The story so far...

In the past four weeks, since we started our Community Support Group in response to the Coronavirus Crisis, our team of volunteers have helped and supported 100 residents who need to avoid supermarkets, pharmacies and other places where people gather for health reasons.

Whether it is fetching groceries, picking up prescriptions, posting letters, a friendly chat or a spot of dog walking - we have a team of trusted locals on hand to help anyone who needs it.

We all sport distinctive lanyards and work to a set of guidelines to ensure everyone's safety.

We started out by delivering simple flyers to every home in our neighbourhood and since then have had a steady stream of people getting in touch. If a resident is likely to need ongoing help over the coming weeks of lockdown then we allocate a dedicated volunteer.

We also have a prescriptions rota to make sure any North Town resident who needs it can get their meds delivered to their front door when they need them. We also linked up with French Weir Health Centre to ensure that the busy and amazing GP team could refer older and housebound folk from across Taunton who needed meds from French Weir Boots Pharmacy to us.

We are working with a network of community groups across Taunton so we can coordinate and refer people swiftly to the nearest source of help.

Huge thanks to everyone in North Town who has come on board and given up their time (ok yes so in lockdown some of us have quite a bit of it on our hands!). Special thanks to my fellow co-ordinators Ann Shorthouse and Jenny Eastwell-Keogh, to Leo Roche and Karuna Tharmananthar for helping get us organised and taking on lots of the work and to the stirling, ever-expanding team of volunteers including: Helen Waring, Amy Clare, Amber Packer-Hughes, Gideon Amos, Emlyn Middleton, Caroline Henderson, Maeve O'Brien, Maria Morse, Hannah Kirkman, Hayley Mortimer, Michelle Ambrose, Caroline Kyle and Joel Christian. Massive thanks too to Anna Geldard for her supply sourcing skill and safety advice and to Helen Hick for the gorgeous and possibly life-saving hand-made fabric masks we are sporting.

An even wider network helps us get our flyers out super fast - you know who you are and are rather numerous so I won't name you all!! X

To anyone we have helped so far, the message is very simple: YOU ARE VERY VERY WELCOME!