Support for the “New Normal”

When we look back at 2020, I think many of us will be able to say we learnt a lot about ourselves. This year has tested us all and everything we once knew. We have also learnt so much about the strength and resilience of our young people; we are extraordinarily proud of how adaptable they have been through the daily changes they have encountered with Covid19 and the associated lockdowns.

With the amalgamation of the summer holidays and regional lockdown, we needed to consider what support our young people might need to return to school and living with “the new normal”.  Covid-19 has changed so many things in everyday life, things that we would never have considered, living with social distancing, how to see friends safely, masks, pods, bubbles at school, track and trace, antibacterial gel the list can seem endless.

Our Support and Participation Leads including Bethan, worked with our young people, foster carers and senior social workers to ensure that Affinity was in a position to offer the best tailored support possible.

Our goal at Affinity is to ensure we provide the support our foster carers really need, and there was understandably a lot of confusion and concern regarding what the “new normal” would end up looking like, and our foster carers wanted to be as prepared as possible to support the needs of the young people in their care. Throughout lockdown were busy compiling and sharing information relating to mental health, self-care, activities, the rules and regulations, in addition to our regular contact, ensuring the information was in a format that was suitable to everyone so that we could support all our foster carers and young people through the difficult time. Foster carers even shared some great resources they had found too.

Every day is different at the minute but here at Affinity, we are in this together.