An alliance made up of five well-known charities have used their expertise to help Greenwich residents access key support initiatives.
The Connecting Communities Alliance (CCA) provides support to Greenwich residents on a range of services including LGBT, disabilities, ageing and mental health services.
The alliance, made up of Metro, Mencap, Metro GAD, Age UK and Mind and funded by the Royal Borough of Greenwich, was formed in 2019 and helps connect people to the correct mainstream services for their needs, such as providing volunteers to support people to attend meetings.
Metro CEO Andrew Evans believes the alliance has been successful, especially considering the setback of the coronavirus pandemic.
Evans said: “As a partnership we were working together to introduce a collaborative approach to supporting people and their needs to accessing mainstream services.
“As partners, I valued the partnership and we’re committed to work together moving forward. We just hope we can do the best that we can for the residents of Greenwich.
“It was exceedingly difficult during the various lockdowns.
“Many clients who were doing well found it difficult to cope. They weren’t able to cope with situations that they might have previously.
“We found that through our clients and our partners did as well.”
After moving online quickly, the CCA realised many clients would struggle to access the organisation in the same way, so over lockdown, continued to do in-person work when it was vital but mostly did video calls.
For those who didn’t have the capabilities, the alliance looked to find ways to improve and increase the technical connection to other support services.
Each of the alliance members focused on different services which the Greenwich residents would best be supported by.
Evans said: “All of our organisations are committed to working together, making sure we still have regular meetings operationally.
“By bringing our organisations together we have created a lot of success.
“We just hope we can do the best that we can for the residents of Greenwich.”
Featured Image Credit: Larry Myhre (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
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