A Covid-19 Community Response Forum (CRF) is in place in Blarney to ensure that vulnerable members of the community or those living alone can access vital grocery, medicine and fuel deliveries and social care supports.
came into being in March and since we delivered our first meal on St Patrick’s Day, March 17th, we have gone from delivering 10 meals per day to more than 50 every day as the crisis has deepened.
Delivering a hot lunch with a smile and a chat every day, whilst being extremely careful to observe all safety protocols, has given us unique access to many people in our community and allowed us to build up relationships and offer help in other areas. We also hope that those who don’t use our service rest a little easier knowing we are there, and that reassurance at this time of such uncertainly is so important. We have undertaken practical jobs too from chicken wire being erected under eaves to stop swallows nesting, to cleaning gutters, fixing outside lights, and painting steps to make them safer. We have delivered shower heads and cooking equipment to frontline workers, replaced ‘Iggle Wiggle’ for a child for whom this toy was particularly important, sourced a tablet for a gentleman to play solitaire after his laptop gave up, and delivered a game of scrabble to a gentleman who wished to play remotely with his overseas daughter. One lucky gentlemen received a bottle of rather good wine which we purchased and delivered from his Swedish family, and a lover of world war two books had his library replenished thanks to a generously answered appeal for books, as did a lady who received the entire collection of Alice Taylor books.
DVD players and DVDs, hand sanitising bottles and baking ware were donated and delivered to a residential unit for young adults with intellectual disabilities, plants and seeds collected for a lady who just had to get out into the garden and many happy readers contributed to and continue to carefully use our book exchange in Centra Blarney village. A lady in isolation was delighted that her much loved dogs got out for a walk every day, and our offering of litter pickers to those who wished to get out and help Tidy Towns received a great response from local families.
So as another busy month in Blarney ends we have seen over 1200 hot meals delivered, we have collected medication, shopping and pensions, posted letters, taken away those all important phones to get them fixed and returned to their relieved owners, and hopefully spread the message that we really are all in this together.
Please call the dedicated helpline 1800-222-226 from 8am to 8pm seven days a week if we can be of any help to you, or if you have concerns for another person in our community.