Time to Shine delivery partners have done a great job over the past few months, adapting their methods and supporting their beneficiaries as best they could. From the start we encouraged staff from different organisations to get together and share ideas around the support they were offering.

With the recognition that lockdown was coming to an end and some form of normal, albeit a very different normal, would emerge we decided to draw delivery partners together to record their learning and share ideas across the city.

The subjects considered included meeting people on their doorsteps for outdoor activity, boosting confidence to help people return to activities, reopening community venues, taking advantage of improved contact to get more people online and how transport might restart. The learning drawn from delivery partners, and other partner organisations, has been combined in a series of short learning briefings, which you can read and download from the Key learning from Covid-19 page of our website.

The briefings include top tips to help people get online, practical advice about opening buildings, information on the equipment and risk assessments you might need if you are thinking about setting up outdoor activities or reopening venues. The issues around transport loom large, as usual, and the briefing contains ideas to help make minibus journeys as safe as possible.

In addition to our own reports our funder, The National Lottery Community Fund (TNLCF), has produced a helpful series of reports drawn from information shared across the 14 Ageing Better programmes in England.

These look at Bridging the Digital Divide, Telephone Befriending, and Covid-19 – Transition Phase. This shared learning, and other useful papers can all be found on the resources section of TNLCF Ageing Better pages.

Jessica Duffy Learning Facilitator
Time to Shine