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Responding to COVID 19

Responding to COVID 19

Summary

When lockdown was imposed, the Area Teams were immediately assigned to establish a virtual Community Hub in each area. Referrals began coming in from the GP Alliance and other partners, particularly to support those residents who were told to shield. Council staff and volunteers telephoned all residents who were on the shielded list, and if they didn’t answer, someone went to knock on their door. They instigated an immediate campaign to recruit volunteers, with 120,000 leaflets dropped into houses within a fortnight of lockdown, asking for volunteers and offering help if it was needed. Within weeks 1,000 new volunteers had been recruited. The peak of demand for help increased on the Easter Bank Holiday weekend and everyone pitched in, the whole Community Resilience team got involved with shopping and delivering food parcels for residents in need.

Website: https://www.sunderland.gov.uk/article/17325/Need-support-or-want-to-help-

Key facts

Main target group: Older people with chronic health conditions or disability

Other target group(s): people on the shielded list

Sector(s): Health

Other sector(s): volunteer recruitment

Desired outcome for older people:
Build and maintain relationships

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:
  • Dementia
  • Inclusion
  • Participation

Contact details

Name: Jackie Nixon

Email address: jackie.nixon@sunderland.gov.uk

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Local authorities

Others involved in the project:
  • Local authorities
  • Social or health care provider
  • Volunteers

How collaboration worked: Volunteer staff (state number) 1,000 Paid staff (state number) 14 core staff and other staff from Community service network and other departments within SCC Premises (they were virtual hubs) Services (e.g. transport) dog walking, going shopping, picking up prescriptions, befriending Community support Financial this was provided the VCS to support the community Other (name)

Older people’s involvement: Older people were not directly involved

Details on older people’s involvement: Older people came forward to volunteer and support more frail older people in communities

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: No

Do you plan to evaluate your age-friendly practice? Yes

Feedback:
Key feedback; 1. Identified lots of older people who were isolated and lonely 2. Was able to support with benefit checks making sure people were getting the correct benefits 3. Matched older adults to local volunteers for support and help

Expansion plans:
A preventative, proactive and person-centred integrated neighbourhood operating model will be developed.

Looking back

Reflections:
Ageing Well priority would be included in the Healthy City Plan (September 2020). This has now been written into the draft Healthy City Plan which will go to the December meeting of the Health and Wellbeing Board for approval. The Healthy City Plan will outline some data, why the priority is important, key areas for improvement and what will be different. There will be a working group will be established to drive forward the key areas for improvement and firm-up ‘what will be different’

Challenges:
Some of the challenges included reaching all the older people, we used the telephone, emails, text messages and even knocked on doors.