The council has put aside £400k to continue two schemes for another year that have provided a lifeline to Derbyshire people throughout the pandemic.

Derbyshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Health and Communities, Councillor Carol Hart, approved £200k funding each to the Covid Community Champion Scheme and Social Connectedness work.

The champion scheme was launched in March last year to ensure consistent and accurate Covid-19 information was provided to communities, and since then around 400 volunteer ‘champions’ have been recruited and reached about to approximately 185,000 people.

A report into the service started: “This project offers a valuable opportunity to link with residents in a meaningful way and will support clear dissemination of Covid-19 messages over the winter. 

“There is an opportunity to build on the network developed to also share information about other public health issues, such as the importance of flu vaccinations and advice regarding Long-Covid.”

The Social Connectedness scheme started in March 2019 to address isolation within Derbyshire communities.

The report stated: “Restrictions placed on people throughout the pandemic resulted in people spending less time with family and friends. 

“This has resulted in a longer-term increase in people experiencing loneliness.”

Research by the British Red Cross has shown prior to the pandemic around 20 per cent of adults felt ‘often’ or ‘always’ lonely – this figure increased to 41 per cent after lockdown.

To combat this in Derbyshire, four social connect groups have set up to provide support to 40 projects with 500 beneficiaries, five full time social connect workers have been appointed and around 1,700 people have been supported through the scheme since September 2019.

Both pots of funding will be split between the eight district and borough councils across the county, meaning each authority will get £25k for each scheme.

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