In the Community

Within six weeks of the first national lockdown, our employment support and training services were 100% accessible online. Adapting our services meant we could continue to provide essential assistance, connecting people to employers and job opportunities. But we didn’t stop there.

With high levels of unemployment and limited job opportunities, we knew that our customers seeking employment support would benefit from wellbeing sessions too. So we introduced weekly, live, online wellbeing, confidence and employment webinars.

Our employment services are available to every customer and we’ll continue to be on-hand to provide support and access to opportunities as we ease out of the pandemic.

When our cafes in Hampshire closed in March 2020, we turned them into food distribution hubs to provide hot meals and food packages to the people most affected by lockdown. We worked with local authority partners, volunteers and FareShare to deliver and distribute over 2,000 meals to support schools, essential workers, and residents with limited access to supplies.

We supported our customers and their communities with essential funding. Throughout the pandemic we’ve provided funding to food banks, community centres, and social enterprises to support our communities navigating the impact of the pandemic.

We provided £85,000 from our Community Fund to 89 local organisations and charities supporting communities with activities, such as food supplies, signposting to local services, and health and wellbeing. And that’s on top of around £650,000 of external funding we leveraged to directly support our community and employment programmes too.

During the past year we’ve also taken the Good Grub Club, created to combat holiday hunger, online. Families who would normally receive free school lunches were given a ‘Hello Fresh’ style ingredient box. The box contained recipe cards, access to cook along videos and fun activities for the whole family to take part in. The Good Grub Club at Home has so far supported the wellbeing of around 450 families.

Moving forward we’ll be running a mix of virtual and in-person sessions across three locations in Hampshire. We use our research, coupled with knowledge of the places we work, to make sure we’re directing our services in the right areas. We’ll always be reviewing what we do and where to ensure those who need our support can access it.

We’ve been focusing on wellbeing, too. And we set up the Buddy Club; a welfare initiative that connects our colleagues with customers. Through weekly phone calls, individuals who felt isolated could speak openly to a colleague and be reassured that they were not alone. The club has had a hugely positive impact on customer health and wellbeing.

Since April 2020, the Buddy Club has welcomed over 1,000 customers and delivered over 7,000 call-backs. We have been able to provide a benefit to over 1,300 customers through external sign posting, internal referrals or escalations to team leaders within Abri. Through these simple but essential conversations we were able to support people with more than just their wellbeing.