A COMMUNITY project which has gone from strength to strength since beginning two years ago is set to expand to help more local residents battle loneliness.

A social enterprise was set up in Pontrilas in 2013 to save the village's post office and help tackle social isolation in the village, south of Hereford.

The Community Interest Group (CIC) named Care and Repair Enterprise (CARE) is now due to expand to include an adjacent unit to the post office which will be converted into a dementia friendly cafe and form part of the group's wellbeing hub.

The cafe will also provide training for budding chefs straight out of school to help them obtain their NVQ levels one and two in catering and hospitality.

Sonya Cary, who leads the CARE project said that the service was set up to retain services for local residents despite government spending cuts.

She said: "We will remain independent with our own aims and will not rely on government funding.

"The Post Office and village store is a vital community service and we then started to look at the services we could operate out of them."

CARE offers a range of services from helping with gardening and household chores to assisting with form filling and looking after pets.

They also provide a ‘telephone buddy’ service; a service which sees volunteers, makes a call to isolated members of the community once a week to chat informally about any subject of interest.

Cary said that the dementia cafe will help the group to 'reach out' to more of the community and will also provide a meals on wheels service.

She added: "We have a lot of people with dementia and wanted to provide something alongside our community good neighbour club.

"Because we are growing we are asked to take on more and more, so the cafe will help us to reach out to those who don't feel part of the community.

"So many people with dementia feel trapped in their own homes so we want to support those people and their carers by providing a welcoming place in the community where those with dementia feel safe.

"It's designed to make people feel happy, motivated and given a sense of purpose."

"It's quite an innovative way we work and our proposals are to provide the course in catering and hospitality for those who have come straight out of school and not in education.

"We will be able to offer meals in the cafe and its all about inclusion so will be open to everybody where people can go for a cup of tea or play drafts or scrabble."