The Matthew Project would shut their offices on the 18th March, switching immediately to offer services remotely, through the phone, online groups, and doing door-step visits when a welfare concern was raised as the Police were unable to do this due to capacity limitations.
Wells Town Council, Wells Maltings, Heritage House, Wells Churches Together, Wells Community Hospital, the Holkham Estate and local community volunteers came together to offer a coordinated response to support the most vulnerable during the COVID-19 outbreak, in Wells-next-the-Sea and surrounding villages.
Norfolk Citizen’s Advice Bureau would normally conduct around 75% of their support face to face. Over three days they moved to 100% remote support model via phone, email and webchat.
Recently the team at the Charity Commission presented an online webinar answering a range of questions specifically for local infrastructure organisations and the charitable groups they work with. The webinar is still available to watch online – links are at the end of this article.
CAN has long been very active in promoting Anglian Water’s ‘Keep It Clear’ initiative, aimed at encouraging the public to dispose of waste water and materiel in the correct and safest way. Busy appearing at fetes, festivals and fun days all across Norfolk, we invited people to think about how we are all responsible for keeping our sewage systems clear and efficient.
At CAN we have been conducting research to assess the impact of COVID-19 on VCSE operations and service delivery. You can read about this here. We are featuring here regular examples of how groups and organisations have adapted their particular services. This week we’re focussing on Norfolk Community Action Network.
The VCSE sector is hard-pushed financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. In previous articles we have looked at how the financial challenges require many of us to explore new ways of fund-raising and generating income – and perhaps turn those challenges into opportunities. In this article we will be exploring an option new to many – Social Investment.