Find out how Hessle Road Network has been keeping the community connected during lockdown

Kirsty Smith at the Hessle Road Network tells us how they have been keeping the community creative and connected during Covid.  They also tell us about the steps they are making to resume some of their services.

When lockdown happened our youth and Community workers began contacting the young people and residents that we work with and arranged weekly food parcel drop offs and craft activity packs.

This has been really beneficial to individuals and families and has enabled us to keep regular contact whilst providing much needed support.  Regular one to one support over the phone has been essential for reassurance and to avoid isolation for individuals we support, but also following Government guidelines we have been able to start one to one support within the project with individuals needing assistance with accessing services, completing forms and advocacy with professional meetings online and over the phone.

We have had to adjust to a more digitised, accessible sessions and have been delivering weekly zoom sessions with a range of activities, quizzes, games and bingo sessions with the young people, young parents and community regulars.  For some this has been something they really look forward to each week and has been useful in helping young people keep in touch with their peers and have some familiarity taking part in activities they would do with youth workers at the project.  The zoom sessions aren’t for everyone though and the regular outreach sessions within the local area and parks, as well as dropping round to have a chat in the front garden has been a necessity for individuals and families.

In addition to the outreach we will be delivering our play-ranger sessions within parks throughout the summer holidays giving out craft and sport packs to young people and families so that they all have their own equipment to take part in activities as a family or within their own support bubbles. During the Easter and May half-term whilst on lockdown we delivered craft activity resource packs to twenty schools and care homes for young people to use and have just put together summer activity resource packs for the children’s homes and Women’s Aid refuge.

Moving forward with the development of government guidelines we can also now begin running small group sessions within the project. Young people have voiced concerns of starting back at school in September, worrying about whether they will be in the same peer group or if they will have fallen behind with work are just a few of their anxieties, so these sessions will be an opportunity to support the young people with this transition.
The Community sessions are also starting back up within small groups outside in our garden area socialising in a small group in a safe environment.  For some individuals who have been in shielding due to age, this will be really important for building confidence back up and addressing mental health issues that may have developed through lockdown. 

If you would like to learn more about the Hessle Road Network, you can visit their website here:  http://www.hesslerdnetwork.org/about.html#

Thank you to Hull CVS who has shared this information enabling us to share across our network.