Dear friends,

It is hard to believe that St Matthew’s Parish Nursing Project has now been serving our community 5 years, thanks to your help, and I am excited to report that 2025 has been a really good year. We have welcomed two new members to the team in our chaplain, Father Parker and volunteer nurse and midwife Catherine Dodd.

  • We have continued to strengthen links with other service providers and build on partnership working, week on week.
  • We have been able to hold more health promotion events in conjunction
  • with Wicker pharmacy and the local authority, and volunteers, Chris and Josie from Diabetes UK, through the Town Hall health fair and even providing blood pressure checks at a Sheffield Steeler’s game.
  • Outreach with those on the streets now takes the from of weekly multi agency outreach, which you can read more about later on.
  • Stall interactions have increased significantly as we are now able to increase our opening hours due to the expansion of our staff numbers.
  • We have also been involved with the Anderson Green project and the well being cafe.
  • So far in 2024, we have provided 505 Mental health interventions, to put that in perspective, last year the number was was 299 mental health interventions, that’s over a 68% increase.
  • Due to the increase in activity around special events and our stall on the Moor Market, health promotion now makes up the highest proportion of our interactions.
  • We continue to receive support from both local and national funders, as well as through the continued generosity of our loyal, individual donors.

I am also happy to announce that in November we became re-accredited by Parish Nursing MInistries UK to whom we are very grateful for their unfailing support and encouragement.

I am excited to see how the project develops over the next five years, and beyond, and have every confidence in the team that it will continue to develop to meet the needs of our community and to show the love of Christ in very practical ways. For more on future plans see the end of this booklet.

Michaela Suckling