Supporting Families

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic 

Casework

• Casework appointments by telephone and using video calls
• Accommodating urgent queries as they come in

Identifying those families who are most vulnerable and responding to their needs

• Calling carers: Caseworkers are still working to get through the list of family carers that we identified as most vulnerable: 274 elderly carers and 162 parents with more than one child with high needs at home.
• Partnering up with our volunteers and other volunteer groups in the boroughs to get food and medicine to carers who cannot leave home.
• Providing financial advice, benefit applications and grants to cover for lost income. We have done 22 grants from the 1st March to today to cover families’ needs. The grants were used for emergency payments, computers, kitchen appliances, beds and disability and sensory equipment.
• We have written to MPs and the councils to advocate for the needs of family carers. Islington Council responded to our claims and in April they got 20 food parcels that Centre 404’s minibus delivered to 20 of our families in desperate need. We also organised the delivery of 11 iPads to families who need them to home-school and stimulate their children. Again, Islington Council got the iPads and Centre 404 delivered them to our families in need.
• We are preparing a leaflet with important information and numbers for Centre 404 and emergency/Covid related services and a quick guide on how to install and open Skype and Zoom on the phone.

Activities

• Virtual weekly coffee morning with an average of 5 to 8 carers attending. The facilitator prepares information to share at the session, such as dicsussing home-schooling.
• Some virtual weekly coffee morning have a guest speaker such as Dr Sebastian Gaigg of the Autism Research Group at City, University of London who put together a 20 minute video for us to share with our carers with some tips about anxiety and autism, and was happy to answer any questions family carers had afterwards. Sebastian slides were really informative and one of our carers Meg said:

“It was the most directly useful thing I have seen over the 39 years of Paul’s life!”

• Virtual workshop on positive behaviour techniques to help parents with children who display challenging behaviour at home. Coming up.
• Virtual Mindfulness session with parents and their children, delivered in partnership with Chris from The Stress Project. You can see below a sneak peak of what went on during the session, and see more information on our blog. 
• Webinar about the changes to the Care Act due to the Coronavirus Act and the impact in the families we support. Video recording here.
• Webinar for working parents – managing mental health and wellbeing while working from home. Parents will have tips on how to manage their workload while caring for their sons and daughters. Coming up.
• Virtual workshop on Planning for the future including emergency planning, letter of wishes, power of attorney, etc. Coming up.
• Planning to do knitting, poetry or art and craft sessions on Zoom. Coming up in June.
• Wellbeing online sessions in partnership with the Islington carers hub during the Carers Week.
• Islington Parents forum and Family Carers Reference group – meetings are taking place online on the dates they were set up

Befriending program

Those families who are particularly isolated are being offered a befriending program where we match a volunteer who calls them every week to chat about things they enjoy and give them Covid-19 updates. So far it’s working really well!

Supported Housing and Outreach Services

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic 

Supported Housing

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has created huge challenges for everyone but the housing service was able to very quickly put our business contingency plan in action and respond to the challenge in a timely manner. This has resulted in continuity of care for everyone who receives support with minimal disruption. Working in partnership with all stakeholders such as local authorities and Covid-19 local volunteer groups we were able to ensure that essential supplies are not disrupted for people we support. Therefore, even during the initial panic buying weeks, our service users had access to the essential supplies including those living in outreach services.

Outreach

Due to the Ongoing Covid-19 outbreak, a main focus since the outbreak is to keep our Outreach residents safe whilst maintaining a good health and mental well-being. We are working closely with Islington to ensure food shopping, benefits and vital support is not disrupted and visits to those vulnerable people continues. We are maintaining regular contact with all service users either through face to face to visits as well as via telephone to ensure not only they are safe and well physically but mentally as well.

Positive Stories of our Staff going Above and Beyond:

• Face time being set-up for service users to stay in touch with their families, as some are unable to visit physically.
• Staff working on ideas to maintain people’s spiritual well-being. For example, two of our service users from Anson Road who used to go to church every Sunday, are now being supported to attend the weekly mass online.
• ​At Leigh Road, Skype accounts have been created for teams of tenants who are now self-isolating from each other. Competitions are being planned on art and crafts as well as a virtual exercise class where all service users would be able to take part in regular exercise sessions.
• National Tea Day competition reorganised by Sofia from Mildmay to be virtual (pictured below). She came up with the lovely idea of holding an online competition where we ask service users and staff to send in a picture of themselves drinking tea, but in a ‘funniest’ or ‘craziest’ way! The winner received one month of free tea supplies!

Here presenting the runner ups of our National Tea Day competition!! 👏😀 All the entries were so amazing and what a wonderful way to get our staff and service users interacting virtually with each other! 🤩🙌☕❤️

Now presenting the WINNERS of our virtual National Tea Day Competition! From our service users, Susan, who is looking particularly fabulous here and we know is a very big fan of tea! 👏🤩☕ Well done to Susan, who has won a months supply of tea and biscuits!! 🥳🎉

And from our staff team, Stefania, who has made a very funny creative photo montage here of what quarantine like is really like! 😂👌👏🤩☕ Well done to Stefania, who has also won a months supply of tea and biscuits!! 🥳🎉

Central Services

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic

Staff Appreciation: Stories of our Staff going Above and Beyond!

• Sofia from our Mildmay Supported Housing Project

Sofia reorganised the planned National Tea Day to be virtual so our staff and service users could still connect with each other. She came up with the lovely idea of holding an online competition where we ask service users and staff to send in a picture of themselves drinking tea, but in a ‘funniest’ or ‘craziest’ way! The winner received one month of free tea supplies! Find more details on the winners on the Supported Housing section of this page!

• Michelle Sharp from Supporting Families

Our wonderful Supporting Families Team have been continuing their tremendous work whilst we have been in lockdown, continuing to provide the family carers of people with learning disabilities and autism support which has never been so essential in these difficult times! Here is Michelle Sharp, conducting a ‘virtual coffee morning’ session with some of our family carers. Our Supporting Families team have been truly committed to continuing their services and providing family carers with a degree of normality in the midst of this new reality and they have all found new and innovative ways to do so! You can see more details on the Supporting Families section of this page.

Thanking our Frontline Key Workers!

• Since the Thursday 26th March we have been encouraging people to clap for all carers and key workers as well as our amazing NHS staff as part of the #clapforourcarers every Thursday at 8pm. This big applause and cheers from front doors, windows, gardens, balconies etc. shows our support workers and all key workers how grateful we are for the amazing work they do, especially in these unprecedented times!

• At the end of March/ early April we had a special thank you message directly from our CEO Linda (as below), as well as the plan to fundraise and collect appreciation gifts for our Frontline Key Workers and Volunteers to show them just how grateful we are.

I hope our followers can join me in again thanking our frontline key workers who travel in to work everyday to support people with learning disabilities. Many of our service users are also vulnerable to the risks of catching Covid 19. So their efforts are crucial to keeping people safe. – Linda CEO

• Thanks to the continued support from one of our dedicated volunteer shopping teams, we were able to say thank you to some staff with Easter Eggs kindly donated by our local Waitrose on Holloway Road. Below you can see some of our wonderful staff enjoying their well deserved chocolate!

• The JustGiving campaign for Appreciation Gifts for our Covid-19 Frontline Key Workers and Volunteers was hugely successfully, so we were able to purchase things to top up the gift donations kindly received from some staff, volunteers and local supporters.
• On Thursday 7th May some of Centre 404’s Central Services team spent the day putting together care packages and fruit baskets for our incredible key workers with the help of two of our amazing volunteers, Annabelle and Rachel.
• We wanted the care packages to go out to those people working in our Supported Housing projects and Learning & Leisure teams as our support workers put themselves at risk everyday to ensure our service users continue to receive the upmost level of care.
• We also sent packages over to our wonderful team of volunteers who have been vital members of the Centre 404 community by helping to deliver food donations and taking part in befriending calls with our service users, the result of which is reducing social isolation for many vulnerable people during these times.
• Our support workers and volunteers have been truly admirable during these times and really show that not all heroes wear capes! Thank you to all of Centre 404’s key workers and front line staff, you are all truly wonderful and we are so grateful for everything that you do!
• Read the full blog story with all the photos and quotes here!

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Looking after our staff’s mental health and wellbeing has always been a key consideration at Centre 404.  We are committed to creating a supportive environment for all our workers and employees that ensures mental health and wellbeing and provides support where it is needed.

We have put mental health and wellbeing at the heart of our people agenda as we respond to the Covid-19 outbreak

Throughout the pandemic we have put in place a host of initiatives to help our staff look after their mental health.  We have added to what was already in place with our employee assistance programme by promoting our new partnership with Able Futures and introduced online resources. Our Managers have provided on-going reassurance to staff of the safety measures that we have in place and there have been regular communications as government guidance has developed.  We have a new Mental Health and Wellbeing policy and have signed up to the Time to Change pledge and to be a Mindful employer.

We recently took part in Mental Health Awareness Week and encouraged staff and the people we support to send in their stories of ‘What Kindness Means to You’ inspired by the Mental Health Foundations Kindness campaign.

We had some great responses from both our staff and our service users as seen here:

Volunteers

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic 

• We contacted each one of our volunteers to check in on them (many are in the vulnerable group themselves e.g. elderly, service user or family carer) and/or asked if they would be able to volunteer with us any other capacity e.g. food shopping and deliveries and phone call befriending.
• From our 87 listed active volunteers, 11 signed up to help with shopping and 14 for phone call befriending.
• A group of 5 of our internal volunteers on Thursday 26th March were able to secure a critical bulk order shop for one of our supported living projects housing 19 of our vulnerable adults. This is set up to be a regular fortnightly collection thanks to our wonderful volunteers and help from the amazing staff at our local Waitrose on Holloway Road!

• We have also reached out and established connections with a number of the Covid-19 Mutual Aid groups in Islington, which have now been split down into wards. We will be looking to expand this to Camden and Haringey as we also have families in these boroughs.
• As part of these built connections with the local community Mutual Aid groups, 6 of our residents at one of our smaller supported housing projects one are now regularly supported with shopping by 10 amazing local volunteers at the Covid-19 Mutual Aid group in St. Georges Ward.
• These groups are fantastically organised and planned so that volunteers buy the shopping with their own money first and are reimbursed electronically later as a trust system, to ensure the safeguarding of vulnerable people’s money. This also helps protect everyone from risk of infection through any money transactions. We couldn’t be more grateful for these wonderful volunteer groups, thank you to everyone involved!
• See below picture of some shopping on our doorsteps thanks to these wonderful volunteers helping their local community.

• Our Volunteer Coordinator’s housemate also walked down and dropped off a vegbox to one of our Supported Living Projects! Thank you!
• Thanks to the continued support from our dedicated volunteer shopping team for Waitrose, we were able to get a huge number of Easter Eggs kindly donated by our local Waitrose on Holloway Road to our frontline staff and residents.
• Since the end of March we have been also been linking identified service users and family carers for phone call befriending. We currently have 9 of our internal volunteers who would usually be helping us with clubs and groups or face-to face befriending checking in weekly on over 16 family carers. One of our lovely volunteer befrienders Mark is pictured below. 
• Since May we have also expanded to include a Peer to Peer Telephone Befriending service, whereby existing Peer to Peer Volunteers and new interested Peer Volunteers are recruited and trained to provide the befriending service to other family carers. We recruited 6 Peer to Peer Volunteer Telephone Befrienders initially, to support over 6 family carers who are particularly isolated.
• We are continuing to direct new recruits to support these volunteers projects as we continue to identify those in need of this kind of befriending support.
• We now have 15 Telephone Befriender Volunteers supporting 27 isolated family carers and service users weekly. This includes 4 Peer to peer family carer volunteers.
• As a direct result of volunteers calls family caseworker staff have been able to further identify carers in need of further support with food, medication, as well as those that need encouragement to access emotional support services and social activities that will be good for their wellbeing. Befrienders have also provided support through this befriending to service users who have been diagnosed with Covid. We even have a volunteer that is now helping his befriendee out in the garden as well!
• In early May three volunteers helped to secure donations, put together and decorate packages and distribute and deliver over 200 gift packages to support our frontline key worker appreciation gift campaign. This included putting together care packages and fruit baskets as pictured below, with two of our amazing volunteers, Annabelle and Rachel.
• These appreciation packages were also distributed to all our frontline volunteers too as well as those providing vital befriending services.
• 3 volunteers recently recruited for newly created Virtual Activities Volunteer. These are going really well so far and include Music Therapy, Arts and Crafts (e.g. growing cress in recycled, decorated containers and paint a rainbow), and upcoming Sensory Cookery Sessions.
• So far over 20 service users across our supported living projects are benefitting from this. These activities not only provide an engaging and meaningful activity to our service users but also allow friends (including those who live in the same supported living projects but currently are still isolating form each other!) a chance to socialise and see friendly and familiar faces from across our community.
• We have also developed corporate volunteer partnerships e.g. helping us create accessible quiz activities to be made available to all our CYP clubs members as well as Outreach and Supported Housing= over 214 service users to be accessed at their own convenience.

It has been critical period as I’m sure you can imagine, but a lot of positive things have happened thanks to our wonderful network of volunteers, as well as through engaging with the local Mutual Aid volunteer groups.

I will continue to update this page as our endeavours move into the longer-term, and we continue to tackle this pandemic together.

Best wishes, Josie (Volunteer & Communications Coordinator)

Groups and Activities (Learning and Leisure)

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic 

• We have delivered 50 play packages to the children and young people we support in Islington. More information on our Play Packages Blog here.
  
• We have started weekly Challenge Tuesday. More information on our blog here.
  
• We have updated our website with some helpful home resources.
• We continue supporting service users and their families while thinking creatively about support we are able to offer during this time, this continues to include support with shopping, medicines, 1:1 support, support at home, and telephone and video check ins.

Last two months have been incredibly hard for everyone, but thanks to our dedicated staff team we have been able to continue supporting some of the most vulnerable individuals and families. Thank you for everything you do and hopefully we will be able to resume our services soon and slowly start adjusting to this new normal!

Fundraising

Our Response to Coronavirus Pandemic 

Since the start of the outbreak we have been busy applying for emergency grants and asking for vital donations to continue supporting our essential services. We are incredibly thankful for all the support we have been receiving.

Here are some highlights:

• Waitrose on Holloway Road has helped us secure a bulk food collection, as well as donating hundreds of Easter eggs to show appreciation to our Key Workers, and also donating a bulk of food that will go out to our Supported Housing Projects.
• Through the Neighbourly scheme, Kentish Town Lidl has chosen Centre 404 as their charity and will be donating food.
• A grant from City Bridge Trust to fund the essential and urgent costs brought about by Covid-19. The City Bridge Trust is one of a number of funders that have come together to provide the London Community Response Fund. This is an organisational grant and will be split between different services, for example in our Learning & Leisure Service will fund iPads for our Children and Young People Club members so they can continue being supported and stimulated virtually at home.

• An additional grant made to current grantees to help organisations cover extra expenses during Covid-19 from Cloudesley awarded to Supporting Families Service towards staff hours and resources for the Islington Carers Project.
• Award from Tesco Bags of Help COVID-19 Communities Fund to enable Supporting Families Service and Learning & Leisure Service to send out postal activity packs consisting of resources for activities and sensory equipment for older family carers as well as children and young people with learning disabilities and/or autism in Camden.
• BBC Children Covid-19 Booster Grant: This is a grant of £5000 designed to help organisations change, adapt and expand their approach to delivering their work thanks to which our Learning and Leisure provision is better able to deliver/co-ordinate support for children and young people in Islington during the pandemic. This includes online home resources and exercises, fun tasks and play ideas, fortnightly telephone calls to maintain social contact, signposting to third-party sources and assisting with posting parcels and collecting medication/vitamins for those who are self-isolating.
• Appreciation Gifts for our Covid-19 Frontline Key Workers and Volunteers – £387 raised to date (20/05/2020)
• Covid-19s impact on Centre 404 and Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre – £70 raised to date (20/05/2020)
• 2.6 Challenge – £792 raised to date (20/05/2020)

We are also encouraging people to fundraise for us. You can find some inspiration here from the fundraising we did as part of 2.6 challenge as well as some general fundraising ideas below.

Fancy organising an event of your own?

There are many things that you could do to fundraise for Centre 404! Here are just a few ideas…

• Virtual Tea or Coffee Mornings
• Virtual Bake Off
• Virtual Quiz
• Virtual fancy dress day
• Sponsored to give something up e.g. sponsored silence, give up alcohol, shave off your beard, give up sugar- anything fun or unusual you can think of!
• Sponsored to do a physical activity that you can do whilst socially distancing or isolating (some ideas in 2.6 Challenge below)

You can organise your event as an individual or as part of a group, if you would like to discuss ideas or have an idea in mind and want to know more then please contact us on SilleA@centre404.org.uk

The 2.6 Challenge

People of all ages and abilities took part in the 2.6 Challenge on Sunday 26^th April – what should have been the date of the 40^th London Marathon – with a host of activities – from walking, running or cycling 2.6 miles, juggling for 2.6 minutes, to holding online workouts with 26 friends or for 26 minutes. The ideas and options for fundraising are endless!

Please click on photo below to be taken to Centre 404’s 2.6 Challenge page and see below for more inspiration and ideas on how you could involved, even now the 2.6 challenge has passed! 🙂

Here are some wonderfully original examples from some of our lovely staff team:

1. Sille our Fundraising Coordinator rollerbladed 26 laps of Clissold Park! Please check our her fundraising page here and photos below! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/silles-26-challenge

2. Josie our Volunteer & Communications Coordinator did 26 yoga poses in 2.6 minutes! Check out her fundraising page here and video below! https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/josie-korda1

3. Our Head of People & Resources, Tracy, and her lovely boys did a 2.6k run to support the staff appreciation campaign. Check out their lovely video here: