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covid19

This page will be kept up to date with information received by the Parish Council.  Please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. the PC with any updates for the page.

Please call the local team at South Norfolk Council on 01508 533747 if you need help or can offer help.

Little Melton survey

Please complete this form so that we can identify people who may need help and who we are not able to contact via the Facebook group.   Please complete the form once for your own household and again for any neighbours who you know can't complete it themselves (it does not matter if other neighbours do this as well, better that we get multiple responses than none!). Once we have receiverd your responses then we will try to identify any houses with no response and will check with them.  Please encourage people to join the Facebook group where possible so that we can push information out quickly.   If you have neighbours who don't use the internet then please consider if you can keep them updated (you can use the Print icon from the dropdown at the top of this Article in order to print this page). 

Sources of information

Health

On 13/03/2020 the Hethersett Sugery cancelled all appointments - please see their website for current situation.  There is advice about Covid19 from the NHS.

Mental Health advice from Rehab4Additiction

Public Transport

Help if you have to isolate

Help for people you have concerns about

Most people will be supported by friends and relatives.  If you have concerns that a neighbour does not have a support network and may not have access to the village Facebook group, then please - 

Financial Support

Help from South Norfolk Council

So far South Norfolk Council have taken over 1,500 calls from local residents needing help. Over the last four days alone, our Help Hub has dealt with over four hundred cases of people requiring urgent help.  We have been able to ask volunteers to help isolating people with shopping, collecting prescriptions or arranging for dogs to be walked.   That's one person helped every 5 minutes - and we're ready to handle even more.

If you or someone dear to you needs help you can call the General Coronavirus Help Hub at South Norfolk.  Please call 01508 533933 (Monday to Friday 08:15 - 17:00) or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or fill in our online form on our website www.south-norfolk.gov.uk if your enquiry can wait until the following day.  Our Help Hub will remain open this weekend, Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 March 09:00 - 17:00 for support, available on the above number.  If you need to contact us urgently out-of-these-hours, please call 0800 3896109

The Council has set up a team of local staff who will be with us all the way over the next few months.   It's their job to ensure nobody is overlooked and to help volunteers focus efforts where it's needed the most.  Hethersett Ward which includes surrounding villages Bawburgh, Lt Melton, and Cringleford, Colney and Keswick have a dedicated team of people who are led by Julie Ringer and Barbara Howard at South Norfolk Council.   You can call them directly on 01508 533747 if you need help or can offer help.

They're keeping the register, which may be enhanced by the names from the Government's list of the especially vulnerable and NHS volunteers. If you need help, we may not have captured your requirements don't be afraid to ask even if you're not in the national lists.   We're there to support everyone. If you have expressed an interest in volunteering, Julie, Barbara or one of their colleagues may call you.

Remember, the Council will not ask you for money.  And you might want to call us back if you're unsure whether the person calling is genuine.   There's no embarrassment about this.  Our main concern is for your safety and security. 

As time goes on, we may need to ask volunteers to do more than fetching or carrying.  We might ask help to assist people get home from hospital by moving a bed downstairs or simply by cutting the grass for those stuck inside.

Finally, everyone in South Norfolk will be getting a letter in the next day or so detailing the help available to the vulnerable, those who are in hardship or for businesses afected by the crisis.   We have a comprehensive action plan to help everyone who has been affected, whatever their circumstances.

You can get all the latest local information here https://www.south-norfolk.gov.uk/residents/communities/coronavirus

Further Information from South Norfolk Council - 03/04/2020

Residents

The Council has a comprehensive mechanism to support vulnerability, utilising our existing help hub model, working with our partners, town and parish councils, community groups and hundreds of volunteers to coordinate our response. On Monday we launched the new County Council number for people to ask for help: 0344 8008020 and residents can also visit  www.norfolk.gov.uk/coronavirus

Our help hub team is in place to respond to requests for help from these new channels and support residents with practical help, mostly around food and medicine enquires. 

We are taking delivery of a range of food products which will be stored at locations across the districts. These supplies are to provide us with emergency food for residents who are in need of immediate support.  Central Government is also providing food for the most vulnerable and the first load was delivered this week.

We will have a main distribution centre with holding sites across the area and we will be working with the current well-established food bank system to distribute food to residents.

This week, we started to contact the most vulnerable residents via a list created from our own data, County Council and the national NHS lists.  These residents are considered to be the most vulnerable and we will be checking they have the support they need. 

Individual volunteering

Volunteering is now being coordinated centrally by Voluntary Norfolk and our hub model is supported by a network of mutual-aid groups that we have set up around South Norfolk and Broadland.  These groups help us by allocating volunteers to support local residents and using local knowledge to feed in details of vulnerable residents. This work is key to ensuring we identify residents in our community. 

Our partners in the voluntary sector are working with us to recruit volunteers for a county wide effort to respond to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.  Already, an additional 75 volunteers have been allocated to work in our districts.

https://www.voluntarynorfolk.org.uk/home-2/volunteering-2/register-to-volunteer-2/

NHS Volunteers- More information about this scheme can be found here: https://www.england.nhs.uk/participation/get-involved/volunteering/nhs-volunteer-responders/

We are working alongside all these volunteers to ensure that help is given to our most vulnerable residents and would like to thank everyone who is contributing to this effort.

Some of the things we can do to help:

We have already seen a 61% increase in calls to our benefit teams with families starting to face financial difficulties. This will link into the hardship fund described above.

Businesses

We have been contacting and supporting our businesses and local companies with help and advice on how to respond to the challenges they face.

Our detailed information on the website and FAQs has meant most businesses are able to get the information they need, and we have already had 15,000 page views across the two websites.

The Councils have taken a step by step approach in working through the various criteria and have helped hundreds of businesses since the restrictions began. We have been able to successfully signpost them to the various affiliated agencies handling elements of the available support and explaining the planned payment mechanism for Council actioned support.  

Where the Business Support Team has been critical, is in triaging those businesses that need further intervention at a local level, sometimes in the form of a friendly voice offering guidance and advice, and sometimes help in solving a real cashflow crisis.

There are several measures that have been announced by Government in the Budget, and subsequently, to support businesses as they face significant disruption because of coronavirus.

These measures include:

This week, in total, we have distributed just under £8 million in grants to 504 businesses in South Norfolk and Broadland.

Our team of advisers in our Economic Growth team are providing support and advice and can be contacted on 01508 533921 or by email at  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Supporting our vulnerable residents

This week we are averaged 550 calls per day to the help hub from vulnerable residents and those in hardship.

Over the last 10 days we have deployed volunteers on 1090 occasions to support residents with supplies of food and medicine.  Most of the residents helped so far, have been over 70 years old, but we are expecting more families to start contacting us as finances become tighter. 

We know that some pharmacies are experiencing problems with queues. If your local pharmacy is having issues, please contact us and we will try and help. We understand that there is not a problem with stock or supply, but that part of the problem is people stock piling medicines.

As well as receiving calls we have also contacted 638 of our most vulnerable residents. These have been identified by the NHS, the County Council and from our own data.  The number of outward calls will increase as we receive more data from the NHS.

Nationally we have seen a rise in domestic abuse from two deaths a week to seven. Rural areas can be particularly vulnerable, and with families isolating we predict more cases, both men and women can be affected.  Any issues please report directly to the police on 101.  Support for housing can be requested via 0808 168 2222 (South Norfolk) 01603 430641 (Broadland) or go to the relevant District Councils’ website.