Our team have been beavering away over the last few weeks to put together a package of support that we can offer to our members. You may not have seen our team face-to-face for a while, but a whole new way of working has been embraced – from working at home through to meetings over the phone and through Zoom. It has been a big learning curve for everyone as we find out what can be organised whilst making sure we comply with current government restrictions.

When it has been necessary for some staff to visit the Centre to collect post, check on the building and to make telephone calls this is being carried out safely in a co-ordinated approach, with either only one person in the building at a time or if it is necessary for two people to be in, they are in separate areas of the Centre.

Most of the telephone support and phone calls that you’re receiving from our operations and therapies teams are being carried out remotely from home – some of this has been made possible through purchasing mobile phones for this purpose and others are using their own landlines and mobiles and using technology to disguise personal numbers.

All our communications and fundraising is going on remotely from people’s homes and our team have been busy writing blogs, newsletters, fundraising bids, social media posts and developing fundraising activities as well as new areas of our website. Our finance team are supporting bids and learning new ways to complete the year-end accounts remotely!

Our therapies team are also taking to their phones to offer exercise support and telephone counselling. They are becoming the stars of the show - offering live exercise sessions over Zoom and making recordings of exercises to feature on our website. We have all worked together to use technology and our website to make these sessions possible.

It’s been a hectic few weeks while we’ve got this package in place and yes, it’s not as perfect as having the Centre open and us operating as normal, but hopefully it goes someway to helping our members keep mobile and supported.

We’re all learning new things about each other too! Getting a chance to meet family members (human and animal) walking past in Zoom meetings, getting a glimpse into people’s rooms and most of all reinforcing what we already knew that we have a great team around us. We’re thankful for this.