Tuesday 23 March 2021 the first anniversary of the first national Coronavirus lockdown.

The day was marked with a minute's silence to remember those we have lost to the virus and the day was spend by many reflecting on what has been a very challenging year.

Going into a national lockdown on 23 March last year was difficult for all of us and many Islington residents needed support and assistance. Here at Help on Your Doorstep, we made sure to adapt our services quickly and effectively to ensure that we could offer the support needed by people across Islington.

Before Coronavirus hit, most of our services were including our Connect Advice Service and our Good Neighbours Schemes, were offered face to face. Our team worked hard and fast to be able to carry on providing these services online and over the phone while working from home. We put more work into sharing information and updates on our website and via social media in order to keep residents up to date with news and information about help and services open to them. We started a new volunteer service to provide phone befriending to isolated and shielding residents and to help with essential deliveries. We also worked with many of our amazing partners to ensure that our digitally excluded residents and clients were able to access guidance and support. Ways we adapted our services included phone bingo, online football and helping people to get online.

We are proud to share that since March 2020 -

• Our Connect and Social Prescribing teams have supported over 2,000 residents.
• Our Good Neighbours Scheme has involved over 600 residents in community activities online, over the phone or in person.
• Our volunteers have provided ongoing phone befriending or help with essential supplies to over 180 isolated residents.
• We have had over 11,000 people access our online resources.

Moving forwards,we will continue our work with Islington residents and will use all that we have learnt and experienced over the past year to shape our services and support as many people as we can.

We are looking forward to returning to our offices and community venues later in the year and hope to be holding some outside events and drop-ins from April onwards. Our return will be phased according to government guidance in order to ensure the safety of our staff, volunteers and residents.

We will keep you up to date with all our plans via our website, our social media channels and via our monthly update.

In the meantime you can contact us by phone or by email and keep in touch with us via social media.