Since March, Brent Irish Advisory Service had to move out Active Aging tea dances into a more Covid–friendly form, so we did three things: the first is a telephone befriending service, where we will call up to 80 people weekly.
Second is a virtual coffee, for the members of the community who are confident with the technology. They love having a natter and a catch–up. The third is that, in September, we starting hosting very small pub lunches for some of our elderly members who felt comfortable being out and about. No more than six people, but we managed to host over 60 lunches before lockdown came again.
In welfare advice, we have been talking to our clients on the phone and have now set up a virtual advice service, where our outreach worker will come with a tablet computer, set it up for the client and then they can see the adviser and show them letters or documents.
We have been doing wellbeing calls and our outreach worker has been busy delivering food parcels for those most in need.
We have been giving out Irish food hampers and have Christmas hampers ready to go with all the brilliant food from home, plus puzzle books to keep people entertained.
In many ways, we have never been busier and everyone I speak to tells me how happy they are that we are still here, still supporting and caring about our community.