients rely on the centre to socialise and stay connected in the community, and without support from the likes of the Heart of England Community Foundation we wouldn’t be able to carry on.