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2025-09-30-accounts

Reaching More Older People

Report from the trustees for the year October 2024 to September 2025

The first Silver Salisbury directory and programme of events in celebration of International Older People’s Day was initiated in 2018 by Irene Kohler in her role as Salisbury Older People’s Champion. Eighteen months later a voluntary organisation had been created with a constitution and management committee whose members, in February 2022, became the founding trustees of the Charitable Incorporated Organisation Silver Salisbury Group.

This has been another busy year for Silver Salisbury with lots going on made possible by the work successfully undertaken by Moira, our Senior Outreach Worker, and the hands-on involvement of our trustees Alan, Alex and Jon without which we couldn’t achieve our aim to reduce loneliness and isolation amongst older members of our communities. This year our outreach work has continued to benefit from funding from Salisbury City Council and Wiltshire and Swindon Community Foundation supporting our minority group outreach until the end of 2025. Stonehenge, Southern and South West Wiltshire Area Boards supporting our geographic reach in the Wilton, Amesbury, Downton, Laverstock, Longhedge and Old Sarum areas. To achieve our objectives, our main activity is to introduce older people to activities and groups which welcome older people. Additional activities such as our intergenerational project with two brownie packs supported by Southern Area Board and our “afternoon teas” project funded by Wiltshire and Swindon Community Foundation extended our reach to more isolated older people.

Our main activity is to produce a hard copy directory of ongoing groups and activities which welcome older people together with a hard copy programme of events and activities taking place around 1[st] October which is International Older People’s Day. This has become known as our Festive Fortnight. Both are available on our website but in order to reach older people the hard copy is widely distributed throughout our area of operation. In response to feedback from older people who said that “a year is too long to wait for the next programme”, we also publish a Spring Newsletter in April with a mini programme of events during May.

Reaching out to older people

One of our major achievements is the creation and distribution in the autumn of 5,000 copies of our hard copy annual brochure of groups and activities and 3,500 copies of our Festive programme of events and taster sessions. We take feedback from older people and consult them in their groups and individually; we are rewarded by their eagerness to know when the next brochure or programme will be available. They have come to trust that events will be no or low cost, accessible, and as older people they will be made to feel welcome.

We are aware that we have a core audience who attend a range of different activities. We are also aware that we are achieving our aim as there are always a few fresh faces amongst the familiar ones. We continue to meet people who tell us that they have recently moved to the area or recently been widowed and the brochure is invaluable to get to know what is available in the area. Group leaders are eager to be included in the directory; organisations seek to be able to make their services known; older people keep asking when the next brochure will be ready.

We continue to reach about a thousand older people at our events during the autumn festival providing opportunities for engagement in new interests and meeting new people.

We continue to seek ways to reach more isolated people as we know that it is usually direct human contact and support that enables people to make that move to engage with other people, interests, or activities.

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We value the work of the organisations we work with, for their use of our publications to signpost their clients to our events and groups.

Drop in Coffee mornings

To reach more older people who do not feel able to sign up for an activity or make a commitment to attend a group on a regular basis, we set up our first drop in coffee morning with occasional speakers in the Salisbury library in November 23. The programme of speakers is promoted via hard copy flyers and on social media: numbers fluctuate in response to the speakers’ topics. The coffee mornings offer social engagement in a warm space and we are aware that some participants have been sign-posted by statutory and voluntary support workers.

Grants from LHC community Fund and South West Wiltshire Area Board enabled us to initiate coffee mornings in Old Sarum, Laverstock and Wilton.

Teas project

When at the end of 2023, we reviewed meeting our objectives to alleviate loneliness and isolation we sought to find ways to reach more isolated older people. We were very pleased to be awarded a grant from Sir George Earle Benevolent Fund (via Wiltshire Community Foundation). During 2025 the Teas project engaged with a range of statutory and voluntary organisations and its volunteers made two teas deliveries to a total of 150 isolated older people.

Our Geographic Reach

Thanks to grants from four Area Boards i.e. Salisbury, Southern Wiltshire, South West Wiltshire, and Stonehenge, we are able to co-ordinate activities, groups and events and distribute brochures, programmes, and flyers for one off events in Salisbury and also the towns and villages in the surrounding area including Amesbury, Downton, Durrington, Laverstock, Long hedge, Old Sarum, and Wilton.

Our outreach team made up of people local to the area they work in have made a substantial difference to our knowledge and understanding of the areas in which we operate.

Our Digital Reach

As well as promoting our activities through flyers, local press and newsletters, we have been increasing our digital presence. This helps us connect with those that are comfortable using IT, family carers, health and social care professionals and other organisations supporting older people. Our major print publications are in the spring and autumn, supplemented by flyers for one off events: we also use social media in between print copy to highlight events. Our Facebook posts and visits to our website increase month on month. We reached over 10,000 people through Facebook during our Autumn programme in 2024 with 348 people following our page.

Minority Community Outreach Work

An initial grant from Salisbury City Council was matched by Wiltshire Community Foundation to enable us to contract three outreach workers to reach out to older people in minority communities in Southern Wiltshire, South West Wiltshire, and Stonehenge, as well as Salisbury. These grant programmes ended at the end of 2025.

The Ukrainian Group and the Bangladeshi Elders group are now established with regular monthly meetings. The Bangladeshi group hosted a popular open evening as part of the Autumn Festival sharing their food and culture.

The LGBTQ group responded well to individual contact which we hope to be able to build on and develop in the future and, together with work with other minority groups, once we have sourced a new grant programme.

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Consolidating our work beyond the Salisbury boundary

We are aware that with Silver Salisbury starting in Salisbury and four of our five founding trustees living or working in Salisbury, it is much easier to be on the ground hearing of new groups or activities that welcome older people in Salisbury. All the locations we work in need local people who know their patch. We were pleased to appoint a Wilton based trustee and we benefited from having local outreach workers in Longhedge/Old Sarum. Stonehenge and Wilton. They were able to identify groups of, or which included older people that were already in existence, and community locations where our promotional leaflets could be distributed.

Involving volunteers

Silver Salisbury trustees all undertake their governance roles on a voluntary basis and contribute skills and experience to run the organisation as well as hands on support at our events. We have had a team of volunteers who as individuals have always come forward to bake cakes and help with one off events. Resulting from an initial grant from the Postcode Lottery, we engaged Nina as a contractor who set up systems to develop our volunteer team.

We now have a team of 14 volunteers who support us with baking cakes, staffing our festival events and supporting our coffee mornings. We plan to advertise for volunteers to take a more active role in organising and facilitating the coffee mornings.

We initiated a volunteer fair in volunteer week, June 2025 at Salisbury library which attracted interest in 10 other charities as well as our own and helped our volunteer recruitment programme. We are pleased that Wessex Community Action plan to organise the fair in 2026.

For our volunteer team to get to know each other and to be able to thank them for their contribution to our work, we took them to “Riding for the Disabled” for afternoon tea with a pony which was appreciated by all.

Intergenerational Project

We are aware from their involvement and feedback, of how much our older people enjoy the intergenerational projects we have undertaken. Building on our previous experience, with funding from Southern Area Board, we involved two local Brownie groups which used the opportunity to work towards a couple of their badges and also created a short video to evidence the benefits to both children and older people.

How do we know our service is valued and making a difference?

We would love to have the capacity to monitor more methodically regarding attendance, age range, whether people travel or stay in their local area as this would better inform our planning.

We get verbal feedback:

“when will the next brochure be ready” , “ I’ve just retired here and am new to the area “, “my husband died last year “, “the brochure has helped me to get to know the area”, “I have got to

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know new people in the group I’ve joined”, “ I went to one of your musical afternoons and got chatting to May who had also come alone; we now regularly go to activities together”.

As Chair of the Board of Trustees I wish to thank our trustees, contractors and volunteers for all they contribute to Silver Salisbury, our several funders and donors, and also all the organisations which contribute to the directory and festival programme and all who help to distribute and publicise its contents.

Irene Kohler

Chair

Thank you to our funders:

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Trustees appointed at the date of registration with the Charity Commission as CIO on 20[th] February 2022

Alex Charleson,

Jonathan Gapper,

Irene Kohler (Chair),

Alan Mitchell (Treasurer),

Anne Trevett (stood down 5[th] June 2024)

Subsequent trustee appointments

Gary Nunn appointed 25[th] February 2025:

Contractors providing outreach work

Lorraine Johnson – Amesbury and villages in Stonehenge Area Board: stood down as contractor 30[th] September 2025 and continues in a voluntary capacity.

Moira Packer – Senior outreach worker and lead on producing newsletters and annual brochure

Monawara Ali – Bangladeshi community: stood down as contractor 30[th] September 2025 and continues in a voluntary capacity.

Nina Cope – Laverstock, Longhedge, Old Sarum outreach and Volunteer Co-ordination

Olena – Ukrainian community: resigned as a contractor 31[st] January 2025

Alla Aleksiuk – appointed 1[st] February 2025 to support our Ukrainian community group in a voluntary capacity

Ron Bell – Wilton and surrounding area completed a fixed term contract from 1[st] December 2024 to 31[st] August 2025

Rook Tiller-Collins – LGBTQ community resigned 31[st] March 2025

Volunteers: we are incredibly grateful to our ad hoc volunteers who support our events by baking cakes, meeting and greeting, and serving refreshments

Brochure design: Kirstie Pugh

Printers: Baskerville Press. Multitude of Voy ~~ic~~ es

Examination of the accounts: Grevett &Co

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