Covid 19 - How our work has changed
We have been working hard over the last few weeks to deliver our adapted offer so that children and families get what they need right now, during these unprecedented times.
There are so many fantastic services already in existence and popping up all over West London at the moment, yet despite this volume of support, we are finding that many of the families we regularly work with:
- are suffering emotional stress in the home
- are unable to get the food they need
- cannot access the tech required for their children to engage in developmental and learning opportunities to stop them falling further behind at school
Our Link Workers have been inundated with requests for urgent help to meet basic needs, which they are well-placed to provide due to their relationships, and are also doing their best to continue their regular work, providing ongoing guidance to ensure children and young people's futures aren't derailed by Covid-19.
It has been hugely encouraging for all of us at West London Zone to receive donations with endorsements from our funders that they trust us to direct support to those who need it most because we know our community well.
We are grateful to everyone and every organisation that has supported us these last few weeks, and to all of our partners who have adapted with us to do our best work for children and families in our part of West London.
Below you can see some examples of practical support we are providing, with stories from our Link Workers.
- Rapidly flexed our delivery model to adapt to the circumstance
- Seized the opportunity to further strengthen our relationships with the families we support
- Leveraged our deep local partnerships to provide a personalised service for every family
- Worked very closely with schools to support the Free School Meals voucher distribution, advise on causes for concern, and act as intermediaries to support online learning
- Moved our organisation online to enable digital working with our entire network
- Stepped up communication, management and supervision support for all of WLZ to stay safe and healthy, working effectively and sustainably
- Raised additional funds through a crowdfunding appeal and extra support from current funders
