Barrow News – Love Barrow Awards

Carer of the Year nomination – JIM BLACK

September 23, 2014 Love Barrow Admin

Here’s our first Carer of the Year nomination for the 2015 awards – JIM BLACK

Local man Jim is in his 25th year of providing respite care for children and young adults. Like a lot of nominees for Love Barrow Awards, Jim quietly gets on with it, never bragging or asking for recognition, so the nomination may come as a surprise to him, He is due to retire soon, so what better time for him to be rewarded with a nomination?

Jim began caring with his wife Lyn all those years ago by chance really, following an incident at the local hospital –

Jim and Lyn were in the local hospital with one of their children when an emergency occurred and all the doctors and nurses ran off leaving one nurse caring for a severely disabled little girl. Lyn told the nurse that she would watch the little girl if she needed to see to the emergency case. Later, when everything had calmed down, the ward sister approached Lyn and asked her if she worked with, or cared for a child with disabilities as she had a very natural way.

It was at this point that Lyn decided she wanted to help look after disabled children and her and Jim became shared carers – then more commonly known as respite carers.

Sadly, Lyn passed away in 1999 and Jim ceased caring for a short while, but then resumed his passion for caring, taking redundancy from his job to become a full-time carer.

Jim has been a full time carer ever since and his clocking up 25 years is amazing.

WELL DONE JIM ON YOUR NOMINATION

Do you know of a carer worthy of a LOVE BARROW NOMINATION? Hit that NOMINATION tab at the top of the page, it only takes a couple of minutes.

The nominations keep coming…more teacher nominations

September 22, 2014 Love Barrow Admin

I’ll start the new week off with news of more nominations. Let’s start with details of a “DOUBLE” nominaton in the TEACHER OF THE YEAR category – Claire Prosser and Liam Reid.

Claire and Liam proved to be “inspirational young teachers” at this year’s inaugural Furness Summer Camp. Working exceptionally well together to help 45 school children thoroughly enjoy 3 weeks of their summer holiday.

Claire led on the classroom activities of literacy and numeracy while Liam led the activities including canoeing, archery and roller disco. The two young budding teachers are “excellent examples of home grown talent that the Furness education system is lucky to have.”

Committed and driven, Claire and Liam have been exemplary role models for those Furness children involved in the project and together helped to achieve a very successful first go at the summer camp initiative put forward by local MP, John Woodcock.

“Liam and Claire both demonstrated professionalism and maturity beyond their years and the ability to rise to such a significant challenge. They both possessed leadership and innovation in ensuring the running of the summer camp was smooth and achieved its maximum impact.”

BREAKING NEWS – congratulations on making it to the final three in this category, see you on the red carpet at the Forum in March!

One Project – Two fantastic nominations

September 19, 2014 Love Barrow Admin

It’s a measue of the high regard in which a local community project is held when two nominations come in that involve the same scheme. A nomination made it to the final three in the COMMUNTIY FOCUSED BUSINESS category for Barrow’s WOMEN’S COMMUNTIY MATTERS, whilst a CITIZEN OF THE YEAR nomination for REBECCA RAWLINGS just missed out on being a finalist.

WCM opened in 2013 and has gone from strength to strength helping women of all ages in the Barrow area. They are focused on everything that is a woman – all she can achieve.

“WCM makes women believe in themselves”

Rebecca opened the centre and with “a fantastic team of volunteers” has helped women from all walks of life – they “give all women a voice”

“Perhaps most special about Rebecca is that she never wants thanks or recognition for her work”