Tell us about your story and the impact you have made on the Jersey community:
Maison Allo is a house that offers a warm welcome and essential respite to young people with a learning disability and complex needs. Having regular respite means these young people can have a break from home and enjoy an overnight stay with professional support workers. It might be an evening spent gaming, doing crafts or enjoying a pizza and film night (as well as kitchen discos). Respite is about enjoying yourself and gently learning new skills in a supported environment.
Having respite means that the amazing parent-carers can enjoy a night off - this might be to focus on another sibling, catch up on rest or see family and friends. We know how vital this is to carers wellbeing.
What activities does your organisation undertake that uses electricity and what is your annual consumption?
Masion Allo house is owned by Jersey Mencap and solely used for the purpose of providing respite. We are currently working on a project to re-design the garden with the help of those that use the house to ensure the outdoor space reflects the objectives and ethos of the Respite project.
The house is modern, detached property, brick built with roof tiles and enjoys a south facing aspect. With 6 bedrooms (including staff rooms) and 4 bathrooms the house is in use 7 days per week . One of the bedrooms has a profile bed and wet room bathroom for those with more profound needs. The house does need to be kept warm and attached are the latest electricity invoices. Should we be successful for this support then the money we save on electricity will be used to provide more activities at the project, in particular, funding the renovation of the garden to make it more accessible. We would be happy to give Sunworks a tour of the house as part of this application.
Tell us the reason behind your application. Why you should be selected for the giveaway and how it aligns with your values and activities:
We regularly see how vital having respite can be members and their families. This house is used day and night and we feedback helps us to ensure we are on track to meeting the needs of those using the house.
Having this support from Sunworks would help to keep our costs down so that we can keep investing in the house to ensure it is appealing to our members.
We would be keen to be part of any promotion of this should we be successful as this will help raise awareness of not only Jersey Mencap but also how important respite is and the difference it can make. Our ethos of the house is to be part of the aim of providing a robust and reliable respite property where young people look forward to their visits.
Lastly, tell us about your environmental objectives and how the addition of solar panels will help achieve your sustainability targets:
By helping to make the property more cost effective and environmentally friendly aligns well with our Pond Project which is a nature based initiative in Trinity. Our members and staff have nurtured this have for over 10 years and planted over 70 tree saplings.
We open the pond project up to local companies who bring their staff for 3 hours to work alongside our members at the pond project. This helps with the land maintenance but also the staff come away having a better understanding of some of the challenges faced everyday by our members but also see the positive outlook we have.