As the full impact of the current COVID19 outbreak began to emerge, Age UK South Lakeland chose to change the shape of our service delivery. We have always been focussed on those who are amongst our most vulnerable to help them remain safe in their own home.
The reshaping of our service delivery offer has only been possible because of the commitment of our amazing staff and volunteer teams whose response to this call to arms has been outstanding. They have put away their professional qualifications and joined queues shopping, picking up prescriptions, delivering hearing aid batteries and dropping off reading material. They have also been ready to support in any way they can, examples being helping a concerned older couple to pick up an old Grandfather clock that had fallen over and sourcing furniture from our warehouse to furnish a flat after someone had been made homeless due to the closure of a hostel.
It is also important to remember that those people who were receiving support before the outbreak of COVID-19 still need that support, so the team have maintained contact and made sure that they know that the support is still available and they haven’t been forgotten. Advice and support services continue to be delivered in a different way with the restrictions applied preventing us from completing our usual full home visits and assessments.
Age UK South Lakeland have also been able to utilise the power and flexibility of our Compass on-line system to partner up with a number of other local organisations to develop a co-ordinated task force of support across South Lakeland. By using the secure multi-agency referral system (MARS) to share information safely we have been able to ensure that those needing help have been able to access it. The telephone payment system has allowed for people to obtain the shopping they need without the need to hand over cash or payment card details, thereby reducing their risk to contracting the virus through unnecessary social contact and protecting them from the vulnerability of fraud because of the security features embedded within the system.
As we move forward and look towards what life will be like after COVID-19, it is important to remember that the support provided for older people by Age UK South Lakeland and other local Age UKs around the country will be needed more than ever.
We are starting to consider what the landscape may look like post- COVID-19 and there is no doubt that the older population will find it more difficult to return to ‘normal’ life than most. As a local Age UK we need to continue to support our older people now as we have in the past and will need to in the future.
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