Kindness during crisis

When the pandemic hit, life for so many of our residents was immediately impacted. In April 2020, we set aside £1.2 million to form our Be Kind fund. The fund is there to support with practical requests to help people cope with a sudden change in their circumstances.

We gifted over 2,000 items of white goods, furniture, and technology. Home school was tough for everyone but it’s impossible to learn without the right tools, so we also gave 500 young people laptops to help them keep up with school and college work. During the year, we responded to nearly 4,000 requests and spent £750,000 supporting you. We carried over the money left in the fund so that we could keep supporting you in 2021-22.

As well as creating the Be Kind fund, we also took to the phones and made thousands of calls to make sure no one was struggling alone. As a result of more than 19,000 welfare calls, our teams co-ordinated the delivery of 900 food bags, 1,000 food bank parcels and 2,500 hot meals working with local partners at City College Peterborough and the Trussell Trust.

Sadly, during lockdown residents and employees told us about a growing number of scams designed to trick people into sharing their personal information or bank details. We joined the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Against Scams Partnership as an active supporter. The partnership helps to spread reliable information about spotting and reporting scams.  

Most of our teams started working from home and those who were still out and about in our communities had to work a little bit differently to keep everyone safe. That meant more of you than ever before took advantage of our online services. Just last year, 2,600 of you registered to manage your account online with MyCKH for the first time and we received £4.2 million in rent payments through the portal. It’s easy to  register your MyCKH account, if you haven’t already. We also used our website, social media channels and regular emails to keep you up to date about what the government guidance meant for our services and help signpost you to useful support on a range of topics including mental health and money matters.

 

A community investor 

From promoting heathy living to ensuring you have a voice in how we operate as your landlord, we invest in a wide range of ways to create opportunities for everyone.

Covid-19 had a big impact on many people’s lives, but it’s not the only challenge people living in our homes faced last year. Our goal is to create opportunities that change lives and empower people, so we have a clear plan about how we choose to invest in our communities. Our three key areas of focus are:

• health and wellbeing
• work and training 
• inspiring young people.

Before the first lockdown, most of our support, training and fun activities took place in person in Peterborough. When staying at home meant ‘in person’ support wasn’t possible, we worked with our partners to move support online to ensure these vital lifelines weren’t lost at the time they were needed most.

• Our mental health  partnership with Insight Healthcare moved to provide telephone and video call counselling sessions.
• Virtual career clubs replaced our traditional workshops to support people looking for work.
• We also launched a brand new online training platform so you can learn from home. CKH Learning will have more courses added to it over time and it’s a great way to bring support to people who live further away or can’t come along to face to face sessions.

We’ll be keeping a close watch on all of the government advice so we can safely bring back in person events but we’ll keep growing our online offer too, so as many people as possible can take advantage of the support on offer.