23 March 2020
Ashfield Voluntary Action, Ashfield District Council, the local NHS Trust and the Voluntary Sector are all working together to provide the best possible package of action, support and advice through these immensley difficult times. We want to ensure that our community is kept informed of local measures.
MEASURES TO INCREASE THE NUMBER OF AVAILABLE BEDS IN KINGS MILL HOSPITAL TO DEAL WITH THE CORONAVIRUS
In order to ensure that our local NHS Trust, Sherwood Forest Hospital Trust, is as well-prepared as possible to manage the anticipated number of cases of COVID-19 needing hospitalisation the Trust and Local Government are working together to significantly reduce the number of people currently in Kings Mill Hospital. This will be achieved by discharging patients wherever possible to their home or to a care setting. We will include links to this information on Sherwood Forest Hospital Trust and Ashfield District Council as soon as it the information is available.
LOCAL SUPPORT FOR ELDERLY AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE IN OUR COMMUNITY
Ashfield Voluntary Action has seen a groundswell of support for vulnerable and elderly members of the community. We are delighted to see that there has been a really strong interest in setting up local projects to help the most vulnerable people in our community.
ASHFIELD VOLUNTARY ACTION - YOUR ONE-STOP SHOP FOR LOCAL INFORMATION
We are in the process of compiling a list of local projects (coming soon) and will also support these groups to ensure that they are well-resourced and have everything in place to help and support local groups and people. We will also be putting together simple guidance - Top Tips on Staying Safe to help ensure that you and your loved ones don't fall victim to scams. Check out our website over the next day or two to keep informed as we will add information regularly.
ASHFIELD VOLUNTARY ACTION - WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH GROUPS?
The current pandemic meant that we had to make the difficult but neccesasy choice to suspend all groups run at Ashfield Voluntary Action for the time being. This is not a decision we took lightly, but was the right and proper action to protect both service users and staff. We are currently looking at alternative solutions to provide support to people who would otherwise may be totally isolated. Check out our website regularly for more information on the measures we put in place.
ASHFIELD AND MANSFIELD EMERGENCY FOODBANK
Ashfield Voluntary Action used to run an emergency food bank. As the level of need increased, we realised that we no longer had the capacity to run the foodbank and handed over the operation to St John's Community Foodbank in Kirkby Woodhouse.
We continue to work in partnership with St John's and Mansfield CVS to support the operation of this project which now runs as a telephone referral scheme across Ashfield and Mansfield. St John's advise us that people have recently been trying to self refer to the scheme. Furthermore, the current situation with food hoarding means that the foodbank is running extremely low on supplies. The foodbank is intended as an emergency stop gap to work alongside other larger local initiatives. Unfortunately Ashfield and Mansfield Emergency Foodbank does not have the resources to meet an increase in need or to change the way it operates. The project is run by a very small team of dedicated and hard-working volunteers who run the foodbank on a shoe string and work very hard to support the community. Unfortunately, whilst they recognise that the current situation is extremely difficult they cannot accept self referrals to the scheme.
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