Blackpool FC Community Trust column: Coming together for a new academic year ... and tackling loneliness

The programme focused on engaging some of the most vulnerable children in our primary schools and supporting families of key workers by providing sports activities in a Covid-safe environment and also a free meal at each session.

Ninety eight per cent of the children we engaged said they enjoyed and ate all of their healthy lunch.

One hundred per cent enjoyed working with the sports coaches, 98 per cent made new friends and 53 per cent said they would have been doing nothing at home had they not attended. A further 25 per cent said they would have spent the day on a games console or watching TV.

This past week has been the start of the academic year for our Blackpool FC Sports College students.

It’s been great to restart face-to-face delivery for these people and we were very proud to introduce a record number of 70 new BTEC Education students into the programme as well as 17 degree students.

As part of their introduction week, they spent a great Thursday afternoon with Blackpool FC head coach Neil Critchley.

Neil spoke to the group about his coaching journey and career, and then answered some very challenging questions.

The students also enjoyed an internal football competition at our home game fixture venue, AFC Blackpool.

We also had the joy of restarting our Kickstart Traineeship programme for people aged 16 to 24.

Twenty four new students have started their journey with us, which will run for 12 weeks, with the intention of seeing them develop their skills and qualifications to enter the employment world in the future.

We have developed our facilities to be Covid-safe and risk assessments are in place for these programmes to be reintroduced.

The team have worked unbelievably hard to make our programmes as safe as possible and to be delivered face-to-face.

And I’m very proud that they have shared my vision for our work to return to normal as much as is possible.

Let’s hope now that we can all remain sensible and safe, allowing all provisions to continue without a further lockdown.

ASHLEY HACKETT (CEO)

Tackling Loneliness Together is a programme aimed at improving social inclusion and decreasing social isolation across 32 local authority areas, including Blackpool.

At Blackpool FC Community Trust we aim to engage with those who are elderly, living in a low-income area, living with long- term health conditions, living with a disability, widowed or living alone.

We have numerous opportunities to support those we engage with, including phone call support, postal offers, online session support, garden gate conversations and NCS local action.

The intentions of Tackling Loneliness Together, which is funded by the Government and EFL Trust, is to identify those who are isolated and suffer from a lack of social activity.

By working with numerous external partners, we can create a network that gives us a greater reach and access to those most in need, while also creating a real sense of community.

Once we have identified those in need of support, our aim is to provide them with the support they need to feel less isolated, whether it be phone calls, inclusion in our online social sessions or face to face garden gate visits.

By catering to the needs of the individual, we can provide them with the support they need at the right time. We have so far engaged with 180 individuals.

We identified 500 season ticket holders aged 60 to 90+ who we feel may need some support.

This led to the creation of a wellbeing check letter, in which we introduced ourselves and the programme, while offering support for those who are suffering from social isolation.

In this letter we included a well-wishing message from the club manager Neil Critchley letting the season ticket holders know they are being missed by the football club.

A big part of the project are volunteers and we have been fortunate to have identified and introduced volunteers to the programme.

Our volunteers have helped with the creation of quizzes for our postal offer, packing our letters to season ticket holders and assisting with phone support calls and garden gate conversations.

The work of the volunteers has been excellent and they are an integral part of the Tackling Loneliness Team. We have also identified certain people we have engaged with who may also like to help volunteer moving forward.

A great example of our partnership work in action was our garden gate visit with a gentleman named Ronald.

Ronald is in his 90s and lives alone. His family live overseas and he had very little interaction with people.

After creating a working partnership with Blackpool Coastal Housing, we were made aware of Ronald. We decided to go visit him on his 94th birthday, taking him a card from the Community Trust, alongside Blackpool Coastal Housing and Red Cross.

Ronald was delighted to see us as he rarely gets visitors and really appreciated the cards and well wishes.

We had a good chat with Ronald and informed him of our plans to hopefully include him in our online offer to increase his social interaction.

This is a perfect example of community providers working together to help cater to the needs of those in Blackpool.

Lee Kenworthy, health officer at BFCCT, said: “We have made a great start to the project, reaching those in need and creating a strong partnership network that enables us to reach across Blackpool and tackle loneliness together.”

For more information on BFCCT call 01253 348 691, visit www.BFCCT.co.uk or follow BFCCT on social media.

LAUREN CHOLMONDELEY