Linx Week 16 Lockdown Update

July 13th 2020

On the back of a surreal week 16 of lockdown, we are delighted to bring you what could be our biggest and most exciting newsletter yet! Our staff teams have been deliriously happy this week after being deployed back out in our communities to do what we do best, which is engaging young people! In this newsletter we will capture for you (our readers) the work completed this week for which the aforementioned is just the beginning!
Please check out our weekly video update during week 16 of lockdown, which demonstrates Linx team’s continued actions in supporting our young people, families, and communities:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yhR2T0QTkc

•As promised, the Linx team have been out this week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening’s delivering detached youth work in wards Hemlington, Netherfield’s and Newport Gresham, respectively. These are now regular fixture’s in Linx’s “COVID calendar” and these three sessions will be taking place every week, up until we have the green light to reopen further provisions. Young people were delighted to see us, and us them and some amazing engagement in socially distanced discussions and games took place. In total we engaged with 30 young people throughout detached work this week – a cracking start!

•Speaking of opening other provisions, staff have been looking to the future this week and have completed Covid 19 risk assessments for both center based and group work activities for young people. This marked another building block put in place for our goal of rebirthing our town wide open access youth provision to be even bigger, better, and more engaging for young people than ever before!

•Just to further the point that we are a service that well and truly delivers for the young people and communities of this town, this week we have started another new project in the form of our virtual youth forum. Linx staff were joined by members of our youth forum for the first time since lockdown in a Zoom setting, where some great foundations were laid for an exciting project that will be commencing in the coming weeks which will greatly benefit the local communities!

•Sticking with the virtual delivery for now, Linx staff and young people had another amazing virtual youth club this week with Norma Wilburn Managing Director of NWA Social and Market Research Ltd. This was to assist with a project revolving around capturing the stories of people living in South Tees about how they are coping with the lockdown and the effect on their physical activity. Linx young people will be getting involved to tell their stories so stay tuned!

•As mentioned Linx Hemlington Detached Youth Work Project is so much more than just open access youth work delivery! With this statement in mind we are pleased to announce that this year again, amongst many other passionate local partners, Linx has been successful in receiving Feast of Fun summer holiday grant from Together Middlesbrough and Redcar to support our young people. The program will include a wide range of support packages and below are a few:
•Essential food parcel delivered to families’ doorstep
•Wellbeing packs including arts and crafts delivered to families’ doorstep
•6 weeks of on-line fun and interactive workshops such as virtual let us cook together sessions and virtual let’s shop together session amongst many more

These are truly some great opportunities for young people and families during the 6 weeks of summer holidays, and we cannot wait to get started!

•This week 8 food deliveries and 3 arts and crafts packs have been delivered to new households! But that’s not all! We are pleased to say that our partnership with Greggs has resumed this week! We will now be picking up regular surplus from Coulby Newham Greggs which will be going into our packs to further help our families in need.

•We have been working once again with Sexual Health Teesside to get our young people to complete this key survey (See below link) around young people and sexual health. We would encourage all our partners and stakeholders to please distribute as appropriate:
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•And finally (we’ll take a breath now), our staff have attended a wide range of key training and events this week. This included our staff member Josh who was on BBC Tees speaking about the impact of our detached work, and our staff member Ricky who attended the Virtual Key Facilitators Meeting in order to ensure we are following all relevant guidelines when we commence delivery of our key fund projects again.

To finish we just wanted to provide some advice and guidance regarding free school meals. We are acutely aware several schools across the country have begun phased re openings. Subsequently we just wanted to provide the below information to do our bit and help!

Many families are entitled to free school meals but are not claiming this support. Free school meals support in the form of supermarket vouchers or food parcels will be provided over the summer holidays for all children who are registered for free school meals. Apply as soon as possible to your school or local authority so that you do not miss out.

More information about who is eligible for free school meals and how to apply can be found here: www.gov.uk/apply-free-school-meals

We hope you find this briefing useful and please contact us if you are aware of any young people and their families in Middlesbrough who will benefit from our current ever evolving activities and support. Please share this amongst your contacts if you see necessary. Thank you to all our local partners who continue to work together and provide the best possible outcomes for our young people, families, and communities within Middlesbrough.