July update

House update
Things have moved along very rapidly since my last report. Arcon Housing Association have agreed to buy the house we identified in Withington. They have put an offer in to purchase and this has been accepted. I have prepared a project proposal that sets out how we would hope to finance the rent and running costs of a house for 5 people with learning disabilities and 3 live-in assistants. It is all very exciting but there are a few issues we still need to address.

Although they have been encouraging and supportive, the Local Authority cannot guarantee that they will fill all five places in the house. As I have said before there will always be a degree of tension between the people who want to live in a L’Arche community and those people the Local Authority will agree to fund. The decision the committee need to come to is whether we are prepared to take on a long-term lease with Arcon that would commit us to paying rent on the house whether we fill all the places or not. In practice the worst case scenario for L’Arche is that we have to meet a whole year’s costs with no one at all living in the house. This would probably amount to about £40k.

We also need to establish how much Housing Benefit we are likely to receive for each person who moves in.

We need to agree how much we can afford to pay live-out assistants and live-in's who will have their right to live in the house tied to their occupation in L’Arche so that the day their employment ceases they would lose the right to live in the house.

Feel free to send me you your points of view on these issues.


Other services
In addition to offering an accommodation service we also plan to provide outreach support which would mean supporting people who either live in their families or on their own. This support could be used to help people with very practical issues to do with managing their own homes (paying the bills etc) or it could be geared towards work and leisure activities. People might be supported to join in already established L’Arche community activities or it could mean developing new activities for people to get involved in. For example if we support a few people who want to join a choir then maybe we get some singing lessons, book a hall and start a choir. Equally if some people want to do outdoor gardening activities then maybe we will look to get an allotment and start a garden project.

We have also suggested that once we are established with our first home we will consider how we might support friends of the community to become Adult Placement carers as a new way of living as members of a L’Arche community.

Prayer evenings
Are going well at Chorlton Central Church. The most recent was held on July 6th and was led by Julie R and Kevin where we prepared our banner for the National Gathering. People seemed to enjoy this. We have now agreed to continue prayer evenings throughout the summer so they will continue to be held on the first Wednesday of the month. The next being August 3rd and then September 7th. Stewart has offered to lead August’s prayers but we need someone for September. Perhaps we could have a volunteer to help Stewart in August and so get some ideas for leading in September.

Boogie Nights
The next Boogie Night is on Friday 23rd September. Please make sure this date is in your diaries. We have had quite a few new faces at recent gatherings and it is always helpful to have regular faces to welcome new people and talk about our plans for L’Arche. Unfortunately, this is the same weekend as the quiz night but that shouldn’t be a problem!

Quiz Night
Caroline Slevin who volunteers in the office every Tuesday has organised a fund raising Quiz Night on Saturday September 24th to be held at St Catherine’s Community Centre on School Lane at 7.30pm. Tickets are £5 each and available from the office. Please let me or Julia know if you want tickets. There are only 150 places so we’re only going to hand over tickets on production of the cash so hurry, hurry, hurry!

National Gathering “Celebrating our Belonging”
A storming success! Manchester is on the map! Lots of people commented on the wonderful liturgies and the fabulous party on Saturday night. Elvis was a hit (as was Heather’s decoration of the room.)

There was particular praise for the organisation of the registration and the welcoming process which was largely down to our volunteer helpers here in Manchester. So thanks and well done to everyone who helped out.

Ning!
L’Arche UK has launched its own internal social network called Ning. As members of L’Arche Manchester we can all join the network to do so we each need to read and accept the terms of the related policy which deals with issues of confidentiality etc. I will send around a link to the site and a copy of the policy this week to everyone with an email address.