1. Attendance

• Bexhill Dementia Action Allianceh
• Hastings and Rother Rainbow Alliance
• Care for the Carers
• Little Gate Farm
• Rother Seniors Forum
• Rother District Council
• Rother Voluntary Action
• Homecall
• Cllr Chris Madeley
• Cllr Lynn Langland
• Alan Care

2. Apologies

DISC Dementia Support, Sussex Police, Dance-Ability & Maria/James from Rother District Council.

3. Claire Prime from Homecall

Showed the group a PowerPoint presentation about how Homecall that was set up as a registered charity in 1985. What is the service about, it is a home visiting scheme for people who are registered blind or partially sighted that live in Bexhill. The scheme is provided by volunteers who are trained to support people with sight impairments to live independently in their homes. These are some tasks that they help support people with:

• Visiting Clients in their homes
• Reading and writing correspondence, newsletters and books
• Attending appointments and occasional shopping trips
• Day to day financial administration
• Support to attend clubs, societies and social events
• Access to other services, e.g. the local Blind Society, Social Services or Age Concern
• Day to day tasks, e.g. threading a needle or finding lost items.

If you would like anymore information, please contact Claire on claire.homecall@gmail.com or 01424 845812.

4. David from Rother District Council – demo on Chatbot (Aimee)

Rother will be launching a new Chatbot facility called ‘Aimee’ at the start of December 2022 in time for the Christmas break.

A Chatbot enables a resident to ask a question about council services and receive an automated response giving them the information they need.

The solution will be available to support residents 24/7 and help people to more easily find the information they are after.

Aimee (Artificial Intelligence mee) started out life as an Excel spreadsheet proof-of-concept called DES (Digital Expert System) before being developed on a Microsoft platform and uploaded to our website.

We looked at purchasing an off-the-shelf solution, but the strong performance of our developed prototype made a commercial solution unviable.

Aimee is fully integrated with the Recite Me accessibility software so can be translated into over 130 languages with half of these providing a verbal response.

The colour schemes will also match any accessibility settings that the resident has selected.

There are plans to introduce speech recognition in the early part of 2023.

Future development will include integration with back-office systems such as the Waste Management software so answers can be tailored to the individual’s property and reporting can be done with a single click without redirecting the resident to another part of the website.

We also have the technology to transfer an automated chat to a live member of staff, but this is dependent on resourcing being available for the transfer.  We are looking at integration with Whatsapp to deliver the human question and response solution.

Further down the line we plan to integrate the system with Smart devices such as Alexa which will enable a resident to interact with the council from their armchair without the need for a computer, tablet or smartphone.

5. Organisations Update

Rother Senior Forum

The event in July at Emmanuel Centre Battle, we had over 30 people attend with live music and afternoon tea.  We are looking different venues for trips to celebrate Older People’s Day 2023 .Also looking at arranging a theatre trip in July 2023. 

Hastings & Rother Rainbow Alliance

Hastings and Rother Rainbow Alliance is continuing to promote awareness of issues regarding LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer, plus) communities and continues to support a wide range of social groups to reduce isolation amongst its members. Some, like the women’s’ afternoon tea group at the Front Room café in Bexhill, the bi group and the trans group, are well attended but in others attendance has dropped off. This could be because people are more reluctant to go out in post-covid times. Those present offered suggestions on advertising and increasing attendance.

Little Gate Farm

Discussion took place about these five themes:

1. Pilot supported internship with Glyne Gap School. 
2. New Community Fund Raiser Tracey Anne Cook
3. How to bring in business in a recession
4. How to get into larger organisations
5. Christmas Fayre 

Care for the Carers

Think Carers training, is taking place on Friday 25^th November 10.30am until 1pm at the Town Hall, this is to celebrate Carers day which is on 26^th November.

Bexhill Dementia Action Alliance

Dementia Awareness session took place on 17^th October and we had 15 people sign up, which was brilliant.We are having a Dementia Awareness event on 18^th November in the morning followed by the monthly Companionship Café, which are taking place at St Augustine’s Church Hall on Cooden Drive, Bexhill.

Singing Down Memory Lane is going to be supported by Homeinstead in the New Year. The venue & day with be changing to Friday morning at St Augustine’s Church Hall on Cooden Drive, Bexhill.

6. Hastings and Rother Ageing well network meeting

The launch of this network meeting was on Thursday 13th October in the morning at Hastings Central Hall. The network is about getting community and voluntary groups that provide Older people’s services, to look how we can make Hastings and Rother Age friendly community. This is being co-ordinated by Hastings and Rother Voluntary Action and by Rother District Council. The next meeting took place on 14^th November at the Town Hall in Bexhill in the Council Chamber, that was very successful.

8. Dates of future meetings for 2023 at the Town Hall

Committee room 2pm-4pm

• Wednesday 15^th March
• Wednesday 19^th July
• Wednesday 15^th November