Fund undergoes many changes

Captain Jan Savage

In 30 years of association with the Mayor’s Welfare Fund, Captain Jan Savage has experienced many changes.

Captain Savage has just retired from the fund’s committee, having first been associated with it from the early 1970s.

She says one of the biggest changes to the work of the fund came when the benefit rates were cut in the early 1990s.

Applications for help with rent and heating costs escalated.

In the early days people approaching the fund received a bag of coal or some wood or blankets.Today the requests are for electric heaters and help with rents and bonds for flats.

Captain Savage says the people coming to the fund today have also changed. Now they are much younger, teenagers setting up house.

They are also more mobile and change flats and houses more often.

She says there were restrictions on the fund and how many times people could get help. "But all applications are considered on merit," she says.

Captain Savage first became associated with the fund when she stood in for Major Margaret Love, who managed the Bealey Avenue Samaritan Emergency Lodge.

It was then called the Mayor’s Coal and Blanket Fund but when she was appointed as a member in the 1990s she worked with Mayor Vicki Buck who, said Captain Savage, set the fund on its present footing as a charitable trust.

"The fund fills a definite role in the city and deals with people in the lower socio-economic area very well," she says.

Captain Savage might be retiring from the fund but she will continue with her involvement with the Community Board established by the Pegasus Medical Group.

Beginnings in 1895
The Mayor’s Welfare Fund goes back to the death of Hyman Marks in May 1895.

Among his charitable bequests was 2000 pounds to be invested and the interest paid yearly to the Mayor for distribution in the form of coal and blankets to the city’s poor.

Over the next 60 years the Coal and Blanket Fund assisted with coal, coke, blankets and firewood.

The Mayor’s Welfare Fund Charitable Trust was formed in 1992 which meant the fund had greater access to other trusts for funds and was able to offer taxation benefits for donations.

Its work is divided into three areas: a fund that is a last resort for financial assistance for rents, power, telephones, wood and medical expenses; another that assists children whose families are suffering financial hardship; and a Making it Happen Fund that is administered on behalf of the Community Trust. This is aimed at assisting people "where it can be shown that timely financial support will result in ongoing benefits."

This fund has been used to help people attend sporting competitions and cultural events and for medical procedures.

Members of the fund’s committee are: Gill Mendonca, John Bryant, Trevor Batin, Anita Connew, Pat Marshall, Brenda Lowe-Johnson, Ron Middleton, Celia Martin, Jocelyn Wilson, Peter Cameron, Captain Heather Rodwell, Betty Freeman-Moir and two councillors.