Rodborough
Rodborough Community Mutual Aid Network
If you live in Rodborough Parish, please join our main WhatsApp group. Please ring our contact line to be added in.
Tell us what street you are on and we can direct you to your nearest Neighbour Network, where you can help us to support our community in this time of crisis.
This is a map showing all the streets that are currently covered by Neighbour Networks as well as the pick up points for leaflets. For a full list of streets in Rodborough with established groups, please scroll to the appendix at the end of this article.
(Press the “play” button to access the map controls)
Draft Strategy
This is an outline of the initial support we can provide over the first few weeks to build up a network that is resilient and ready.
The primary purpose of the Rodborough Response is to:
- Provide a parish level overview of needs and support available / provided
- Assess and respond to local needs at a ‘hyper-local’ (street / block) level
- Share information and resources to ensure a coordinated response, avoiding fragmentation and duplication of effort
- Mobilise resources, where possible and appropriate to respond to need. These might be financial resources and/or products and services (for example, fundraising for Foodbank; providing cooked meals for acutely vulnerable Rodborough residents).
Assessing and responding to local needs
CORE TEAM
We are a group of local residents with various skills/experience who have come together to help our local community organise itself. We do not have all the answers and we are not a professional organisation.
We will be doing our best to co-ordinate action and to liase with the local Schools, Churches, Pubs, Parish and District Council where needed.
Currently this team consists of Helen Elliot-Boult (Volunteer Co-ordinator & Rodborough Community Primary link), Georgia Boon (Volunteer Co-ordinator & Rodborough Church link), Tosca (Volunteer Co-ordinator & Stroud Coronavirus Community) and Robin Layfield (website & Parish/District Council liaison). Carole Oosthuysen is linking in from the Tabernacle, Juliette Morton is liaison for Gastrells.
WhatsApp group
There is a Rodborough Community Mutual Support WhatsApp group with over 100 people signed up committed to volunteering within the Parish. Please call our contact line to be added in.
Members are encouraged to find or set up Neighbour Networks for their individual streets and to use them to co-ordinate action at the very local level. If you already have a local network with your neighbours then utilise that. Most groups are using WhatsApp to organise but whatever works best for you – tech or no tech.
See list of Neighbour networks
These networks/groups are now leafletting their streets in Rodborough with the #ViralKindness leaflet
Each Neighbour Network has at least one designated Group Co-ordinator / point of contact who can organise the team when a request comes in. This will usually be the person whose number appears on the leaflets.
We are encouraging groups to add the Contact Line number (below) as well, as a fallback in case the contact cannot be reached.
Group Co-ordinator role
- Welcome new members
- Liaise with the Core team
- Take calls and direct team member action
- Escalate where necessary to the core team
- Manage the group itself
- Check on group members’ health and re-task members who are forced to self-isolate
This can be a shared role – if someone falls ill, the group still needs to function. Groups need inbuilt resilience so that if someone drops out for any reason, the group can still function.
Group Member role
Group members work with the Group co-ordinators to complete tasks as they come up on a daily basis.
It is important to point out that all networks/groups don’t have to be organised in this way – whatever works best for you. We are just suggesting this as a good way to organise. As long as your group knows who to contact in order to escalate issues/concerns then any form of organisation is great.
Safeguarding
Safeguarding is our overriding concern. The people that we are trying to help will often be elderly, isolated or vulnerable. Many more people will become vulnerable over the course of this pandemic and it is crucial that we take particular care over safeguarding.
To this end we will look to place volunteers with DBS accreditation in key support roles. We are depending on small close-knit networks of neighbours to work together, taking some comfort in the knowledge that everyone knows everyone else.
It is very important that you do not identify any person who is currently (or who may become) vulnerable in any public spaces – especially on Facebook and in the main Rodborough WhatsApp Group.
Resources
Safeguarding Training notes
Data Protection
We encourage all our volunteers to keep their own notes essential to helping out those people that have requested assistance. This information should be kept safe and secure and should only be used with their permission.
Private information such as health records, sexuality, race, ethnicity and religion is regarded as especially sensitive and we do not encourage recording of this except where necessary. An example of this is where a caller has an underlying health issue that needs specialist support.
Data protection laws exist to protect the rights – especially the right to privacy – of individuals. They are not designed to stop people from helping those in need.
In an emergency, working with partners and sharing information with them can make a real difference to public safety. In fact, it could be more harmful not to share the data than to share it.
Further reading
Personal Health and Wellbeing
It is essential that all volunteers assess their personal risk and health on a daily basis. If there is any doubt whatsoever, stand down.
We encourage all volunteers to keep a brief daily journal of how they feel and to refer back to that to track and trace any change in their wellbeing.
Please: if you have any doubts about your health, notify your co-ordinator and stand down. There are other volunteering tasks that can be done from home without putting you or anyone else at risk.
There is a good example of a daily journal here.
Hygiene
Good hygiene is essential and we recommend reading the following resources ahead of any volunteering activities.
Resources
Hygiene guidelines
Practical steps for Support Work
Contact Line
Local firm Sysconfig have donated a telephone number to us that will be staffed from Friday 21st March. If no-one is available to answer, messages can be left on voicemail and will be actioned as soon as possible.
The purpose of this line is to direct callers to their nearest Neighbour Network, to provide useful signposting to resources and to escalate support requests in an emergency.
For most people their first point of contact will be their local network/group but this number is available as a safe and secure back-up that is available across the Parish. It can also be used if you don’t want to provide your personal number to people in your group.
Skills
If you have skills or resources (medical, technical, cleaning, catering, driving, engineering, social caring, or if you are just good at organising) that you feel can help with this monumental task, please contact Tosca or Georgia at rodboroughcommunity@gmail.com.
We are specifically looking for:
- Contact Line / telephone support
- Telephone befrienders
- DBS accredited volunteers
Current List of Neighbour Networks
New groups are setting up and extending all the time so this list may not be 100% accurate. Many of these Networks cover several streets, not just the street in the name.
Ash Road
Bagpath
Bath Road (Upper) — Clothiers to Golden Cross) (including Frome Avenue & Frome Park Rd)
Bath Road (Lower) — Aldi end
Birch Road
Bowl Hill
Butterrow (includes Butterow Lane, Butterow Hill, Rodborough Lane, Butterow West, Bagpath, Montserrat, Mt Vernon – there are separate groups coordinating each area, join main one first)
Castlemead road
Chandos Road (includes Warwick Close, Heather Close & Hill Court)
Coronation Road
Court Way
Dark Lane
Dudbridge Hill
Dudbridge Meadow
Dudbridge Road
Erin Park
Eros Close
Field Road
Fishers Way
Frome Avenue
Frome Park Road
Glen Park Crescent
Heather Close
Hill Close Estate
Hillside Terrace
Kings Road
Kingscourt Lane
Kitesnest Lane (includes Orchard View, Larksfield Rd, & Birch Rd)
Lower Spillmans
Middle Spillmans
Montserrat
Oak Drive
Old Rectory Close
Orchard View
Over Butterrow
Queens Road
Rodborough Avenue
Rodborough Fields
Rodborough Hill (including Field Rd)
Rodborough Lane
Rooksmoor Hill
Selsley Hill
Shepherds Well
Southgate Crescent
Southgate Gardens
Spillmans Pitch
Spillmans Road
Stanley View
Stringers Close
Stringers Drive
Swells Hill
Tabernacle Walk
The Butts (including Tabernacle Walk & Dark Lane)
The Street
Walkley Hill (includes Old Rectory Close, Church Place, Southgate Crescent, Southgate Gardens, & Courtway)
Warwick Close
Woodhouse Drive
Developing networks
There are no networks that we know of on the following streets. Please get in touch if you live here and a) there is a group that we don’t know about or b) you want to set one up.
Setting up a group is easy, just create a group in WhatsApp (or Facebook messenger or Email) and add your neighbours to it. Once your group is established contact Tosca to be patched in to the rest of the co-ordinators.
Bear Hill
Constance Close
Ham Mill Lane
Middle Spillmans
Rooksmoor Hill
Shepherds Well
Stringers Drive
The Hithe
Further reading
Last updated: 30/3/2020