It’s Time the City Showed It Cared for Volunteers

By Laurence Westgaph

LIVERPOOL has been at the forefront of the development of pioneering philanthropic institutions.

We have the first Royal School for the Blind, first Tropical School of Medicine and following in the footsteps of such fantastic institutions is Dare To Care. DTC has been delivering holistic therapies and developing alternative methods of improving health in Liverpool for more than 15 years.

Complementary healthcare, and in particular auricular (ear) acupuncture, has become fashionable during the last decade, but only for those who can afford to pay for it.

Roman Abramovich, Cherie Blair and many more of the rich and famous pay through the nose to benefit from this ancient form of Chinese medicine.

Princess Diana was also a strong believer in the benefits of the treatment.

Since the 1990s, Dare To Care has been providing free acupuncture, reflexology and aromatherapy treatments to the poorest people in the city.

The centre was the brainchild of Carol Darby-Darton, who opened the project in 1992 specifically to help substance mis-users.

Over the last decade-and-a-half the project has gone from strength-to-strength, winning numerous awards and benefiting from two lottery grants which allowed the services to be made available to the wider community.

Nowadays pensioners are some of the main beneficiaries of the centre’s services, Dare To Care’s oldest client is currently 102.

Although the clinic has been amazingly successful over the years it still struggles to make ends meet. DTC receives little support from the city or the Primary Care Trust and is run exclusively by volunteers.

Why is it that we are able to find mega bucks for severance pay to individuals who don’t seem to make the grade, yet our award- winning voluntary sector organisations have to scrabble around year after year simply to keep their services available to the public?

It seems awfully perverse that our community organisations have had to suffer in the year we celebrate Liverpool’s unique culture. Leighton Dene and Boaler Street care units have had their funding cut, along with the L8 Law Centre and other community organisations.

I’m sure everybody who went to the concert yesterday enjoyed themselves and hopefully the event will break even and not be a drain on the public purse.

But, I wish the city would put as much man power, time and effort into supporting our pioneering organisations like Dare To Care, as they do into staging concerts and conferences for bigwigs.

When 2008 is long gone we will still need the unique services on offer at community facilities like Dare To Care.

Although the normal folk of Liverpool may not be seen as ‘movers and shakers’ there is no doubt that without them our city would not have won this Capital of Culture title.

Forget music, architecture and art, I just hope that the festivities of this year don’t lead to us losing yet more of the services that cater for the well being of our most precious assets – our people.

You can contact Dare To Care on 0151-709 9528Monday to Friday.

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