Newsletter March 2025

Staffing news

Laura Hogarth & Wendy Benfold News!

A Message from Laura Hogarth (our former Activity and Support Manager):

As you may well have heard by now, I have taken the very difficult decision to leave my role with SARAG. When I began my maternity leave, I wouldn’t have thought in a million years that I would not be returning; SARAG has been, by far, the best job I’ve had, with the most lovely team of people. The relationships I’ve formed with many clients over the last few years, through both the support groups and the 1:1 support, have really meant a lot and I am so sad to be leaving these behind. I am going to miss everyone so much. However, I feel now that I need to prioritise my family for these precious few years whilst my children are so young. I’m also planning to finally take the leap and put my all into my own small business making quirky jewellery, having been running it in the background for a number of years now. I’d like to wish everyone well and I will continue to follow SARAG’s fantastic development via social media and the newsletter.

Take care everyone and please, please do access the fantastic support available from the team if you haven’t already.

Message from Wendy Benfold, Activity and Support Worker:

In 2022 I previously took a step back from working and entered into semi-retirement. Just 18 months later I joined the SARAG team in December 2023 initially working on a temporary basis for one year and I am so glad I did. It has given me the opportunity to work with the wonderful service-users and their families, the Trustees, Solicitors, other stakeholders and SARAG members of staff. Now that the year is drawing to a close I am happy to say that I have been offered the opportunity to continue my work on a permanent basis and assist in developing my role further.

When I first joined the team, the face-to-face work required within the Social Groups was not reflected in any other type of work I have carried out previously, which was mainly dealing with enquiries on a one-to-one basis or by telephone. Initially I was a little apprehensive when stepping into the role which had been successfully set up and developed by my predecessor Laura Hogarth and I was hopeful that I could continue with that work and develop good relationships with service-users and stakeholders in the same way. I hope that I have achieved that during the last 12 months as I have thoroughly enjoyed facilitating and attending the Social Groups and gradually getting to know each of you, whether you have been attending the groups for a number of years or whether you have joined us more recently.

Ying Chian Introduction – Our New Administrator

Hello everyone! I’m Ying, and I’ve just joined SARAG as charity administrator in December last year. I’m excited to work with you, and hopefully to meet you at some of our events and social groups throughout the year!

I grew up in Singapore and Thailand and moved to Sheffield for university in 2016. I’ve also lived in France for some time, and travel around Europe when I can, so if you have any travel plans or memories to share, I’d be more than happy to have a chat about them!

My background is in structural engineering and architecture, and my heart lies in advocacy and research. I’ve worked on design projects in a variety of contexts, from factories in Singapore to Finnish saunas. Prior to joining SARAG, I was a sustainability activist in Singapore and helped design and build scale models for an exhibition. Previously, I have also worked with South Yorkshire Climate Alliance as an administrator and technical advisor. I’m glad to be returning to the third sector and to work with the fantastic team here at SARAG, as well as all our service users and supporters who have been so encouraging.

When I’m not at SARAG, I’m a lot of a music and dance geek – I’m a classically trained pianist and an amateur dancer (with a penchant for the video game JustDance). I’m also a writer who dabbles in the very lovely Sheffield writing scene; I particularly enjoy writing science fiction, satire, and the odd love poem.

Dates for your Diary

Social Groups: Contact Wendy for more details:

March: Bradford 4th, Doncaster 11th, York 17th, Hull 18th, Sheffield 25th.

April: Bradford 1st, Doncaster 8th, York 14th, Hull 15th, Sheffield 22nd.

May: Bradford 6th, Doncaster 13th, York 19th, Hull 20th, Sheffield 27th.

Online Zoom Groups: Mondays 10th March, 7th April, 12th May, all 12:30 -1:30

Bereavement Groups: Contact Deb for full details:

March: Wakefield 4th, Sheffield 25th. • April: Wakefield 1st , Sheffield 22nd. • May: Wakefield 6th, Sheffield 27th.

Bereavement Zoom Group: Every 2 weeks on a Thursday between 10.00 -11.30.

Bereavement Steering Group zoom meeting is 15th May, 10am -11am.

Messy Groups:

On Zoom 14th March & 9th May • In person 11th April Contact Simon for full details.

Social Media links:

LinkedIn: Yorkshire and Humberside Asbestos Support Group (SARAG)

X: https://x.com/yorkshireSARAG

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YorkshireSARAG

Facebook private bereavement page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/saragbereavementsupport.

Fundraisers:

Michael’s Barcelona Marathon 16th March you can donate here:

https://localgiving.org/fundraising/Barcelona-83e09bef451

Nev’s Sheffield Half Marathon March 23 you can donate here:

https://localgiving.org/fundraising/Sheffield-Half-Marathon-2025

2nd – 8th June is Volunteers Week. Watch out for more about how we hope to

encourage volunteers into Team SARAG in the next edition!

Thank you from SARAG! Fundraisers

Thanks to our Christmas supporters:

Huge thank you to Doncaster Lions who donated an amazing £500 toward the cost of our Christmas lunch 2024. That helped SARAG so much with the cost of this annual event, enjoyed this year by 94 people! The Lions also found us a magician who performed close up magic at the tables, then an incredible trick with gold rings from the audience!

Massive thanks also to David Haigh who entertained us with his lovely singing and to all those who donated gifts and prizes for the event too, it’s very much appreciated and the raffle raised over £700!

ASDA’s Aldwarke Road Branch in Rotherham, kindly donated a prize for our Christmas Raffle in December. Pictured below is Tracey Cox, the Community Champion there and Penny Partlow, our Fundraising and Finance officer. THANK YOU ASDA!

Fundraisers

Nev Stevenson (our Head of Service) is running the Sheffield half Marathon on March 23rd. Nev has never attempted a half marathon before so let’s give him some support! Can you donate to his fundraiser please?

Please click below:

https://localgiving.org/fundraising/Sheffield-Half-Marathon-2025

Please feel free to watch him run on the day in Sheffield if you are able to and we will update you with his progress in the next edition.

Another of our dedicated fundraisers is Michael Wolstencroft.

He is running the Barcelona marathon on 16th March.
Michael said:
¡Hola amigos!

I’m running the Barcelona Marathon on the 16th of March in support of Yorkshire & Humberside Asbestos Victims Support Group. I’ve been working as a specialist asbestos solicitor for 14 years plus and I’ve seen first-hand the important work that SARAG do, it’s an absolute privilege to have the opportunity to give something back and hopefully raise as much money as possible!

Please donate to Michael’s page for our charity here:

https://localgiving.org/fundraising/Barcelona-83e09bef451

Please nominate us:

The Benefact Trust Movement for Good campaign is open again and if we receive enough nominations, we could win £1000! If you click the link below and enter “Yorkshire asbestos” it will find our organisation.

Please enter your information and click “nominate this charity for the £1000 draw”. That’s all it takes! Thanks very much for your support doing this.

https://movementforgood.com/?utm_source=Email-giving&utm_campaign=MFG25-Email-1&cmp=1&utm_medium=HTMLEmail#nominateACharity

Appeal for Help

Our Charity provides support to those affected by asbestos related conditions. Our support is available across Yorkshire, Humberside and North Nottinghamshire, to those diagnosed plus their families, supporters and carers. Every year, our charity receives around 350 referrals from hospitals across our area. We help each individual access (on average) over £24,000 in government benefits and compensations.

As well as reducing financial hardship, we offer emotional, bereavement and wellbeing support, either in person, by phone or online, and we organise face-to-face social groups.

Our ultimate aim is to do more. To build on our successful service and expand our remit.

As a charity, we receive referrals for all patients currently diagnosed with the malignant conditions Mesothelioma and Lung cancer, across our region. However, we do not currently receive all referrals for patients with non-malignant conditions like Asbestosis and Pleural Thickening, outside South Yorkshire. We aim to rectify this, raising the number of cases we manage each year to around 500.

We want to provide more social groups, as capacity and resources allow. We aim to provide more events and activities that directly benefit our service users and their supporters, improving wellbeing and health, reducing stress, anxiety, loneliness and social isolation.

We need to fully fund our bereavement provision when funding ends next year and want to expand this by recruiting volunteers to enable us to provide more.

Will you help us please? Could you create a standing order to donate an amount to our bank every month? Could you leave us a legacy in your will? Could you sponsor our fundraisers? Or donate to our bank or by cheque? Here are examples of what your donations could fund:

• Support for a newly diagnosed person through their benefit
• journey costs on average £500.
• Wellbeing support costs around £250 per person.
• Social group attendance on average is £15 per person.

Any amount you can afford, whether as a one off or regular amount helps us do more to help those affected by these terrible conditions. Please see back page for our bank details or contact us.

Thank you

Finding Our Feet

The newsletter from the Bereavement & Family Support team

Deb Williams, bereavement support worker, writes:

Ah, spring at last! March, April, May… the time of year when the sun noticeably rises earlier and goes down later. It starts to shine a bit brighter, and the earth warms up, waking from its sleepy slumber. There is nothing quite like it. The anticipation of warmer days, lighter nights, the budding of leaves on the trees, and bulbs breaking through the soil and showing themselves.

Spring is associated with new life, rebirth, anticipation of warm comforting days, and of hope. This is not the case for everyone though. For those who are grieving or living with a life-limiting illness (whether that be ourselves or a loved one) then spring can be a painful and bittersweet season.

How can we rebirth our new lives when hope, anticipation, and optimism has been replaced with dread and uncertainty? When everyone else is seemingly full of the ‘joys of spring’, planning and seeding new ideas and adventures, we feel the ‘spring’ in our step has gone; we feel out of kilter with the natural fl ow of life and the season, and we stand still, and we feel numb. The natural world itself is full of new life, new beginnings, second chances, and hope. Things that we do not feel. Everyone else, seemingly, is getting on with their usual life, when the ‘usual’ and familiar has disappeared from ours.

Grief, whether that be from a death or a living loss, is a natural and normal human experience. Feeling grief is an acknowledgement of what we have lost, and unlike nature’s seasons it is not linear or predictable. It does not follow an order. It is a very personal experience and can feel like it is never ending.

Spring feels contrary to the realities of grief, but trust that your Spring will come. Seeds of a different life are planted within us without our knowing, and in your own time and in your own way, you will start noticing and recognising your own strengths, your courage, and your resilience, just like the new green shoots of spring that have managed to survive the winter, and breakthrough the frost to show themselves to the warming sun. The bulbs in our gardens, the leaves on the trees, and the seedlings in our trays can give us all a sense of awe and wonder.

When your Spring comes, lean into it and sense the warmth of the sunshine from the inside out.

‘Nature can help us feel connected to something much larger than ourselves. This sense of connection can be comforting during times of grief, reminding us that we are part of a vast, interconnected web of life, and we are not alone. Nature helps to provide us with a model for grieving, for resilience and for hope. There is a season for everything, and nature shows us that.’

Here’s a little nature exercise for you to try: Sound Walk A sound walk is a walk with a focus on listening to the environment around you.

This quarter’s invitation is to take a walk in nature and to listen to the sounds immediately around you, and to pay attention to what you notice.

Walk at a pace that suits you, and make as many stops as you wish, taking time to pause. Listening is sometimes easier if we have our eyes closed, so if you feel safe enough to do so, stop, pause, and close your eyes for an experience of deeper listening.

Can you hear bird song? Can you name the bird that is singing? Can you hear the rustle of leaves in the trees from the breeze? What other nature sounds can you hear? What human sounds can you hear? What is the loudest sound you can hear, or the quietest? What is the furthest away sound you can distinguish?

Well-being, breathing exercises

Each quarter, I will aim to bring you an exercise that could help with how grief/bereavement might be negatively affecting your breathing, and thus your overall wellbeing.

Being bereaved and experiencing grief is a very stressful time. Being stressed can affect our breathing. Our everyday breathing patterns are often overlooked in the management of stress, anxiety, and panic. However, the way we breathe every day, influences how we feel and how much stress we experience. It also dictates how we breathe and how our bodies respond during high-stress situations. This breathmind connection is not new-age ‘woo woo’ it has long been accepted by the scientific community that how we breathe affects which branch of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) – the ‘fight or flight’ sympathetic branch responsible for the stress response, or the parasympathetic ‘rest and digest’ responsible for relaxation, is activated. Our breath is a fundamental ‘state changer’ and by manipulating our breath and changing how we breathe, we can alter how we feel on both a physiological basis and a psychological basis.

Where possible, breathe only through the nose. Good functional, everyday breathing incorporates breathing through the nose during rest, activity, and sleep. Breathing through the nose takes practise and consistency. This will initially take conscious practice. Nasal breathing triggers the relaxation response and helps to prevent overbreathing which is a major fueller of anxiety and panic. Nasal breathing during wakefulness slows and draws the air into the lower parts of the lungs. This may help to maintain the strength and function of the breathing muscles and reduce the feeling of breathlessness.

When we are feeling stressed:

• Breathing becomes faster
• Sighing becomes more frequent
• More air is breathed with each breath
• Breathing tends to be primarily limited to the upper chest
• We tend to breathe through the mouth
• There is a sensation of air hunger or suffocation.

When we are feeling relaxed:

• Slow breathing
• More regular breathing (less frequent sighing and yawning)
• Lighter breathing
• Breathing low into the diaphragm
• Breathing in and out through the nose
• Effortless breathing with no feeling or sensation of air hunger.

An exercise to help stop a panic/anxiety attack or a coughing spree:

When breathing becomes faster, harder, and from the upper chest, it feeds into feelings of panic and suffocation. To alleviate this, it is important to breathe slowly through the nose and deeply into the diaphragm. The following exercise can be helpful during a panic or hyperventilation attack as a rescue exercise, and the sooner you can spot the symptoms of panic and utilise this exercise, the better.

Breathing Recovery, Sitting Directions:

Sit up straight and take a normal breath in and out through your nose.

• Pinch your nose with your fingers after the breath out to hold your breath for up to five seconds. Count: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. (no longer that 5 seconds).
• Let go of your nose and breathe in and then breathe normally through your nose for 10 seconds.
• Repeat the sequence for five minutes, five times daily, to improve the overall function of breathing or use immediately as an exercise to stop a panic/anxiety or coughing attack.

*(Adapted from the Buteyko Clinic International client hand out for RACING MIND, HIGH STRESS, ANXIETY, PANIC DISORDER AND TRAUMA)

Recipe: Meals For One – Easy mushroom pilau

Preparation time – Less than 30 mins

Cooking time 10 to 30 mins.

Serves 1

A fast and filling spicy budget rice dish that is all made in one pan. It uses standard long grain rice as that’s much cheaper than basmati. A dollop of plain yoghurt and/or an Indian chutney make a nice addition if you have them. Read the recipe tips to see what extra ingredients you could use if you already have them in the cupboard.

This recipe is part of a Budget meal plan for one. In October 2023, this recipe was costed at an average of £1.09 when checking prices at four UK supermarkets. This recipe is designed to be made in conjunction with a low-cost storecupboard.

Ingredients

3 tbsp vegetable oil

1 onion thinly sliced.

150g/5½oz mushrooms, thickly sliced or halved if small.

1–1½ tsp medium curry powder, to taste

85g/3oz long-grain rice

½ vegetable or chicken stock cube, crumbled

50g/1¾oz frozen peas

ground black pepper.

Method

1. Put the oil, onion, and mushrooms in a large saucepan. Season with lots of pepper and fry over a high heat for 4–5 minutes, or until the onion is softened and the mushrooms are lightly browned, stirring regularly with a wooden spoon. Sprinkle over the curry powder and cook for 1 minute more, stirring constantly.
2. Tip the rice into the pan and stir in the stock cube and 400ml/14 oz water. Cover the pan with a lid and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and cook the rice at a low simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Remove the lid, stir in the peas and cook over a high heat for 2–3 minutes or until the liquid has almost all gone and the peas are hot, stirring constantly.

Recipe tips

You can use any mushrooms for this recipe, but white closed cup mushrooms are the cheapest, especially if you buy in bulk.

Feel free to add any vegetables that need using up to this dish; spinach and other greens such as shredded kale work well. Or you could add leftover cooked cauliflower, broccoli florets or carrots.

If you have any eggs that need to be used up, hard boil one to serve on top of the pilau. You could also add cooked chicken or prawns.

The cheapest long-grain rice can tend to be a bit starchier, so be prepared to add a little extra water if needed and cook until tender. As the liquid is boiled at the end, it doesn’t matter if it looks a bit ‘soupy’ to begin with.

For a more authentic favour, add crushed garlic and grated ginger at the same time as the curry powder. Or swap the curry powder for garam masala and add a few extra spices if you have them in the cupboard.

By Justine Patterson

I hope you have enjoyed our submission in SARAG’s newsletter. Please feel free to contact me directly either by emailing me at deb@dreamy-cori.217-154-35-86.plesk.page, or contacting by phone or text on 077141724126, should you wish to contribute anything to the next newsletter in June. It might be that you would like to write your own poem, share a story, or have some ideas that you think will help our Bereavement & Family Support Service, or could enhance our content in the newsletter. We also have a private Facebook page should you wish to join us. You can find us at

https://www.facebook.com/groups/saragbereavementsupport.

Take care during the next three months. You know where I am. Warmest of wishes,

Deb.

Donate to us

SARAG is only able to provide our service because of the generous donations made from our Solicitor panel members and individuals.

We would like to take a moment to thank all of you who have donated or contributed to the charity over the years. Without this support the charity would cease to exist.

Best wishes to you all.

If you feel you can donate to SARAG, this is how you can help:

Ways to donate:

Donate online:

Local Giving: https://localgiving.org/charity/sarag/

By Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/gb/fundraiser/charity/3157989

Donating this way incurs no fees and SARAG receives the amount you give, in full.

By cheque/post:

Complete the form below if applicable, making a cheque payable to “Yorkshire and Humberside Asbestos Victims Support Group” and send to: SARAG, Unit 20, Moorgate Crofts Business Centre, South Grove, Rotherham S60 2DH

Through your bank:

Set up a regular Standing order to our bank details: YORKSHR & HUMBER ASBESTOS VCTMS SUPP GRP. Sort Code: 089299 / Acc. No: 65467785

By text: link

Let us know how much you want to donate and your mobile number, then we can send an automatic payment link for you to use. The money reaches us almost immediately and incurs only a small fee from the provider.