If you are a Social Worker or Health Professional and have a client who either needs furniture or has DIY needs around their home/garden, then please complete our quick referral form and we will contact you to see how we can help.
After an initial conversation, where possible we meet with you and the potential recipient to assess their needs and agree on how we might help.
Furniture
We accept donations of quality furniture that must be in good condition and available to pass directly onto recipients.
White Goods – UPDATE 11/2023
We are no longer able to accept donations of appliances (washing machines, fridges, fridge-freezers, microwaves) due to changes in our Insurance policy. In some cases, we have sufficient funds to be able to purchase new goods – please still enquire.
Projects
We can also do non-construction projects – clearance, decorating, gardening etc. As our time-givers are just normal people, do not expect projects on the scale of Grand Designs! As a guide, here are some of the things that we may struggle with:
- Anything where specialist skills are required
- Anything where specialist kit or tools are required
- Projects that are too “big”. Painting a room in a house = yes, re-roofing it = no.
- For legal reasons, we can’t do any gas fitting or electrical work.
Once we have discussed the project with you, we need to visit the house and meet the recipient to make an assessment of the jobs to be done. This helps us get a better idea of costs, scale, and if the job is one that we can complete to a high standard and cover safety issues. Once the project and risk assessments are completed, we will try to find a team of time-givers whose skills are a good match for your project. Please be patient – as these people give their time for free, it may be a while before we find a team who is a good fit – obviously, it is easier to find somebody to paint a wall than it is to locate a carpenter; likewise, some jobs are pretty seasonal – it’s hard to find somebody who wants to build a fence in December. Once we have found a team to complete your project, we need to set a date and arrange materials so that everything is ready on the allocated day.
Project Day
Someone should be available on-site on the day to let the group in, whether it be you (i.e. the social worker) or the recipient. Since time-givers are normally busy during the week, many projects take place at weekends. In general, a member of our Core Team will be present at the start of the project to make sure everybody has what they need and that they all know the plan. We will also try to be there by the end of the day to ensure that the project has been satisfactorily completed and to arrange for a further visit if required.
Afterwards
Some groups really hit it off with the people they are helping. They may offer to pray for them, they may stay in touch. Sometimes if additional work needs to be completed, they may offer to do this outside of the original brief that was agreed with The Besom. It goes without saying that any offer to pray or to keep in touch would be made sensitively and that it would never be made if the group thought that it would be unwelcome.
Who will complete your project?
The Besom is a service for people in churches who want an opportunity to give, so these will be the people who come to complete your project. These time-givers must be known to their church as regular attenders, and The Besom requires that they provide a reference from their church’s leader. Whilst some time-givers will have DBS check certificates for other work they do either professionally or within their church, there is no guarantee that this will be the case.
What are the “terms and conditions”?
There are no terms and conditions as such, but there are some suggestions: First and foremost, we need to make sure that this project can be completed well – that we do a good job for the person you refer, and also that everybody is protected, so we do need to know of any likely hazards such as needles or wild pets. You need to ensure that the project you refer is permitted to be undertaken, e.g. please do not ask us to paint a house red or to remove shrubs/trees if the house belongs to somebody whose permission hasn’t been obtained.
Warranty – nothing we do has any value if it isn’t any good. We want to do high-quality jobs every time. This is one reason why we never ask people to give their time – people approach us and ask to give it, so your group will always be enthusiastic! That said, they are enthusiastic amateurs. They should have the necessary skills to complete the job well and if anything needs to be put right, we will aim to do so, but as a free service with a very low budget, this should not be taken as a warranty.
What to do if something goes wrong: Get in touch – we can talk about what happened, why it happened and what we can do about it. If you do not have the specific contact details of the people who have carried out your project, then please either email or phone us.