Our Response to COVID-19

Our response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last year has been challenging for everyone, and the support that has been needed for the older people in our local community has hit an all-time high. Out of necessity, we had to adapt many of our services to support older people, their carers', and their families in South Gloucestershire. These service adaptions have meant we have remained operating and been able to help many people over the last year.
As the restrictions start to ease and the world resumes to a new 'normal', we wanted to share our COVID-19 response to show you how we have continued to make a difference during this unpreceded time.

Information & Advice

Over the last year, we have had over 12,000 contacts with older people, their families and their carers’. Including responding to 2,729 information and advice calls and providing 622 people with specialist benefits advice. Although we have our Information and Advice telephone helpline, our Benefits Advice service is usually a face-to-face service. Each year up to £3.5bn of Pension Credit and Housing Benefit goes unclaimed by older people. Our friendly team would usually visit clients in their homes and support them in applying for the benefits they are entitled to. However, they have had to adapt the service to telephone appointments; the 622 clients who received our benefits advice, on average, now receive an additional £2,754 income per year.

Volunteering

We have had over 180 volunteers working with us to support older people in the community. Most of us will feel lonely at some point in our lives. For a lot of us, particularly those in later life, loneliness can define our lives and have a significant impact on our wellbeing. Our Befriending service aims to support those experiencing loneliness, and our befrienders have spent a staggering amount of time volunteering at over 4,000 hours in the last year. This time spent with or talking to their clients helps to tackle loneliness and isolation, has made such a positive difference at a very tough time. Our volunteers have not only kept in touch via phone but also through video chats, writing letters, sending cards, local walks and even the odd window visit. Many of our clients were shielding through the pandemic, but our wonderful volunteers even supported them by dropping off essential shopping supplies when they were advised not to leave their houses.

Activity Day Centres

Our Activity Day Centres were suspended in March 2020, yet we were proactive in our approach and began to reassess our service. We moved many of our activities online and offered supported Zoom calls to our service users. We also began weekly welfare checks and essential shopping supplies, which has led to the launch of a new service that we shall continue to provide, called the Community Services Programme. This programme offers a tailored plan for individual needs and aspirations created by our specialist team to focus on achieving their personal goals. The service provides group and one-to-one activities both inside the home and within the community (subject to any COVID-19 restrictions in place). We have had highly positive feedback.

Foot Care

It's essential that we all take good care of our feet in later life. It lowers our risk of having a fall and reduces our risk of infection, as well as relieving pain. Age UK South Gloucestershire's foot care services help older people who are unable to look after their feet. Our Foot Care service paused at the beginning of the outbreak, and we referred people, in need of urgent assistance, to the NHS service that was available throughout this time to ensure no one was left suffering. We resumed our service in September. Our practitioners followed a strict, Covid-19 safe procedure, including safety screens between the client and practitioners, to enable the service to continue. The ability to resume this service resulted in 162 appointments through this time, helping people to steady on their feet.

We rely on donations and funding to enable us to support older people in the South Gloucestershire community. If you can support us with a donation, then we can help even more people in later life.

For more information, please click on one donation link above or call us on 01454 411707.

Age UK South Gloucestershire is here to support you and your local community in later life.