4,000 households in Scarborough supported through pandemic
A Scarborough hub aimed at helping those in need during the Covid-19 pandemic has been reflecting on the last year.
A Scarborough hub aimed at helping those in need during the Covid-19 pandemic has been reflecting on the last year.
It is being run by Age UK and the charity has been looking back over the last 12 months as today is the anniversary of the first lockdown.
Julie Macey-Hewitt, Chief Executive of Age UK Scarborough, said:
"It's been a different experience for us as it has with everybody. It's not something we've done before so a year ago it was just literally an idea that was thrown out there thinking that the lockdown would last a few months, and we're still here a year later and in that time we've helped so many different households and households that have never needed help before.
"In the peak we probably had about 170 new volunteers, so these aren't our existing ones but these are ones who've come through just for Covid, and they've volunteered almost 18,000 hours of their time over the last year. In terms of households, we're just about to reach our 4000th household so you're looking at well over 12,000 individuals helped.
"Towards the beginning of the year it was mainly the older people who needed the help and support, and then as we shifted into certainly the second lockdown where schools were still open, it was a lot of single parents who needed support. I think now we've got some people that we've helped for the whole year that is now becoming that short term help."
Volunteers have been doing people's shopping, collecting prescriptions, delivering food parcels and hot meals.
Julie explains what else:
"Telephone befriending volunteers provide different phone calls to vulnerable households. We have at the moment 108 people receiving telephone calls but at the peak that was up to about 250 people who got on average about three calls a week from their volunteer.
"We're going to look at getting more people out and about and helping people to become more independent again. So we're going to be looking for volunteers to take people shopping, so rather than doing it for them, we'll take them and help them with that experience of maybe going on a bus for the first time in a year and going into a supermarket. We're also going to be looking at doing more activities like clubs."