New Longton construction company fixes dementia day-care centre’s windows for free

A construction company based in New Longton, Preston has fixed a dementia day-care’s windows for free, after vandals smashed them in last month.

In September, the Post reported on the shock of staff at Genesis Care, which is based at Chorley Methodist Church, when they discovered vandals had thrown rocks through three of their windows.

Following the incident, the charity, which provides respite care for people with dementia, was now left with five windows that needed repairing, and due to delays in insurance, staff had resorted to putting sticky back plastic over the holes, to ensure residents did not hurt themselves.

After seeing the Post's article, Austin Watson Ltd, builders and joiners of New Longton, decided they wanted to help the charity with their windows at no cost to the church.

Operations Manager at Austin Watson, Paul Biscoe said: "One of our chaps, whose mum goes to church quite bit, heard about the story and just fired it into one of our Whatsapp groups, asking if there was anyway we could help, so I contacted the church, and our lads went down and sorted it out for them for free.

"It’s not all about profit for our company, we work a lot in the community, and we’re quite proud of the fact that we’re able to help out in incidents like that. We do experience it with schools, when there’s been play areas smashed up and things like that, so it’s just not nice to see and obviously we might lose out on a bit of labour costs but its just nice to help out really."

Director and Company Secretary of Genesis Care, Pat Albrow, said: "It came out of the blue, and it made us feel really good, after being a bit down about the actual damage, it was really nice that somebody out there was going to do some good as a result of it.

"They were very efficient, they came and measured up and it was only within a couple of weeks that they came along with the glass and swapped it over, so we’ve no more holes in the window and it’s lovely.

"We’re very very grateful and would like to say a big thank you, it meant a lot to us and it’s really good that they did this for us."

As well as the charitable deed by Austin Watson Ltd, the Post's original story also prompted another charitable offer from a local woman, who donated £20 to Genesis Care.

Pat explained: "We had a telephone call from a lady who had also read the bit in the paper and thought it was quite dreadful that somebody had done that to the church windows and she said she would like to send a donation, so she sent us a cheque which was really kind of her, it will go towards the amenities and doing activities with the service users, so that was lovely."

Pat added: "The responses has been great, there’s good people out there as well as bad."

To find out more about the services Genesis Care provide, visit their website or contact 07845969442.