Caring for one another

The Abhayaratna Trust Local Care Network Training

On Thu, 20 February, 2020 - 16:19
Sadayasihi's picture
Sadayasihi

The Abhayaratna Trust is embarking on a new project called the Local Care Network (LCN) project! The idea behind this is to help develop and embed a more explicit and organised culture of care and support in the Order for Order members who need it, including accessing financial assistance and other services (for more details, visit their website and watch a short video about it).

The project is a collaborative effort involving external agencies including Age UK, who have given The Abhayaratna Trust access to a tool (called Compass), developed by Age UK in partnership with the NHS, that facilitates a holistic assessment of a person and produces a care/support plan for them. 

The LCN will be piloted, in the first instance, in two UK Centres: Manchester and Sheffield, with more Centres to join later in the year.  Please contact Mahasraddha (mahasraddha [at] abhayratnatrust.org.uk) if you want to find out more about how your Centre can participate in the LCN pilot. 

On the 12th February, representatives from the Manchester and Sheffield Buddhist Centres, as well as Mahasraddha and Taradakini from The Abhayaratna Trust Team, attended a day’s Compass training run by Age UK Kendal in The Lake District, UK

Following the excellent and comprehensive training day, they are currently working out how to make use of the impressive Compass tool, both in The Abhayaratna Trust team and in LCNs to begin rolling out the pilot project in the Manchester and Sheffield Order Sanghas.  

Upeksaraja, who attended the day on behalf of The Sheffield Buddhist Centre, said the following: 

Our visit to Age UK South Lakeland to view their very comprehensive and well thought out ‘Compass’ software programme was fascinating. It left me wondering why this sort of thing hasn’t been done before as it facilitates co-ordination between services for a much more effective and efficient care system.

We still need to assess how and where it could be helpful to Abhayaratna Trust, but at the very least we have some excellent ideas for further development.
 

It was very enjoyable meeting other Abhayaratna Trust colleagues, and our presenters were excellent. We also discovered a great vegetarian cafe round the corner!

Read more about Local Care Networks

Listen to a podcast about the Abhayaratna Trust

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Responses

viryaja's picture

Sadhu to you all!  And many many thanks for your efforts in this.

Much metta

Viryaja

bodhaniya's picture

Thanks for posting this, which sounds like a well thought out and important initiative.