One of the many challenges we’ve faced during the Covid-19 pandemic has been getting good, up to date information out there to those who need it.

We all know that there are quite a lot of people who’ve been keen to share their own views and theories. For one reason or another this hasn’t always been helpful, and in any case things have often changed so quickly it’s been difficult to keep up.

Our partner group Inclusion Gloucestershire, a user-led charity for people with disabilities, decided they needed to do something about this. Using their Creating Connections funding, they trained a team of volunteers to update their own social media every day, as well as a dedicated Covid-19 hub.

This means that the people they support across the South West of England – and they reach nearly 3,000 a month online – know where to go to get the latest information and advice, and can also be certain that it’ll be both accurate and accessible.

Vicci Livingstone-Thompson, who’s been leading on the project, said:

"Through Creating Connections we’ve been able to maintain or often increase our levels of online engagement with people who are isolated, which has been particularly important in this period, given the national lockdown.

"For example, we were able to quickly share messages about changes to restrictions amidst the general confusion we saw over the Christmas and New Year period.”

As important as this is, it’s not all that Inclusion Gloucestershire has been doing either. Vicci added that, as well as sharing information, they’ve been able to provide remote support, signpost people to other specialist services and share fun things to do to keep everyone busy and help people cope with the changes.