In the last issue of this magazine, we told you we were planning to restart our service from 5th July. I am pleased to say we achieved that. There have been some teething problems – definitely much easier to stop than to restart. Hopefully, all the clients have managed to contact us and receive the services they needed.
We managed to get letters to all the clients registered with us at the start of the pandemic. Sadly, we have lost a few. The losses have been more than made up for by new clients registering. Clearly, there is a continuing need for our services.
July was a quiet month; August has seen a gradual increase in requests.
The response to my request for more volunteers has been excellent from the Shepperton community. We have now managed to replace most of the gaps we had for manning the telephone. The response for drivers has not been so good. We have two new ones but really need more. We try to have a duty driver for each weekday, plus some back up drivers for those times when two jobs come through at the same time. At the moment we do not have enough drivers to cover each weekday, which means some of us are booking more than one day a month. That’s fine in the short term but not so good if people have holidays or are unwell themselves. You need a four door car, in reasonable condition, a clean driving license and undergo a DBS check. Normally, if we are not driving around Shepperton, the furthest we are asked to go is Ashford or St Peters Hospitals. Occasionally we are asked to go to Woking or Guildford. However, if a driver is not comfortable with that, they say so and we allocate the job elsewhere. If you feel you could be available for one day a month, or even occasionally, please contact me on cliffshears@outlook.com.
Cliff Shears, Chairman