Care Merseyside is a social prescribing charity based in Knowsley and a partner of the Dr Maassarani & Partners (Tower Hill). They have redesigned the delivery of their schedule of activities, which previously involved things like creative writing classes, exercise and drama classes, and are contacting all their beneficiaries to offer support. They quickly set up a new programme intervention to adapt to the current crisis called ‘Phone a Friend – You’ll Never Walk Alone’.
Their team of Link Workers are working remotely and are calling those most vulnerable in their community on a daily basis for a chat and help with any needs, such as delivering groceries.
By using Elemental, the Care Merseyside team identified up to 300 vulnerable people, and have called them to see if they would wish to be supported by this service.
Each of the Care Merseyside team are using Elemental to find out how the person is feeling and is using a validated measurement tool to measure social isolation levels, which will show a baseline to how isolated the vulnerable people are. The impact of the service will be tracked using Elemental, and this score will be reviewed in a week or two to see if the volunteer system has helped them feel less isolated.
Care Merseyside have contacted local schools to offer their staff and pupils to get involved. The aim of this initiative is to provide enrichment activities for pupils to take part in while working from home, such as letter writing skills and arts and crafts skills. One school came back thanking Care Merseyside for contacting them and described the initiative as “incredible”.
