With the Coronavirus Pandemic, people with sight or hearing impairments have been hit harder than the wider population. We secured funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to provide Sensory Packs to our Centre Users to help keep up their wellbeing through this difficult time.
The decision to produce Sensory Packs came after consulting with Centre users. In the early days, there were lots of fears about food parcels and many charities stepped up to the plate brilliantly. Because of this, and by speaking to people through our regular befriending calls we gathered food and supplies was less of a problem than not being able to get out and not being able to come the the Centre.
We hatched a plot to provide all our Centre Users with some important items like accessible recipes, puzzles, games and aromatherapy items. For some, in more dire need, we also supplied personal listening devices to replace broken hearing aids on a temporary basis and RambleTags to help blind and partially sighted people get out safely with the aid of a friend or family member.
Centre Manager jacquie Winning explained: "We had Centre Users asking for all sorts of things to relieve the monotony of lockdown. Of course, with many of our Centre users having to shield due to additional health challenges it was very difficult for them to stay positive through those long months. We came up with the idea of Sensory Packs to provide a little bit of joy and relief to this vulnerable community and we can't thank the National Lottery Community Fund enough for supporting our work."
Packs were made up under strict Coronavirus restrictions by our staff and volunteers then distributed across Forth Valley in our minibus over several days. One person commented it was "like Christmas all over again" and the response from everyone was extremely positive.
We made a short video of our mission to Stirling with the Sensory Packs which you can see here on our YouTube Channel. The video has subtitles (please click on the CC or Closed Caption button) but is not, at present audio described.