Coronavirus challenges & changes
In my 15 years at Age Concern Luton I’ve never known anything like this week. We’ve stopped lunch clubs, closed our three shops and fundamentally changed everything we do in order to try and help older people who, if the current course is not changed, will die from this disease.
I was heartbroken by the information coming out of Italy, from our NHS and published by the government and we’ve tried to respond to the ever-changing situation as best we can.
Shopping for housebound people when shops are empty is a challenge. Helping many others too scared to go out, or returning home from bare shelves, has required our workers to voluntarily start 3 hours earlier, charm independent shopkeepers and plead with panic-buyers amidst abuse when they have been allowed to pick up bits for multiple vulnerable people. Unfortunately if stocks don’t return to normal in the next week too many people will be running out simultaneously for us to cope.
The outpouring of help from people in the community is amazing but requires a significant logistical effort. Whether there is a way to speed-up DBS checks, transfer these between organisations or some other bright idea is a bigger issue than we can solve. Whilst that needs to be sorted out the best thing you can do is help your vulnerable loved one’s stay in, stay in yourself and shop responsibly.
Messaging is confused. Do we want older people to go out and shop (in silver hours) or try and avoid the supermarket altogether? If it’s the latter, and these hours are only for those completely without help or perhaps don’t see the danger, we can help them with practical support or advice. If everyone goes we can’t direct our limited resources.
Finally I want to say that our staff have been amazing during this time. As an organisation we could have decided to concentrate on those we’re already helping (which is challenging enough!) but instead we are trying to spread ourselves as far and wide as possible to help the maximum amount of people. That our team have done this without question, with good humour and largely off their own backs is truly humbling and we cannot thank them enough.
