Battersea Corona Virus Angels – Update (24Mar21)

Canon Simon Butler, Vicar of St Mary’s Battersea (and a trustee of KLS), has just written an update to the Coronavirus Angels volunteers. As we’re a partner in this group we thought we would share it here. 

Steps to Freedom: our final offering, and closing the service

Hello everyone,

With the sun shining today, it’s a sure sign that Spring is on the way. It’s great to hear that half of the population has now had its first vaccine. Things are looking up.

Today marks the anniversary of lockdown and this email comes with three aims, to:

  1. Alert you to the final offer we are making as Coronavirus Angels and to seek your help.
  2. Inform you about the way we intend to wind down the service we offer in the coming weeks.
  3. Thank you once more for all that you have done.

Steps to Freedom

Our final offer to local people from Coronavirus Angels is very simple: instead of shopping and running errands for people, we are inviting people who feel anxious about going out again the chance to go and do what they need to do with an Angels volunteer. We want the most vulnerable to find the confidence to go out again and to begin to take steps to resuming normal life. In the coming days, the flyer above will be delivered to local people and we will try and match up our volunteers who can still help with someone who needs this service. So, here are two requests:

1. If you can deliver flyers from the end of this week into next week…please let us know by texting the Angels number (07714 618577) and we will allocate you a location to deliver to. The leaflets will be available for collection from St Mary’s Church on weekday mornings and on Saturday morning between 9.30am and 11am.

2. If you can help in helping someone take Steps to Freedom…then to avoid any further messaging we will contact volunteers in the normal way to see if you can help. If you can, great; if not, just tell us if we call. That keeps it as simple as possible.

Ending the Service

The Coronavirus Angels coordinators met last week and have decided a programme through which the core work of the Angels will come to an end (befriending will continue until further notice). Simply put the telephone line will close on Monday 12th April. After that you will be able to leave a message and we will reply within 24 hours. We will continue to help our friends who have called on a weekly basis until the 17th May (individual arrangements will be made with each person). Any help we offer with the Steps to Freedom programme will end by the end of June, when the roadmap indicates we shall have all restrictions lifted.

However, we want to ensure that people are signposted to places where they can get help so the flyer going out this next week contains some important contact points to access services that may help. That’s another reason to ask for your help with flyer distribution over the coming week.

Coronavirus Angels support KLS

The  Coronavirus Angels Coordinators and supporters (20 of us in total) took part in the KLS Spring Steps Challenge to help raise money for Katherine Low Settlement. The team walked 1,397,249 steps in 7 days raising a total of £2,525.25 for KLS. We walked in all weathers and directions, visiting Covent Garden, Richmond Park, St Paul’s Cathedral amongst others, and everyone set foot in Battersea Park! The total amount of steps walked in the challenge was over 5 million and raised over £12,000, which all goes to support KLS who do amazing work in the community supporting those in need. Thank you everyone who walked, supported and donated.

Thank You Very Much

We promised that when we emerged from the Coronavirus crisis we would have a big party to celebrate the work of Coronavirus Angels and we intend to keep that promise to you to thank you for the commitment you’ve shown to your neighbours in a time of need. Watch out for a final newsletter later in the spring with more details of a summer party.

Best wishes,

Simon Butler

St Mary’s Battersea & Coronavirus Angels Coordinating Team

Contact

If you need a bit of help from the Angels then do call us on 07394 856 557 and email [email protected]

Support our family

We are committed to building stronger communities and enabling people to challenge themselves and find ways out of isolation through our varied community projects. There are so many ways you can support our work and help us to deliver our services to even more people.

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