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During the
second half of the Inner Wheel year President Faith Geake organised
some interesting speakers.
President Faith's chosen charity this year is Cornwall Hospice
Care. Our speaker at the February meeting was Oliver Hoare, Head
of Fundraising for Cornwall Hospice Care.
During the Illustrated talk given by Oliver we were presented
with a few statistics, showing us how the need for funding is
so essential. The care provided by the hospices cost 3.85million
a year to fund with only 19% of that coming from the N.H.S. The
shortfall is made up by fundraising. Funds are raised from the
shops, events, lottery, donations and legacies. The fundraising
is further supported by 850 volunteers who work mainly in the
30 charity shops throughout the county but some also work in the
hospices such as on the front desk.
We were shown
how the hospices not only care for terminally ill patients as
inpatients but a day clinic is also provided along with domiciliary
services, an advice line and bereavement counselling. A short
heart-warming film with revelations from a mother and son who
gave their own account of the care they received form Cornwall
Hospice Care was very poignant and meaningful.
Looking to
the future as the 40th year of Hospice Care in Cornwall approaches,
there are several changes in the Hospice movement for earlier
intervention by using community hubs in various places throughout
the county. Plans are also afoot to increase the amount of beds
and also to increase the amount of nursing staff to enable services
to branch out into the community giving greater patient choice.
After this
inspirational talk President Faith gave the vote of thanks.
Our speakers
for the March meeting were Rachel Trudgian and Ian Champkins.
Rachel is the Select Relationship Manager and Ian a Customer Service
Provider from the St Austell Santander Branch.
Rachel and
Ian's talk consisted of an example of Santander's Scam Avoidance
School, which is designed to help people spot the signs of the
most common scams and prevent themselves falling victim to fraud.
During the lively talk we were given examples of scams by email,
text and phone. Where scammers often pretend to be your bank,
the police, HMRC or a service you use such as BT.
Phishing emails
from criminals look very convincing but will contain a few tell-tale
signs and members were given the chance to spot the ones who weren't
genuine. Such as ones where the senders address didn't match the
organisations address, ones that just said "Dear Customer"
and weren't addressed personally and ones that contained a website
link with a request for personal information.
It was helpful
to find out that scammers also use text messaging or "Smishing"
to obtain personal information. Here criminals use a tactic called
number spoofing where they make it look like the text is from
your bank or service. Again we were given examples and asked to
pick out the scam texts which also contain several of the components
found in the phishing emails.
The talk finished
with lots of general advice for us such as beware of cold callers
asking for personal or banking details. We were advised to never
give out passwords or PINs, never access your banking details
through a link in an email or log on to a computer giving a phone
scammer remote access and allowing them access to your personal
information. Lastly sharing information about scams helps to make
everyone aware and helps prevent fraud.
The talk was
both useful for our everyday lives and particularly relevant with
the general data protection regulations (GDPR) that we need to
adhere to as, an increasingly more amount of correspondence is
done through email.
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