Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Charity keeping check on vulnerable in community
STAFF at a Hilltownbased cha r it y a re making sure their most vulnerable service users are not left feeling lonely during the coronavirus lockdown.
The team at the city’s Grey Lodge Settlement has spent the past couple of weeks delivering food and medicine to those who need it, and making hundreds of phone calls to check on their regular users.
The facility normally offers a range of community groups and projects in the Hilltown area, such as playgroups and activities for OAPs.
However, since the global pandemic broke out in Scotland, the team has shifted its focus to help people get through the lockdown.
Alan Duncan, who heads the team at the Grey Lodge, said the response has been “fabulous”.
He said: “The team is making between 200 and 300 phone calls every week as a friendship link with playgroup and afterschool parents, and I am speaking to about 50 over-50s who come to our dance groups.
“We started thinking about the friendship link phone calls before the lockdown was announced.
“Trust is starting to build up and the conversations are lengthening each week as they start to learn more about each other.”
As well as the friendship phone calls, Alan and his team are delivering vital supplies such as food and medicine to older people in the area.
However, it is not just older folk Grey Lodge is helping out.
Youth project manager Jen McLean has been reaching out to children and young people in isolation and is keen to make sure they stay connected.
She has been making video calls to all of the youth group members, and is drawing up an eight-week activity programme to make sure they are all kept busy and social in the coming weeks.
Jen said: “We are running our youth groups from home by video call just now and we are in the midst of planning an eight-week programme of activities.
“We are trying to run the groups as normal, just not meeting faceto-face, but we are encouraging them all to put their thinking caps on and come up with some creative ideas of what we can do. One of the parents I video-called last week said she was so grateful we were doing this because her son had been down in the dumps – she said she was so happy to see a smile on his face.
“For many people, these groups are the only socialising they do, so this is helping them to stay a bit more upbeat.”