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A volunteer coordinator has stepped forward to help run the Rodney Stroke Club, which faced the real possibility of closure after nearly 40 years, as its two long-serving coordinators stood down.
Trish Hutchings of Whangaparāoa says she read about the plight of the club in Hibiscus Matters late last year and decided to put up her hand. (HM December 11, 2023).
“Closure would have been such a shame because members really enjoy it,” she says. “Sometimes it’s the only outing they get – the only time they get to see anybody all week.”
Trish began on February 2, the club’s first meeting after the year-end break. One of the outgoing coordinators, Lillian Carde, says she’ll stay on for a while to help with the transition, after which she will have to bow out.
Trish is hopeful a second coordinator will be found to help share the load, an arrangement that worked well with Lillian and Gaye Miller for the past 15 years.
Lillian says in addition to the coordinators, the club has a pool of about a dozen volunteers helping with everything from providing music to indoor bowls and serving tea and lunch. They include people whose loved ones have had strokes, who recognise the important social and support role the group plays in the lives of stroke survivors.
Trish moved to NZ from England in the early 1970s, worked in banking for 22 years then as a budget advisor. She and her husband Richard brought up two children, now living in Australia and Singapore.
She volunteered previously with an aphasia support group – aphasia is a disorder affecting the ability to communicate, usually caused by strokes – but stopped to take care of Richard when he got Alzheimer’s. He died in 2019.
Trish keeps busy: she’s treasurer for a fortnightly lunch club for the elderly at the Masonic Hall in Ōrewa, and helps run the weekly Fellowship at the Peninsula Club, where she lives.
The Rodney Stroke Club meets on Friday mornings at the Red Beach Methodist Church. More info: contact Trish on 022 408 0100.
