Link4Life supports local community during Covid-19

Link4Life Volunteer, Training & Club Development Officer Barry Woodburn shopping for vulnerable residents on behalf of the local Response Hubs

Link4Life, the Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust which leads and manages culture and leisure services on behalf of Rochdale Borough Council is supporting the local effort to support those who are shielding or self-isolating and has created online resources to help people stay active during the lockdown.

Following the closure of its facilities, the majority of Link4Life staff have been placed on furlough in line with the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, however a number of the team have been redeployed to support the delivery of front line services.

Working in partnership with Action Together and Rochdale Borough Council, Link4Life staff have been seconded to the Local Response Hubs, which are providing emergency food parcels, giving assistance with shopping and medicines and providing wellbeing assistance. The #Thrive team are making welfare calls to children and young people who access the service to support their emotional health and wellbeing, and members of the Exercise Referral and Active Living team are making welfare calls to older adults and vulnerable people, typically those with long term health conditions, who usually attend regular sessions at the leisure centres.

The Children and Young People team have been volunteering to deliver PE activities to those children who are still attending school as their parents are keyworkers, and other members of staff have been seconded to residential childcare workers.

Andy King, Chief Executive of Link4Life said: “As a charity working at the heart of the community, our team wanted to help as much as they could. The Local Response Hubs were set up quickly at the start of lockdown, and everyone has worked together to implement things speedily so that we could support those most vulnerable as quickly as possible. I’m really proud of the work that the whole team has achieved over the last few weeks, and will continue in the coming weeks.”

In recent weeks, Link4Life has continued to support its customers despite the gyms, swimming pools, sports halls, events venues and Touchstones museum and art gallery being closed as part of the government lockdown and restrictions on social distancing.

The charity has moved activities online so that customers have access to a variety of resources to help them at home. The free online portal gives lots of ideas for children, adults and older adults:

• link4life.org/at-home

Alongside Link4Life activities and those of their partners, there are also links to some of the great resources available from other organisations to give a range of online workouts, fitness classes, recipes and nutrition, indoor activities, art projects, water safety, virtual tours, online viewing of the boroughs’ artworks collection at Touchstones Rochdale, national theatre broadcasts and mindfulness sessions. There’s also gentle home exercises for older adults and for those managing health conditions such as back pain, and as part of Rochdale Borough Culture Network, the charity has contributed to new creative activity pack which will be available in the coming weeks.

Andy King said: “It’s really important that we continue to support our community as much as possible during this time. Recent research from Sport England shows that adults consider exercise to be more important now than before Coronavirus and believe that it is helping them with their mental health during the outbreak, so we’ve worked to launch alternative ways of providing our health, physical and creative activities so that people have a variety of things to help them to stay busy whilst they are at home.

“We’re aware that a large number of households are home schooling and it can be difficult to keep children entertained so we’ve included a wide range of activities that families can do together too”.