Sense of community or being connected comes in many forms. It can be simply walking down the street and hearing friendly “hellos” from passersby; meeting up with new friends and chatting for hours; joining a club or a community event and feeling welcomed immediately and attending school.
In response to Covid, we summer squad as gone virtual. Many providers adapted their services to be delivered virtually. The virtual website went live 02 April 2020. There are on average 93 activities ranging from art and crafts (most popular), learning, cooking entertainment, sport, music, wellbeing and SEND specific. There is also a parent section. The site has had 23,135 unique visitors and is ‘live’ until lockdown is lifted. We held an Easter competition and a Covid what it means. The entries ranged from posters, poems, raps and tik tok videos. View the winners on WV Virtual Squad Competition Winners.
Base 25 were commissioned to deliver detached work during lockdown. To help reduce the pressure on emergency services and the risk of young people being criminalised during the COVID-19 outbreak, Base 25 worked closely with WMP to ensure that young people in Wolverhampton are behaving safely and within the expected rules as set out by Government in response to the pandemic. Each morning we have liaised with Police to capture the most up to date information to inform our detached work and the following represents the key ‘hot spot’ areas worked.
62 young people worked with through the street-based work average age between 12 – 16
Their media campaign reached over 16,000 people. The most popular campaign #ISTAYHOME has reached 11700 people and our competition alerts have reached 992 people on average. The detached youth work post reached 3600 people. Base 25 produced a monitoring report and video highlighting their work.
Base continue to offer detached and will do so throughout the summer.
We continue to work with young people, families and the community in identify local issues and working together on solutions. Funding will become available to local community organisation to deliver local activities during the summer holidays.