IMPACT REPORT
A Year in Review 2020-21
Covid-19 Local Response Hubs At the start of the pandemic, working in partnership with Action Together and Rochdale Borough Council, Local Response Hubs were quickly set up in each township across the borough to provide emergency support to local residents who were shielding and vulnerable and needed it the most.
Link4Life staff seconded to the Local Response Hubs Over
6000
phone calls responded to Delivery of over
3000
emergency food parcels
Introduction Link4Life is a charity based at the heart of Rochdale inspiring people to live active, creative, happy and healthy lives. On 18 March 2020, in line with national lockdown, all Link4Life venues closed as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. Nobody could have anticipated the effect that covid-19 was to have and the pandemic changed the way we worked, but it did not change our mission to continue supporting our local community. Looking back, we thought that we would be closed for a few weeks, not that we’d still be dealing with the pandemic 12 months later. Despite 2020-21 being a year of
2
Over
1300
uncertainty and constant change with lockdowns and restrictions, we remained committed to our purpose of ‘supporting people to live their best live’ and adapted quickly to continue our work to support people to stay active, creative and healthy throughout the challenging times. Like many charities, covid-19 had a significant impact, disrupting our work, financial model and longerterm stability. As we emerge from this year, we will continue working hard, supported by our partners at Rochdale Borough Council, to manage the impacts of the pandemic and support our community throughout the borough. I didn’t want 2020-21 to pass by without highlighting what we
were able to achieve despite the uncertainty caused by numerous lockdowns and restrictions. I’d like to recognise the great team that we have at Link4Life for their work and resilience throughout the last year, and to thank all of our members, customers, visitors, partners and stakeholders for sticking with us through these uncertain times. We are extremely grateful for your support and together, we’ll emerge stronger and more resilient.
shopping trips and medication collections Signposted almost
1000
people to other support including
• Housing issues rent, mortgage, maintenance issues, homelessness, white goods, how to manage their own property (from homeless) • Money management benefits, fuel and energy payments • Mental health & social isolation • Safeguarding • Health & Wellbeing • Adult care, families and young children
Andy King CEO
• Local food suppliers, foodbanks and school vouchers • Self-care, motivation, reassurance, confidence building
Supporting FAST Testing and Vaccination Centres across the borough With venues closed, some were repurposed to support FAST testing and vaccinations across the borough. Heywood Sports Village was used as a Find And Stop Transmission (FAST) test centre with both a walk-in site and drive-thru site located there. Littleborough Sports Centre was used by Rochdale Health Alliance as a local Vaccination Service Centre. The centre was one of 4 vaccination centres across the borough supporting the NHS to deliver the covid-19 to as many people as quickly as possible. On the first day of the centre opening, over 500 vaccinations were completed. Heywood Civic Centre was set up as a PCR test centre for anyone with coronavirus symptoms, and a PCR test centre was set up on the car park of Rochdale Leisure Centre. Members of the Link4Life team supported with testing and marshalling at covid-19 testing and vaccination centres across the borough.
Link4Life at Home portal To help people to stay creative and healthy during the first lockdown, we created ‘Link4Life at Home’ to give access to a range of free online activities and resources for children, adults and older adults. Members of the Link4Life team filmed a variety of activities including online workouts, fitness classes, recipe ideas, nutrition information, indoor activities, arts projects and mindfulness sessions. Users could also view the artworks collection at Touchstones Rochdale or take a virtual tour of Rochdale Arts & Heritage Centre. There was also
gentle home exercises for older adults and those managing health conditions such as back pain. Alongside these activities, we included content from our partners Les Mills, Life Fitness, National Theatre Live and British Gymnastics and links to some of the great resources available from other organisations. Activities and resources were added throughout the year and in total, almost 19,000 people accessed the free portal with 64,000 views to free resources.
3
your health
Children’s Healthy Eating The Community Nutrition Team, which focusses on childhood obesity, continued to provide support by producing online videos with recipe ideas and healthy eating and nutrition information.
Mentally Healthy Schools
#Thrive Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions impacted mental health & wellbeing and resulted in anxieties, uncertainties and worries in children and young people. #Thrive is for children and young people aged up to 19 years who are experiencing emotional health and wellbeing issues such as feeling stressed, worried or not enjoying things. #Thrive offers lots of different types of support; offering advice to improve general lifestyle, counselling sessions, online courses or access to other types of support such as sport, drama, music or art.
In partnership with Pennine Care NHS Foundation Trust and Youth In Mind, during the pandemic the team worked with an additional 1859 young people alongside those already in the service. Support included initial consultations and wellbeing calls face to face, on the telephone and video calls, as well as providing advice and support to parents, carers and anyone that works with a child or young person.
As part of Rochdale’s Mental Health Support Team service, Link4Life’s Mental Wellbeing Engagement officers worked with schools in the borough to deliver a new six week Mindful Movement programme to support young people within the community during the challenging time. Consisting of mental health & wellbeing workshops, yoga, breath awareness, mindfulness and positive affirmations, the programme helps to support young people with their mental wellbeing and create a better understanding of how they can manage situations and feelings. For those children and young people who had to home school throughout the pandemic, the team adapted the programme and created a variety of online videos to do at home. In the first week, 12 classes from 4 schools logged on to the live Zoom programme, totalling around 180 children. Throughout the year, we worked with over 2700 children from 13 primary schools across the borough.
4
Healthy Workforce Programme With the majority of people working from home during the pandemic, our healthy workforce programme, delivered in partnership with Rochdale Borough Council, continued to engage employees in healthy initiatives including online
weekly health MOT’s, online fitness classes, book club, gardening club, monthly film club, weight management and healthy eating sessions, yoga, mindfulness and virtual cafes.
Health & Wellbeing classes online Throughout the year, the charity continued to work closely with Public Health partners, providers and commissioners to support the delivery of a number of specialist health and wellbeing programmes. With centres closed and us all staying at home, programmes moved online. Gentle Exercise classes – seated and standing – continued to support those with long term health conditions or those who want to improve their overall health and wellbeing. Working in partnership with the Stroke Association, we continued to deliver weekly online Moving Forward after Stroke sessions and Moving On after Stroke courses. Community sessions including Yoga, Pilates, Zumba Basic and Zumba moved online helping people to continue their workouts. Regular participants were pleased to see the instructor online and take part in their usual class, but we also had new people taking part who wanted to try the class for the first time and could do so in the comfort of their own home.
Prehab 4Cancer We continued to host the Greater Manchester Prehab4Cancer programme by moving the service online.
Outdoor activities When restrictions eased, gentle exercise classes started outdoors in local parks and we hosted regular socially distanced walks at a variety of locations throughout the borough.
Leisure Centres re-opened, but with tier restrictions in place, indoor group exercise classes were not able to return straight away, so we took them outdoors.
Customer Satisfaction On re-opening the leisure centres, we exceeded Government guidelines to ensure that venues were covidsecure; helping to prevent the spread of covid-19 and keep the local community as safe as possible when visiting. Prior to the second national lockdown, the leisure centres received glowing customer satisfaction scores through mystery visits and independent national benchmarking research,
both of which showed Link4Life achieving higher scores than the national average. The overall score from mystery shops averaged 94 per cent, with some sites scoring as high as 97 per cent – ten per cent higher than the UK national average. The results also topped out in several categories, scoring 100 per cent for both ‘adherence to recommended guidelines’ and ‘confidence’ from customers.
5
Light’Arted Light’Arted, a partnership project with Arcon Housing and the Co-op enabled Touchstones to commission a local artist; Beam Irwin, to create light installations inspired by the Lowry’s on loan from the Co-op.
your culture
Working with HMR Circle, the creative packs were distributed to Arcon Housing tenants for them to display in their windows during winter 2020. Images of the displays form part of the exhibition ‘What’s Changed?’ at Touchstones in 2021.
6
Get Creative Inside Working together with Cartwheel Arts and other partners in the borough, 6000 family art packs were produced and distributed to families in the borough. Many low income households across the borough have little or no access to the internet, and creative materials were in short supply so the creative packs
provided families with great ideas and the items to do them with. The Equalities Team from Rochdale Borough Council helped to identify the most vulnerable children in the borough, and the packs were delivered to schools and community organisations by Sky TV engineers volunteering in support of the community response.
Christmas Spectacular With Middleton Arena’s auditorium closed, the much loved annual Christmas pantomime was unable to take place. The events team, together with our partners Shone Productions, put together an all-singing, alldancing digital recording of our Christmas Spectacular for ticket purchasers to enjoy in their own home.
The Ice Queen and The Dragon Dippy Re-imagined The Dippy Experience (Dippy at Number One Riverside and The Dippy Exhibition at Touchstones Rochdale) arrived in Rochdale in February 2020, but after just six weeks both venues closed as we entered the first lockdown. In the opening six weeks, Dippy had achieved over 157,000 visitors. At the time that a UK wide lockdown was announced, it was uncertain whether the exhibition would re-open. The eventual re-opening in late summer enabled visitors to engage with Dippy once again. To ensure that the exhibition could still be enjoyed by visitors, the Touchstones team wrote and developed a new narrated tour which invited visitors to become participants and help scientists, beamed back from the future, in their quest to avert a major E.V.E.N.T in a covid-secure way. Despite further lockdowns and local restrictions, just over 9,000 visitors attended before the exhibition closed in December 2020.
The Ice Queen and The Dragon was a partnership project produced by Link4Life and Rochdale Borough Council, funded by GM Arts. The project brought together a team of local artists, including actors, musicians and set makers to devise an enchanting short story – a winter tale of hope, friendship and strength. This original short film broadcast on the Link4Life facebook page on Christmas Day and was then added to the Link4Life At Home portal for the local community to enjoy over the Christmas period.
7
your community
Sport & Leisure Career Courses We delivered 5 free Sport & Leisure courses for local residents aged 14 and over interested in a career in the sport and leisure industry. 68 participants gained entry level qualifications in the following: • A Community Sports Leaders Award Level 2 • Emergency 1st Aid • Certificate in Safeguarding • Certificate in Disability Awareness Participants also benefit from access to work experience and additional specific qualifications needed in particular areas of the sports, leisure, health and wellbeing industry.
Supporting the local community to get connected Working in partnership with HMR Circle and Rochdale Borough Council, we assisted getting people online so that they were not digitally excluded and could stay connected as we all stayed at home. We helped by loaning tablet computers to those that didn’t have access to technology, and giving additional support and training to those who were not computer literate or did not have access to the internet. We stayed in regular contact with our participants, who were telling us that they were finding lockdowns and restrictions difficult, with many feeling socially isolated. We set up regular tea & chat sessions, sing-a-long sessions and quizzes to help people chat to others and have a bit of fun.
8
Health & Fitness members and Swimming Lesson pupils return Covid-19 has had a significant impact, disrupting our work, financial model and longer-term stability. As a charity, any profits are reinvested to enhance the lives of people in the borough, so we are delighted that 66% of health & fitness members restarted their membership with us when leisure centres were able to reopen. We understand that some of our members are not ready to return
at the moment and we look forward to welcoming everyone back when they are ready. Outside of lockdowns and restrictions, swimming lessons returned to pools (with reduced capacities due to covid secure measures that were in place), with 58% of pupils continuing with their lessons.
Gymnastics A brand new gymnastics programme launched at Middleton Arena. The programme, in partnership with British Gymnastics, coaches children and young people from the age of 2 years old from beginners to competition level.
Fit and Fed Continuing the charities commitment to the issue of ‘holiday hunger’ experienced by many families in receipt of free school meals, we worked closely with early help services, schools and local voluntary groups to deliver the Rochdale Borough ‘Fit and Fed’ program.
Over 200 children registered on the programme ready for the centre re-opening in April 2021.
Holiday Club Link4Life were able to deliver a successful holiday club programme throughout October half term for children with mild to moderate additional needs. Over the week, there were 57 attendees to the programmes at Heywood Sports Village and Back o’th Moss Community Centre.
School Swimming Attainment Throughout the academic year, when swimming pools were able to open, we taught over 2,300 pupils on the school swimming programme, of which 92% achieved the STA Level 1 Award in School Swimming.
Support with Homeschooling During the lockdown, we know that remote learning was difficult for teachers, children and parents so we produced homeschooling resources to offer support. The Touchstones team created four videos covering different historical topics; Prehistoric History, Egyptians, Romans and Anglo-Saxons. Online videos for each topic were supported with activity sheets to support each lesson.
Our Sports Coaches filmed a range of short videos to help children and young people stay active. The great resources available from our partners and other organisations were also added and all free resources were made available on the Link4Life At Home portal for everybody to access.
9
Staying in touch Communication with our customers and staff was extremely important as we kept everyone updated with changes and had so much to share. • Over 70 email communications were sent to members and customers
Funding Success As a charity, we had real disruption during covid-19 and our industry, like many others, has been severely affected by the pandemic. Usually, revenue generated from health & fitness memberships, swimming lessons, event tickets and other sessions and bookings helps to support the charity and the activities that we offer to support the local community to be active, creative and healthy, but sadly due to venue closures and social distancing measures being in place when venues were able to open, income had been greatly impacted. We were successful with our application of £555,000 to the Leisure Recovery Fund giving a vital boost to the charity. The fund, which was set up to assist leisure centres with re-opening giving the sector the
10
• Over 720,000 page views to our website best chance of recovery in the medium to long term, and prevent leisure centres closing due to the financial impact of the pandemic. In October 2020, we were also awarded a grant of £666,457 as part of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF). The funding helped to secure the future of cultural venues – Middleton Arena, Heywood Civic Centre and Touchstones Museum & Gallery and enabled us to continue community delivery programmes during the longer period of closure for these venues, and helped us to re-open and safely re-start exhibitions, performances and new educational resources and programmes using the collections to created for schools.
• Shared over 4,300 posts on our social media channels
• We increased the number of social media followers across all our platforms over the year • Sent over 60 internal communications and had regular zoom meetings to keep in touch with our staff through the lockdowns
Covid secure venues The health and safety of our members, customers, visitors and staff remained our highest priority and we worked hard to keep Link4Life venues covid-secure to ensure that people felt safe when they visited. Our procedures, safety measures, risk assessments and training were developed with leading industry bodies and guidance from Public Health Rochdale.
Re-opening venues On re-opening venues, we adopted the ‘4 S framework’ which was considered best practice: • Spacing Social distancing measures were implemented throughout the centre and capacities within centres and activities was reduced. Equipment and the programming of areas in venues was spaced or marked for social distancing
Touchstones Rochdale was awarded the We’re Good to Go covid-19 industry standard and consumer mark by Visit Britain. The official UK mark recognises tourism and hospitality organisations that are committed to operating safely and have worked hard to follow Government and industry covid-19 guidelines.
• Sanitising An enhanced cleaning regime was in place alongside sanitisation stations for hand sanitising and access to cleaning supplies for equipment • Signage New signage and floor markings assisted customers in adhering to social distancing requirements • Smiling Our team had extensive training to enable them to assist in a friendly and supportive manner, while managing all of the changes that had been made
Middleton Arena was granted the Society of London Theatre (SOLT) & UK Theatre’s See It Safely mark certifying that the venue complies with the latest Government and industry covid-19 guidelines to ensure the safety of our staff and audiences.
Staff Training: Covid-19 Rehabilitation We know that covid-19 affects people in different ways and it can sometimes take weeks and even months to fully recover from its debilitating impact. As part of GM Active, our team along with colleagues across Greater Manchester, gained training to enable staff to safely help people who are recovering from the effects of covid-19 to engage in physical activity and exercise supporting them in their rehabilitation. On completing the training, our team • have an excellent understanding of covid-19; its nature, effects and impact on the individuals’ health, prevalence and the treatments • are able to help and support rehabilitation; recognising when it is safe to exercise, monitoring breathlessness, behaviour change and exercise guidance • can support with health screening, exercise testing and prescription, fatigue management, and help people to access the services available to provide additional support if needed
11
Link4Life is the trading name of Rochdale Boroughwide Cultural Trust. Registered Charity No: 1118610