Good Neighbours
Sea Mills & Coombe Dingle
Community Hub Update #1
12 May 2020
The Community Hub is a partnership between Bristol City Council and Sea Mills Community Initiatives. I am functioning on behalf of SMCI as the local contact person, as part of my work for Local Friends – partly because this is what Local Friends was set up to do, and partly because it enables me to use the infrastructure which was already in place so we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
People can contact us directly with support requests, but the Community Hub also acts as a single point of contact for the Council regarding support needs in Sea Mills: they receive requests for support, undertake some basic filtering, and pass the appropriate requests on to the local community support hub. We pass the requests on to an appropriate volunteer, and report back when support has been provided.
Support requests appear to largely fall into three areas:
- human contact, where the main need is to have someone to talk to;
- shopping or prescription pickup; and
- dog walking.
Volunteers need to sign up with the Council through their Can Do Bristol scheme, register to be part of the Covid-19 response, and agree to work within the principles set out by the Council. The details and relevant links are on the Local Friends 'Offer Support' page (localfriends.org.uk/gn/offer.htm). You can also use the form on that page to say you would like to stay in touch.
The current need is for someone with a car to walk a dog a few times a week, although things may have changed by the time you read this.
Please sign up if you are already supporting someone, even if you can’t do more at present. It would be good to record through Can Do Bristol the support already being provided – partly so the Council know the real scale of the needs out there, and partly to give confidence that the system actually works. Some kind of local support network will be required for some time to come, and people need to know that there is an effective system to support them should they need it.
One final point: do volunteer to help, even if you are in need of support yourself. One thing this crisis may be teaching us is to be better at both giving and receiving. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to be both helping and receiving help – for example, keeping in touch by telephone or email, but also being supported with their shopping.
Thank you to everyone for your help, ideas and offers so far.
All the best,
Paul.
