Coronavirus: Huge thanks to volunteers supporting Peterborough and Cambridgeshire care leavers during pandemic

After an earlier appeal, the Corporate Parenting team received donations of food, toiletries, baby products, nappies, cleaning products and more. The donations have been used to make hampers filled with the relief supplies for care leavers during isolation.

Since lockdown measures were introduced, the team has distributed 71 hampers and been able to supply all essential items requested.

The team has also put in place measures to:

· Ensure all children and care leavers living in privately rented accommodation are safe and can afford their rent, and have access to food parcels.

· Make sure care leavers returning from university are living in safe and suitable accommodation, or are able to continue studies where necessary.

. Identify any young people who are living in semi-independent accommodation that might be at risk of homelessness if placements close.

Lou Williams, service director for children and safeguarding for Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council, said: “Following our appeal at the start of the lockdown restrictions, we have received a fantastic response from the community, with individuals and organisations offering help and support. These young people are a very vulnerable group, often with no family and few social links to support them through isolation and social distancing.

“I’d like to thank everyone that has helped our young people so far.”

Cambridgeshire County Council and Peterborough City Council have been given a £5,000 grant from Cambridgeshire Community Foundation to provide laptops and pre-loaded memory sticks to enable young people to access technology.

Cllr Lynne Ayres, cabinet member for children’s services, education, skills and the university at Peterborough City Council, said: “It’s fantastic to see people donating and making such a difference during this difficult time.

“The hampers are a brilliant way to provide support to care leavers and I’m very thankful to our teams who have made it happen.”

Meanwhile, requests for help and support coming into the countywide coronavirus hub have continued to rise over the past fortnight.

The hub has received a total of 2,101 telephone enquiries over the past four weeks. The team has resolved a total of 5,856 individual requests for help and support, which include delivering urgent food supplies to 832 people.

A further 129 people have been provided with more specialist food, for example that is suitable for people who are seriously ill.

There are now almost 15,000 people on the registered shielded list across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and around a third of this group have told the councils that they have no support in place and will need their assistance.

Around 5,000 shielded people across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are receiving a national food delivery over the course of this week.