Nottingham City Council sent this bulletin at 20-04-2020 02:16 PM BST
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NHS Health at Home
The COVID-19 outbreak means the public need to stay at home as much as possible. If they need an NHS service, they should try to do it online from home first - unless there's a serious or life-threatening emergency or they have been advised to attend an existing appointment for ongoing treatment.
The NHS Health at Home campaign signposts to information such as contacting a GP, ordering repeat prescriptions, managing wellbeing and existing conditions – without leaving home.
Sycamore Dining - two course cooked meals
Sycamore Dining are delivering 2 course cooked meals to older people across the city delivered to your doorstep. Volunteers cook the food on a daily basis from Monday to Friday.
During Covid-19, it is particularly important to safeguard adults with care and support needs. They may be more vulnerable to abuse and neglect as others may seek to exploit the situation. The Social Care Institute for Excellence has produced helpful advice on how to remain vigilant and support others. Click here for more information.
Avoiding Fraud and Scams
In order to help you avoid fraud and scams during this current period please read Action Fraud’s coronavirus related fraud report which includes top tips about how to remain safe in the virtual world, including advice on avoiding online coronavirus-related scams and keeping yourself and your organisation protected while working from home.
Keeping Fit and Active
Physical activity is more important than ever right now. Being active in a way that is right for you can improve your physical health, help manage stress and anxiety and just generally make you feel better. At the moment, you can still go outside for one form of exercise, if you're well enough and as long as you follow the official advice on social distancing. However if you are staying in, you can still exercise by checking out ‘Stay In Work Out’ or trying some of the exercises below:
'I CAN' Active Calendar 2020: Later Life Training have made their new 'habit forming, movement prompting, strength and balance monitoring' 2020 calendar free to download. Please visit their website here.
Make Movement Your Mission: If you are on Facebook, join Bex from Monday 23 March to Monday 20 April at 8am, 12noon and 4pm for a daily 10 minute workouts on the Make Movement Your Mission Facebook page.
Sitting Exercises: These exercises are done while sitting; a great place to start to build strength and balance. See the exercises here.
Flexibility Exercises: These flexibility exercises can be done at home to help improve your mobility. See the exercises here.
Balance exercises: There simple balance exercises can be done at home to help make you feel more steady in walking and moving. See the exercises here.
Movement for those with Osteoporosis or Osteopenia: You can watch and follow the online videos offered by the Royal Osteoporosis Society - See the exercises here.
Getting down to and up from the floor safely
In a time where emergency services may take longer to respond skills such as being able to get up following a fall are essential. These exercises and methods will help develop these skills.
Mental Health and Wellbeing
You might be worried about Covid-19 and how it is affecting your life, especially if you have been advised to self-isolate. This might feel difficult or stressful.
If you're anxious, struggling to sleep, or just generally not feeling yourself lately, take the Every Mind Matters quiz for practical tips from the NHS on how to improve your mood or sleep pattern. Take the quiz
Local Helpline for support with mental health problems
If you are struggling with your mental health and need support or advice call the new Nottinghamshire Foundation Trust Mental Health Helpline on 0300 303 0165. The line is open to people of all ages who live in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire.
Most mental health services are now only offering support online. We have produced a Nottingham mental health signposting guide that gives details of different Helplines that you might find useful. To access the guide, please click here.
Pastoral Support for Care Homes
Many Care Homes and Sheltered Housing have well established links with local churches and other faith communities. At this time of increased demands and stresses there may be some who do not have such relationships. If you would appreciate some pastoral support from a local church, but do not have a contact please get in touch with us and we will try our best to link you up.
Nottingham on Call - your local assisted technology service
Nottingham on Call is a popular local service that supports people who are isolated, vulnerable and at risk due to their age, frailty or level of disability. Most customers come to Nottingham on Call for a personal care alarm and pendant, which gives you the ability to call for help in an emergency, for example if you have had a fall, or there is a fire.
Once pressed, the alarm alerts our friendly contact centre team, based in the heart of Nottingham. Our polite and professional call handlers are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They will always be there to take your call, reassure you and ensure the right response, whether that is contacting a next of kin, or even the emergency services.
Our service is still running during Covid and we are doing our utmost to ensure our customers experience the same service they always would. However we are asking them to reduce their level of testing, to allow us to focus on emergency calls. Our call handlers are alerted if there are any problems with a customer's equipment, ie if batteries are getting low, and will always get in touch with a customer to ensure this is fixed. All our customers can be assured that they are being supported even without testing the alarm.
Being mindful of social distancing, for those who feel confident, we are providing a self-installation process, where we can deliver an alarm for the customer to simply plug in and test. However, we realise that self-installation isn’t for everyone - in circumstances where a frail/incapacitated customer hasn’t got someone to help them, then our service will be able to install the alarm as normal, while observing social distancing practises.
Our libraries might be closed but they are still providing you with information, activities and new reads that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.
The have launched the new Your Online Library webpage designed to support you whilst in lock down. It's jam packed with activities and guides from keeping the kids stimulated and learning, applying for Universal Credit, support for small businesses to lots of trusted online resources including the NHS and BBC Bitesize.
If you, or someone you know, are not a member of the library don’t worry. You can start enjoying free access to library eBooks and eAudio books by joining online here. Just fill in the form and in no time at all you will be happily browsing thousands of items.
You are offered free online access to thousands of newspapers and magazines with PressReader via Nottingham Libraries.
After 30 days of using the service, you will find that you have been signed out as a library member and are being offered their commercial service. All you need to do is log out and then sign in again using the library option to continue accessing everything for free.
If you haven’t discovered PressReader yet, then visit the online library to find out more. You will need your library card number and PIN to get started. Don’t worry, if you are not a library member you can easily join online here.
Armchair Gallery
City Arts’ Armchair Gallery app is free and enables isolated older people the chance to enjoy some of the UK’s greatest cultural collections, from the comfort of their own home. Armchair Gallery has special features for people living with dementia. You can use the app on Android and iPad tablets.
ArtSpeak provides access to the creative arts for the over 60’s in Nottingham.
If you would like to sign up to become a member of ArkSpeak for free please do so here . You can also check out a collection of daily posts in the news section.
Due to the Coronavirus, forum activities have ceased for the foreseeable future and the offices are now closed. However if you would like to talk to the team please cal 0773 292 3102.
Money and funding opportunities
Worried about money?
If you are worried about money, you are not alone. There is lots of FREE advice available. The sooner you talk to someone, the sooner things will get better. For more information click here.
Encouraging older adults to ask about Pension Credit
Department for Work and Pensions are currently running an awareness campaign around Pension Credit – a benefit for those over State Pension age on low incomes. The campaign aims to increase Pension Credit awareness a.nd take up among eligible recipients, which can help with the costs of living.
Funding Opportunities
Apply for a Bring Joy Foundation Grant and support seniors to stay connected with families and loved ones during this time when people may be more isolated than usual. They also have a number of Facebook Portals to give away. If you know of anyone this might benefit please email bring.joy@homeinstead.co.uk
Yorkshire Building Society Coronavirus Response Fund is offering donations between £250 - £2,000 to charities helping local communities to cope with the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic. For more information click here.
Local Transport
At the moment there are regular changes to public travel arrangements including changes to Medilink which runs between QMC and City Hospital. To stay up to date with changes to Medilink and other Nottingham City Transport services click here.
Nottingham City Council have produced a special edition of the Arrow which will be dropping through doors across the city in the coming days. A great number of people will be keeping tabs on our online resources, but for many residents in our communities, receiving a copy of the Arrow through the door is also vitally important. That is why we have produced an additional copy to keep residents informed of the things that matter most at times like these. An online version is also available here.
Stay Home, Save Lives
It is vitally important that we continue to observe Government instructions to stay at home and follow social distancing guidelines – it is tough but staying at home really does save lives so thank you to all of you who continue to observe this. Only go out for food, health reasons or work (but only if you cannot work from home).
If you do have to go out, stay two metres (six feet) away from other people at all times and wash your hands as soon as you get home.
