Caritas Westminster's outreach into parishes across the Diocese is gathering pace, with the successful introduction of the Herts Caritas hub, encompassing the deaneries of St Albans and Watford.
The Caritas Hubs are set up to address poverty and exclusion by supporting parishes in their social action outreach. After a period of familiarisation, the Herts team are working on several projects in parishes reaching out to older people, people with intellectual disabilities and people suffering from bereavement, amongst others. They are hoping to facilitate a Contact the Elderly group, which organises monthly Sunday afternoon tea parties for older people, with volunteers acting as hosts and drivers. With expertise of Caritas St Joseph's they are also hoping to develop a Saturday Club for people with intellectual disabilities. They are looking forward to the official launch on February 11th where the clergy and interested lay people will be finding out more about the support Caritas Westminster can offer to their existing social action work and how it can facilitate new projects.
A second Caritas Westminster hub is launching in East London in January 2015. This is again in response to issues such as, welfare reform, cuts to services, low pay and unemployment. Caritas Westminster's socio-economic research highlighted East London as an area disproportionally affected by poverty and that is why it is so important that there is active and engaged social action.
For more information, please see our Caritas Hubs page.
