From its onset in March 2020, the Covid-19 crisis impacted disproportionately on the elderly, the people we support. It created increased isolation, fear and uncertainty, forcing families to stay apart from their loved ones, leaving many frail older people without the practical help and emotional support they needed to stay safe and well.

Vulnerable members of our local community were more anxious, frightened and confused. They experienced deterioration of mental health and fitness levels. They had increased needs for not only food, medication and other supplies but emotional support. They could no longer access practical support such as help with housework, cooking, reading, medication, hair-washing, hair-brushing, toenail cutting.

They could longer have face-to-face conversations and mental stimulation or access to IT support in the home (to improve digital skills or fix IT problems).

Our older volunteers could no longer make visits to people’s homes to provide emotional support, complete welfare benefits forms or carry out small DIY jobs.

Before the crisis began, we were already concerned about the large numbers of older people who were disadvantaged and isolated. We knew with certainty it would get more difficult and that older people’s needs would sky-rocket. We therefore had to act.

Zero

In mid-March, before the Government announced lockdown, we stood down our normal, revenue-earning activities at zero notice - because it was the right thing to do. We redirected our staff and volunteers and turned our Raleigh House day centre into a food distribution centre. We took on new clients in desperate need and readied ourselves for new challenges, like hospital discharges.

Our social prescribing team, which works with local GP practices, was speedily harnessed to begin working through lists of hundreds of patients identified as vulnerable, calling people to make sure they were safe.

We promptly applied for emergency funding from the London Community Response Fund, demonstrating the demands we were facing, and were successful.

For 12 weeks at the height of the pandemic, we worked with Kingston Council and Kingston Hospital to provide support for hospital discharges, and support for vulnerable people at home. In 'normal' times we operate during 'normal' 9-5 business hours Monday to Friday. For those 12 weeks, and again in January and February 2021, our telephone lines were open 7 days per week, 8am to 8pm, including the 2020 Easter and May bank holidays, with Help@Home staff, our Handyperson team and a crew from our Kingston Community Furniture service on standby to respond.

Befrienders

We shopped for people who couldn’t go out, we collected prescriptions and delivered medication, we made thousands of ‘safe and well’ phone calls, we moved furniture for hospital beds to be installed, fitted key safes, we provided telephone befrienders for the newly isolated and emotional support for people struggling to cope with lockdown.

Our objective has always been to work holistically with people, for them not to experience artificial barriers between our own different services. This approach proved highly successful during those most challenging months, illustrated by examples and feedback from those we supported:

‘The Royal Marsden recommended Staywell to provide assistance to my father during Covid-19 restrictions and in case of side effects from his radiotherapy. My father lives alone (all close family live overseas). I needed to find a local, reliable and caring service to provide regular shopping. The staff at Staywell have been enormously understanding of the challenges and my father's strong desire to retain as much independence as possible. Given the situation with nursing homes and Covid-19, having him remain at home has been a blessing.

The service was free. Communication is key and all of the team have been a pleasure to work with: friendly and understanding. Staff singing Happy Birthday when they dropped off Dad's shopping, including a gift purchased on my behalf, really lifted his spirits. In this time of isolation, those little touches mean a lot. Staywell have proved to be a lifeline for my family.’ (Client's relative)

Covid - the year in numbers

2020-21 was Staywell's busiest year ever, dominated by the pandemic, its effects on our users and our organisation. We dealt with 4,173 referrals.

2,907 referrals came from GPs, 428 were existing users who we continued to support throughout the year whilst building- based services were unavoidably closed, 316 were self-referrals or referred by family, 522 were from other sources, including Adult Social Care, Kingston Hospital and other local hospitals, community healthcare, and many other organisations and individuals.

We carried out assessments with 3,666 people to make sure they were safe and well during the pandemic.

We provided support to 795 households who needed it - 22% of those contacted for assessment needed our support. The support provided included 'safe and well' checks, shopping, collection and delivery of prescriptions, provision of food parcels, meal preparation, befriending - as well as more involved casework by our community teams.

On average, the number of tasks per client was 9.7, including 1,738 individual shopping trips.

51 volunteer befrienders supported people with regular phone calls between 1 and 3 times per week, making around 5,000 calls over the year.

‘Just being able to talk is of incredible benefit to me.’ (Client)

Our Help at Home service provided regular support to over 200 people, with over 7,700 visits completed. Our Handyperson service supported 132 people, with 245 home visits.

Our Information and Advice service dealt with 754 referrals. Of these, we assisted 135 individuals with applications for benefits such as Attendance Allowance, Housing Benefit, Pension Credit and transport benefits – the value of the successful claims was over £80,000.

We supported 158 discharges from Kingston Hospital.

'Staywell have been much valued partners in providing essential, holistic and timely support to discharges. 10/10. Really helpful. Great team. Pleasure to do business with!’ (Kingston Hospital)

We delivered our newsletter, Staywell News, containing useful information on Pension Credit, key safes and general service information to 1,297 households just before Christmas 2020. We provided and delivered 150 Christmas food parcels to very isolated older people.

Overall this work involved 14,144 phone calls.

Marathon

This work was achieved through the commitment of our staff, above and beyond their paid roles, and their willingness to go not just the extra mile, but the extra marathon! It was supported and enormously complemented by the input of a team of dedicated, trained volunteers.

Staywell prides itself on its innovation, not just during the time of Covid, but through steady innovation over 80 years of frontline service provision in our local community. Whilst we are innovative, we also have to be sustainable and be here for our community 80 years hence.

Pre-pandemic we were working towards digital transformation, recognising that this would be an essential component in our ability to survive, thrive and meet the needs of our clients in the future. The pandemic forced us to accelerate this transformation, and the cloud-based systems that we had begun to develop came into their own. Whilst we maintained a team based physically in our New Malden head office, delivering the practical services described above, the majority of our community-facing team were able to transition immediately to home-based and virtual working. Whilst we can't claim this was seamless (who can?!!) we were in a much better position than many charities, which sadly went to the wall as a consequence of the pandemic, and the lessons we've learned from the enforced changes to our working practices were applied in the development of our services when 'normality' began to return.

Partnership working is key to our success. We recognise that we can't achieve the best outcomes for our clients alone. Relationships with our partners, notably those in Health, were strengthened through the work during those months, with the result that we expanded and developed our joint work. This can only be good for our local community, especially as we are now dealing with the longer-term consequences of Covid-19-related lockdown and pandemic-associated physical, mental, and social well-being effects on the older population.