ANGUSALIVE SERVICE-WIDE ACTIVITIES AND PROJECTS
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ue to the Coronavirus pandemic resulting in the closure of our services in March 2020, many of the activities and projects we’d normally provide the local community and visitors had to be cancelled, postponed or moved online. A number of activities and programmes were developed to be suitable for online platforms and we also worked closely with partners and organisations in the local community and further afield.
Partnership Working
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uring the pandemic ANGUSalive worked with partner organisations to support the county’s local response to the demands and pressures of the Coronavirus pandemic. We were members of the Angus Council Strategic (Gold) and Operational (Silver) Incident Management Teams and through this structure were linked into the Tayside Local Resilience Partnership and updates from National Government. These resilience arrangements will continue to have a pivotal and co-ordinating role, influencing the recovery plans for the charity and the community going forward.
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Supporting the Community
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he charity has helped the Angus community through the Coronavirus pandemic in a number of ways.
Colleagues from our Libraries team supported the Humanitarian Assistance Angus Response Team (HAART), the helpline for isolated and vulnerable residents in Angus requiring a helping hand during the lockdown. Our Information Advisors volunteered to be part of this critical lifeline service which answered calls and supported residents to receive help with food shopping, prescriptions, financial assistance and more. When this service came to an end, colleagues continued to support Angus Council’s ACCESSline given the increased demand on this telephone channel to access council services. Two employees from our Libraries Digital Team continue to work in partnership with NHS Tayside to support the Test and Protect contact tracing team; they were ideally placed to assist by using their transferrable skills to carry out this important role from home. The use of our ANGUSalive vans helped Angus Council’s Waste Management Service follow social distancing guidance. By providing additional transport for their bin collections this resulted in employees feeling a lot safer and reduced the impact on service delivery. Three of our facilities (Reid Hall, Forfar; Arbroath Community Centre and Montrose Town Hall) have been temporarily handed back to Angus Council for use by NHS Tayside as vaccination centres to support the rollout of the vaccine across the county of Angus.
