The community needs as many people as possible to volunteer to help their friends, family and neighbours in your street. There will be a structured volunteering response for the most vulnerable households that are shielding and do not have any other support from their family or neighbours. The best way you can help is to set up a street/ street cluster support group if you do not already have one running – or to offer your help in one that is already set up.
Setting up the group
- Contact Community CVS so you can find out about wider help and getting support with requests that you can’t deal with in your street group.
- If there is already a WhatsApp group in your street, the best thing would be to use this. It saves you having to set something up, and means that some people are already in touch with each other.
- If there isn’t a group, or you don’t know about one, set up a local WhatsApp group and give it the name of your street. If it’s a very little street, you might want to include other streets, but it’s best to keep it small.
- If you can find someone else or a small group who can share the job with you, that would be good – this means there are more people doing the work and will be useful if anyone gets ill or has a problem with their phone.
- You need to make sure everyone in the street knows about the group. The easiest way is probably to do a leaflet and put it through everyone’s door – you can ask other people to help with this if they feel OK to do this. Make sure you do this safely (wash your hands before and after you do it, and don’t touch your face while you are putting them through the doors).
- The leaflet should give your contact details, so people can join the group and/or ask for help. It should also say what help you can offer. You need to make sure people who are not on WhatsApp can contact you by mobile or phone. There is a template leaflet here that you can change – just add your road name and contact details.
- When new people contact you, send them a link to join the group. When they join, it’s nice to say hello and ask their name and house number – then other people in the group can also say hello and where they are.