A COMMUNITY cafe is providing invaluable additional help to people living with disabilities.

Liz Prudhoe, the director of Adapt (North-East), a charity which started in Hexham in 1991 to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities, has spoken of the success of the cafe and disability resource centre in the town’s Burn Lane industrial estate since it opened in 2017.

Invited to talk at the recent Hexham Town Meeting, hosted by the town’s outgoing mayor Tom Gillanders, she said that the resource was the missing piece of the charity’s jigsaw.

“We attracted some funding and were able to make the last vacant unit into a community cafe and we always wanted to have a ‘changing places’ facility which is the next step up from a disabled toilet,” she said.

“We have had quite a bit of use from it, and we had a family going up to Kielder use the facility and then go on their way as there aren’t many of these around. It’s an additional benefit for those that may need to use the facility, so the community cafe has been the last thing for us.

“The use of the cafe has been very interesting because we are finding people that may need additional help are not having to go elsewhere.

“We have started, next to the cafe, having community information mornings and those will help support people in the community.”