As you know, England, Scotland and Wales have recently announced a delay to their planned dates for lifting further/remaining COVID restrictions. It's likely that Northern Ireland will do likewise. We expect further announcements on:
England – 5 July
N Ireland – 17 June (but no information at time of writing)
Scotland – 21 June
Wales – 15 July
Where are we now?
We’ve been running Zoom sessions to support groups that wish to, to restart services offered by a professional through a Service Level Agreement, plus some social activities and meetings. Groups who are considering restarting any of these need to check that they understand what COVID/number restrictions are in place in their area/nation.
If (having attended one of our Zoom sessions and had new paperwork approved) your group had been planning to restart a service or activity in July on the basis of all COVID/number restrictions having been lifted, you’ll need to decide whether you still want to proceed within the existing guidelines.
Restart of fundraising
Some activities remain on hold, as we continue to review which services and activities can restart within the governmental guidelines, and when. However, we know some of our groups are very keen to resume face-to-face fundraising, so we’re pleased to announce that we can now support you to restart the following activities from 28 June:
- Store collections
- Having a stall or cheering point at organised events
- Organising low-level physical events (wheel and walks, etc)
- Street collections
If your group would like to restart any of these fundraising activities, then somebody from the Coordinating Team, or the activity organiser, will need to attend a Zoom training session with Martin Mears (Head of Events & Community Fundraising). Martin will explain the new COVID Risk Assessment documents you’ll need to complete and submit in order to resume fundraising safely, and the support we can give you with this.
The first two Zoom sessions for fundraising training are on Friday 25 June at 2pm (sign up here) and Thursday 1 July at 6pm (sign up here). We’ll add more dates later.
Other services and activities
If your group would like to restart services offered by a professional through a Service Level Agreement (such as one-to-one therapy, or group exercise classes), and hasn’t yet sent somebody to one of the Zoom training sessions for that, you can find new dates here.
If your group would like to restart certain social activities and meetings, and hasn’t yet sent somebody to one of the Zoom training sessions for that, you can find new dates here.
How many different Zoom sessions does our group need to attend?
To summarise, we’re now running three different sets of Zoom sessions to support three different types of service/activity requiring three different types of paperwork:
Services offered by a professional through a Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Certain social activities and meetings, using Guidance documents
Certain fundraising activities, using Guidance and/or Risk Assessment documents
So, if your group wishes to restart all three types, someone would need to attend all three of the different Zoom sessions. But there’s absolutely no pressure for any group to restart any face-to-face activity at all until volunteers and service users feel comfortable to do so.
You can find more information here.
What about everything else?
All other services and activities remain on hold, and may continue to be so for a period after government rules allow them to restart. We need time to interpret governmental guidance, once fully issued, and to adapt our paperwork and processes accordingly.
We’ll update you again in the next email on 2 July.
