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Share Friends

The Shared Friends service, in the Adults and Communities Directorate, aims to help adults with learning disabilities make new friends and achieve their social ambitions. The service relies on people volunteering to help.

The service, managed by Shirley Corbett, is marking its 20th Anniversary by thanking all of its volunteers whilst celebrating the successes of the last 20 years.

The team organised an event at the Council House on Friday 5th June with 154 attendees to mark the occasion.

More than 90 of the guests were volunteers and their services users along with past colleagues and partner Organisations, Senior Managers and the Director of A&C Peter Hay. Also in attendance was the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Cllr Michael Wilkes and Lady Mayoress, Mrs Vivienne Wilkes, plus special guest speaker ‘Blind’ Dave Heeley, the international marathon runner.

The evening was based around the US Sitcom ‘Friends’ and was supported by Service Birmingham and coffee chain Starbucks.

Throughout the evening several awards were handed out to mark achievements, the three award categories were ‘Long Term’, ‘Extraordinary Friend’ and ‘Extra Mile Support’. These were awarded to around 30 of the volunteers in attendance to highlight their outstanding hard work. BEST Leader for the Shared Friends team, Bryon Batten, was also singled out for an award to acknowledge his dedication and achievement within the service.

Sandra Andrew, a Share-Friends case worker said “the celebration was a complete success from start to finish. Having been part of the working group who planned the event was great to see it come together. It was good to see so many volunteers come out and also colleague from the past, including Debbie Kerslake who started the service”.

“The whole reason for the event was to say a big thank you to our volunteers and publicise the work Share-Friends does, and I think the celebration really did that” added Sandra.