Volunteering During The Crisis and Beyond!
It’s been a tremendously busy few months at Link Visiting. The impact of Covid-19 on our community meant that we had to quickly adapt our service to ensure all those we usually support knew where to access help, knew how to stay safe and most importantly knew that we there for them to offer friendship and company even if it is just over the phone for now.
We have adapted, grown, and changed hugely and at times it’s been incredibly stressful. I won’t lie, there have been tears, sleepless nights and long team meetings where, at times, I’ve been worried about my staff. There are 7 of us, mostly part-timers and every one of the team has been incredible. We wanted to ensure we were doing the right thing for our community when they needed us, and we wanted to make sure we did it safely and well.
At times of crisis, we quickly assess what is important to us, what is needed for our loved ones to stay safe and well and then, we ask ourselves, what can we do to help others?
It has been a privilege to be part of the Community Response and play our part.
Working with volunteers, helping, and enabling people to feel part of their neighbourhood is what we do and what we have always done.
We know how important it is for people of all ages to feel connected to those around them. With our partners in the Response, we quickly worked out the key messages to give to our community; get to know your neighbours! Check-in with those who live near you and offer to get shopping and prescriptions. Find out who is shielded and keep an eye on them. And then once you have done that – VOLUNTEER! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of you got in touch. Young people, commuters, single parents, older people, and people who frankly would not normally give volunteering a thought, felt compelled to offer a hand, to stop and look around at their neighbours and at their wider community.
It has been humbling and a privilege to have helped enable so many of you to volunteer. Our dream at Link Visiting has always been for frail older people to feel seen, to feel heard and feel recognised. We see first-hand the serious impact that loneliness has.
So, it has been especially wonderful for us, that out of the pain and stress of this devastating virus, people have come together in an incredible way and amazing new friendships have blossomed and community cohesion has flourished.
At the beginning of March we were busy working with just over 300 volunteers who were supporting older people with friendship in a wide variety of ways from one to one home visits, to a huge mix of different weekly and monthly activities, running weekly courses for people with dementia, making regular phone calls and organising fabulous parties. We were working with just under 350 older people and our small staff team were kept more than busy. But when crisis hit, we had to think on our toes and redesign our service.
Our part in the Response is supporting shielded people with fortnightly Welfare-Check phone calls.
We have connected over 2,700 vulnerable people to a volunteer caller and currently actively phone just over 1,600 people.
We have made chatty social calls with our Telephone Buddy Project and now regularly ring 335 people 1 or 2 times a week.
We came up with the idea of well-being goody-bags – so no one felt forgotten and worked with local churches and the Community Hub to get them out to those particularly struggling and who needed cheering up.
We’ve posted regular newsletters and shared letters and pictures from children.
We worked tirelessly to support the Response by recruiting, interviewing, and placing over 650 volunteers and our own volunteer base has grown to 450 people.
It has been tiring and stressful on MANY occasions. It continues to be if I’ve honest! We’ve felt overwhelmed and tearful at times, but do you know what’s got us through and made it all worthwhile?
I am not ashamed to say, it is talking about our fantastic volunteers!
During #VolunteersWeek, can I take the opportunity to say that my heart lifts when a note drops into my inbox from a member of the team saying, ‘We’ve had lovely feedback!’ We’ve loved hearing that a particular friendship is going really well, we love hearing from our older Link friends that their life has improved because someone cares so much that they call regularly and listen and acknowledge what they’re going through. You have helped us make sure the right help is getting to the most vulnerable in our community and you have shared your concerns quickly and effectively. You have let us know that you are enjoying volunteering, that it’s made a difference to your life as much as to the person you’re calling, and WE LOVE HEARING about it!
Can you put a price on someone’s time? Someone choosing to spend their time with you, ask you questions and then listen to the response? It’s such a gift! More valuable than anything.
To have someone to voice your concerns to, celebrate with, share news and ideas with. It makes life worth living and why we are so grateful to you, our volunteers not just this week, but every week of the year. You understand the true value of friendship and celebrate it as much as we do!
We do not need an excuse to shout out to the world how great Wokingham Borough is. We have a thriving voluntary sector, a council that genuinely care for their residents and people who want to know their neighbours. It’s Volunteer Week so please hear us when we say, ‘THANK YOU for everything.’ You have shown you understand how important friendship is when the world is in chaos and you have stepped up and demonstrated true kindness and care. You have made our job an absolute pleasure and we and lots and lots of people in Wokingham Borough would be lost without you.
From all the team at Link Visiting and the wider community, please hear our loud applause for you and for all that you do. You keep us going. THANK YOU.
Let’s hope that we can keep this brilliant community spirit alive now in the months to come and volunteering and being neighbourly is just the usual way of life.
