Plimmerton Community Support Network
Information for Community Street Group Coordinators
Welcome to this initiative to keep Plimmerton safe. Thank you for volunteering your time to help establish and facilitate a community assistance group. You can choose to coordinate a section of a street or you can share the role with a neighbour. Areas will be of manageable size for coordinators, for example 5 to 20 households.
What will Community Street Group Coordinators do?
- To begin with, coordinators will be responsible for ensuring people in their street or section of their street swap contact details so they can be better prepared to support each other in emergencies.
- They will set up a way to stay in touch, an email list, WhatsApp chat, Facebook group, telephone tree or something else. There is a form below to give you an example of the type of information that will initially be useful. As neighbours become more comfortable with each other more information may be included in these shared lists. As a coordinator you need to compile the list, distribute it to everyone included on the list and to keep it up-to-date.
- From the list coordinators need to ensure that people have someone they are comfortable to contact. For example if COVID-19 is in the community people may need to self-isolate in their homes and may need someone to pick up prescriptions or shop for them.
- Link to emergency professionals if needed.
- Distribute information.
What will the Plimmerton Residents Association do for Coordinators?
- The Association will work to ensure that all Plimmerton and Camborne residents are offered an opportunity to join a neighbourhood group by contacting possible coordinators in areas where there have been no volunteers.
- Information and support will be provided to Coordinators to help them understand their role and to provide mentoring if tricky situations arise.
- Information about the emergency will be distributed. For example this could be links to emergency services.
How do I start the conversations with my neighbours?
Firstly coordinators will relate the reason for establishing these groups now. That is, the likely possibility that COVID-19 will impact Plimmerton. Then explain that these groups will offer ongoing support in other emergency situations.
Stress that any information gathered will only be shared with other members of your neighbourhood group. Information will not be shared with the PRA. This initiative is under the umbrella of the PRA and therefore needs to adhere to the existing Privacy Policy.
Initially only basic information will be collected and shared but longer term groups may wish to share other information. You might choose to develop a neighbourhood emergency management plan. Or you may choose to put together a list of people in your street with skills and equipment that could be useful in emergencies. Households should be encouraged to develop emergency pet management plans.
Resources
Example of a form for collecting data:
