As you may be aware, The Abhayaratna Trust is embarking on a new project called The Local Care Network (LCN) project to help develop and embed a more explicit and organised culture of care and support in the Order for Order members who need it, including accessing financial assistance and other services (listen to the Podcast here). The project is a collaboration with external agencies including Age UK South Lakeland, which has given The Abhayaratna Trust access to a software tool called Compass to facilitate a holistic assessment of a person’s health, wellbeing and finances. 

The LCN will be piloted in two UK Centres: Manchester and Sheffield, with more Centres due to join later in the year.  

In February, representatives from the Manchester and Sheffield Buddhist Centres, as well as Mahasraddha and Taradakini from The Abhayaratna Trust team, attended a day’s Compass training run by Age UK South Lakeland in their Kendal HQ in The Lake District, UK. 

Upeksaraja, who attended the day on behalf of The Sheffield Buddhist Centre, said: 

"Our visit to Age UK South Lakeland to view their very comprehensive and well thought out Compass software programme was fascinating. It left me wondering why this sort of thing hasn't been done before as it facilitates co-ordination between services for a much more effective and efficient care system.

We still need to assess how and where it could be helpful to Abhayaratna Trust, but at the very least we have some excellent ideas for further development.

It was very enjoyable meeting other Abhayaratna Trust colleagues, and our presenters were excellent. We also discovered a great vegetarian cafe round the corner!"