Suffolk ACRE has been building a network of sustainable, independent Good Neighbour Schemes across the county under the Suffolk ACRE umbrella. For each scheme we help raise a team of volunteers who are willing to help others in their community in a number of ways. These include giving lifts to hospitals or doctors’ surgeries, or even just for a social visit for someone who is normally housebound. Volunteers also collect pensions and prescriptions, help with filling forms, befriending the lonely, the elderly and the bereaved, minor household repairs such as checking smoke alarms and replacing batteries if needed, help with shopping, help with pets and suchlike. Volunteers can choose in which way or ways they would like to help so they don’t feel over-burdened. The only service for which there is a charge is giving lifts, for which the driver is compensated directly by the client at 35 pence a mile as compensation for fuel and running costs.

Each scheme centres on a mobile phone that is held on a rota basis by members of the core group of volunteers, usually for a week or two at a time. The number of the phone is publicised throughout the parish and every resident has the right to make use of the scheme regardless of age or state of health.

Early on in the project Gavin Hodge developed a Good Neighbour Scheme Information and Infrastructure Pack, effectively a toolkit that is available to any village or community considering launching a scheme. Gavin can also give a brief presentation to parish councils or groups of interested residents about how the scheme works and who are the principal beneficiaries. He sits in at meetings of steering groups as an advisor and maintains close contact with all schemes after launch. Regular network forums are held at Suffolk ACRE in which two members of each scheme are invited to come to Suffolk ACRE HQ to share good practice with the other schemes and talk through any problems that have arisen.

The Good Neighbour Scheme is continuing to expand across the county with 17 individual Good Neighbour Schemes up and running in Suffolk. The first to launch was at Stradbroke, and the other schemes are at Aldringham-cum-Thorpe, Barrow, Bildeston, Botesdale & Rickinghall, Cookley and Walpole, Holbrook, Honington & Sapiston, Earl Stonham, Lakenheath, Layham, Rattlesden, Shotley & Erwarton, Stowupland, Tattingstone, Whitton in Ipswich and Wickham Market. We have helped raise more than 400 volunteers for these schemes which are making good neighbourly services available to thousands of Suffolk people.

A new development has been the first urban pilot of the Good Neighbour Scheme which was launched at Whitton in Ipswich by the Mayor of Ipswich, Inga Lockington, in September 2007. This scheme was developed by working closely with members of Ipswich Community Church. Suffolk ACRE hopes to develop more urban examples of the Good Neighbour Scheme and is working towards this aim at Beccles, Lowestoft and in Ipswich.