During these unprecedented times, it is vital that we respond to your needs and help you to help your community. Whether you are a new community group that has formed in response to Covid-19, or an existing group or organisation that is carrying out new activities, these are the resources for you.
We are continuously updating useful information and guides to support you and your voluntary group. It is important that while you provide a community response, you also safeguard yourself, volunteers and vulnerable people in your community.
***Volunteering during lockdown***
Unless Government guidance changes, volunteers can still help out those in their community. Please exercise sensible action over this. Limit shopping trips and deliveries as much as you can. Perhaps collate lists and only do the shopping once or twice a day – rather than volunteers going out repeatedly on shopping errands.
Toolkits & Guides Safeguarding Funding Managing or Leading Volunteers
COVID-19 Community Groups Survey
We are a collective of Suffolk based organisations who want to ensure that your organisation, scheme or group are receiving helpful and timely information, have sufficient resources and, where necessary, adequate funding. This important feedback will be used to inform and influence ongoing support and guidance. The organisations involved with this survey are listed at the end with links to their websites. If you have any queries about this survey, please contact info@communityactionsuffolk.org.uk
Toolkits & Guides
These 6 key priorities guides are very good place to start when setting up your group. They will give you some key priorities to help your group be safe and effective. Once you have read and digested these, you may want to move on to the more comprehensive resources.
We have put together a number of different guides so there is something for every type of group or organisation. They are designed for you to dip in and out of and to provide you with some sensible considerations. We have provided templates so that you don’t have to start from scratch.
Peer Support Facebook group
We have set up a closed Facebook group especially for the leaders of the new Covid-19 Community Response Groups – some of you might be brand new to the world of volunteering!
The Facebook group is a forum for you to share your challenges and solutions and learn from each other across the county. We are all in this together, and it is important that while so many are self-isolating, you don’t feel isolated yourself. The groups will be moderated by Community Action Suffolk Staff who can input their experience and signpost where necessary.
The discussions on this Facebook group will be important, as it will help us to see what the common challenges are. Please click on the button below and answer the quick questions to join.
Safeguarding
You will want to ensure that those who are vulnerable in your community are protected and appropriate action taken if abuse or neglect is suspected. We have put together resources to help you ensure you and your volunteers understand what safeguarding is and what your responsibilities are.
A range of free safeguarding documents, training and guides from Community Action Suffolk are also available on the Safeguarding page of the CAS website.
Safeguarding tips from Robin on Vimeo.
Other videos
Funding
You may need a little funding to help with your activities. Here are some resources to help you with this.
Managing and Leading Volunteers
You have probably found yourself in the position where you are now leading a small or even large group of volunteers. Please head over to our section on Managing and Leading Volunteers for some resources to help you in what might be a brand new role for you! We believe that a little planning and support can help avoid problems further down the line and enable you to celebrate with your volunteers the positive impact you are making in your community.