My year on the front line...
It is universally accepted that the care sector is living through the most challenging period in living history....
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As lockdown restrictions ease, Suffolk’s leading charity The Green Light Trust like other organisations has had to adapt further to the challenges that working through a global pandemic expose.
The charity had managed to maintain contact with those in our community faced with complex challenges of social exclusion through streaming its online streaming programme Air but now it wanted to return to work in person. The online Air programme had proved to be remarkably successful during the height of the pandemic. It had maintained a lifeline to those individuals the trust were already working with locally, but it had also enabled the charity to extend its reach, as those who needed help contacted the Trust from locations as far away as Liverpool.
Some of the team continued to work from home whilst others were coming back onto their three sites as gradually the trust recommences running its programmes. The team at the trust wanted to return to in-person programmes across all its sites as soon as possible but how to do that safely for staff and colleagues. Testing was going to be part of the solution but it’s more challenging on multiple sites and when resources are naturally limited to set up in house testing. It’s just not financially feasible or logistically possible.
The Trust instead decided to implement a testing regime by asking its staff to test themselves using lateral flow tests twice a week at home and register the tests in the normal way. This was more flexible and was convenient for staff as they could just collect the tests from work when it suited them. There was high take-up and acceptance amongst the staff at the Trust who were already used to testing themselves if they had primary school-age children and a willingness that this would help get the Trust to be able to work face to face. Homeworking has some benefits, but zoom cannot replace working outside in a woodland setting. The Trust runs its face-to-face programmes in some of Suffolk’s beautiful woodland settings using the catalyst of nature to help individuals come to terms with the challenges that they are facing and provide them with the tools and building blocks to change their lives.
The testing programme has been running for the last couple of weeks and The Green Light Trust has found that it is easy to register with the programme and so far with the support of the staff has been working well so far.
