By Gillo Newsham, Founder, Covid-19 Southport Support Group (Corona virus 2020)
I set up the Covid-19 Southport & Formby Facebook Support Group because I saw that people were wanting to help each other during the lockdown.
How could Southport respond to the Coronavirus? The same as in almost any crisis, by turning to the community.
I am an online journalist and I know that social media and technology is a boon in times like this, but some elderly or vulnerable people don’t have access to it. So although we set up on Facebook, the plan was to connect people in their neighbourhoods.
We now have a whole team of volunteers, some helping with the Facebook group and others organising support groups.
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We have many success stories in our group – people posting an appeal for something simple; like shopping to be picked up, or where they can get a thermometer, and strangers and neighbours responding.
We have sons, daughters, grandchildren who live hundreds of miles away, some live abroad, and they have come into the group and asked for people to check in on their parents, or grandparents, and instantly got positive responses.
But we want to do more. We are very aware that the most vulnerable people will probably not have the internet or awareness of it. Some don’t have a mobile or a phone.
So we are setting up street-based groups, across as much of Southport as we can.
Our group members are leafleting where they live, so that the response is very local. We are using technology as well, setting up WhatsApp telephone groups to coordinate. It’s already working.
One volunteer, Katie Langley and her children Megan and James, have delivered 200 leaflets around their home in High Park. They are already planning a Stay At Home Street Party on May 8th for VE Day 75th anniversary, asking people to decorate their houses in red, white and blue and have a picnic in their own front gardens.
They have done this themselves. That’s the idea behind the local street groups, they run themselves for themselves. The Facebook group remains in the background as a resource.
We hope that most people, eventually, will get a leaflet through their door, offering a phone number to call if they need help, and inviting those who want to, to join a WhatsApp group for their street. This way neighbours can help each other, keep an eye on any vulnerable people who live among them and help make the neighbourhood a community.
The best way to find out more is to join our Facebook group where volunteers are organising WhatsApp groups.: https://www.facebook.com/groups/200618958018826/
