A message from our Chief Executive, Phil East
Salford Foundation has 30 years’ experience of providing help and support to children, young people and adults. This expertise is helping us to ensure we continue providing high quality help during the coronavirus pandemic, whilst following government advice.
Throughout this period, our beneficiaries remain our biggest priority. Our staff are working hard to keep them feeling safe, happy and loved, and are supporting them to understand the situation as it continues to evolve. Throughout the period since lockdown first began all of our services have remained open. Our projects supporting individual children, young people and adults have switched to providing support through a blend of phone, digital and face-to-face methods. In addition to our normal range of help, we are still here to support people through the additional emotional strain they are experiencing. We are also providing every form of practical help that we can. We remain open for new referrals to all of these services.
As schools and colleges have reopened our National Citizen Service (NCS) and ‘Raising Aspirations’ teams are back in education settings, delivering projects and services. Our teams have also developed a range of digital solutions so that we can continue to support children, young people and schools in all circumstances, regardless of the level of lockdown we may be experiencing.
We made the decision not to make use of the furlough scheme and instead to redeploy staff to meet the increased and changing needs we have seen emerging. We have done this in spite of some of our income sources drying up. This has been because we are a mission focused charity and we believe that it has been right to use some of our reserves to support people through these extraordinary times. We have also launched new projects as a direct response to the pandemic, including Digital Buddies, The Shed and RISE. We have also increased our capacity to support women experiencing domestic abuse. Details of these services can be found on our website.
We are grateful for the support that our local communities and donors have shown to us during this time. Thank you for everything you have done and are doing to help.
Finally, and most importantly, thank you to our amazing staff for persevering through this outbreak and always putting our beneficiaries first. Your kindness, commitment and passion never ceases to amaze me, and I really appreciate everything you are doing.
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