As a result of the coronavirus outbreak, we have had to make some important changes to our services to ensure the safety of the older people we work with and provide them with additional support at a worrying time.

Our regular groups and weekly befriending visits have been suspended until further notice and our groups volunteers, tutors and volunteer befrienders are doing fantastic work by starting to make weekly phone contact with the older people the see regularly.

We know that during this time, older people may experience feelings of increased isolation as their regular activities are cancelled. To ensure that we are meeting these additional needs we have increased our service provision to include the following:

• Individually contacting all 680 older people we work with to ask what support they have and what support they need 
• Posting an additional print newsletter to all service users with useful information including what to do if they feel unwell, useful contacts, advice on staying active and advice on avoiding coronavirus related scams 
• Offering a telephone befriender to any older person who would like one 
• Recruiting, training and inducting new volunteers to become telephone befrienders
• Providing support with practical tasks like shopping and picking up medication or connecting service users to other organisations who can offer this support

We have also sadly had to cancel a number of our upcoming community fundraising events which raise vital funds for our services. 

During these uncertain times, we would be extremely grateful if you would consider making a donation, no matter how big or small, to support our coronavirus response effort and help us to keep our older friends and neighbours connected to our community at a time when this is more important than ever.