#community work in the time of pandemic

What's next? I've been Community Worker at a church in Guildford since just before Christmas. I'm getting to know the congregation and regular users of the church. People often remark on how busy our church is - we like it that way.

Most of the people I spend time with whether they're members of the church or people coming in for other activities are at least five years older than me (I'm 55) and there are many who are 20-30 years older than that. So the most vulnerable age groups for COVID-19.

A key aim of my role is to help reduce loneliness and social isolation in Guildford. Practically all the work I do involves welcoming people into our space to do things together. We have weekly dementia-friendly café and singing group and we host a baby clinic fortnightly. We have a Lunch Club for the older members of the church, a well-attended indoor Bowls Club and we hold a Tea Dance and show a film once a month. For some people these are very important parts of their social life and contribute greatly to their well-being. We also hire rooms to lots of groups for fitness classes, counselling and local 12-step meetings. We pride ourselves on being friendly, welcoming and getting to know people well regardless of whether they ever want to come to our religious activities.

And we're a liberal community, the local Bangladeshi Society pray here on Fridays and we're the only church in the town licensed for same-sex marriage, for example.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, my plans were to expand the things we're already doing and add some more, particularly aiming at the age groups we don't see much of. It's not that we're likely to ever completely close our doors (though I guess we will if we have to), but I know I'm not going to see people face to face nearly as much.

So now I'm asking myself "how do we best serve local people and continue to combat loneliness when social distancing and possibly isolation will be the norm for a while?" I may just spend a lot more time on the phone!

We're taking it all day by day and listening to the official guidance as well as communally discerning what's in our hearts. We want to continue to be a gift to our community.

I see lots of you switching to working at home but I have reservations about the practicalities of running our dementia-friendly café as a teleconference :) I'd love to hear what others in similar situations are doing.

This post started out as a thread on twitter, but it works well all in one go too :)