CEO - Continuing to support our community

Doing something a little outside of the norm for Blackpool FC Community Trust.

During this unprecedented time, a lot of our usual services have obviously been put on hold, so whilst we try to find as many ways as we can to continue to support our regular participants, we have also picked up on some new services.

One being after a call from Blackpool Council to open one of twelve community hubs in Blackpool to support our residents that have had to socially isolate for the twelve week period.

I can only imagine how difficult this must be for these people and we hope our support, through the Blackpool Corona Kindness campaign can help make this an easier period for them.

The Trust is supporting residents in the Bloomfield and Highfield wards and our partners at Revoelution are supporting the Tyldesly ward, meaning that Blackpool FC Community Trust staff are supporting the whole area around the Bloomfield Road stadium.

The service currently provides people in need with weekly food parcels, provided by Blackpool Council, which we deliver to the homes, but we are also including activity packs for people to hopefully enjoy and also a friendly face for the people kept indoors to see and have a chat.

We are hoping to extend the offer over the next couple of weeks to include collecting other shopping needs of residents and potentially also medication that they need collecting, plus just doing some basic welfare checks too.
Blackpool Football Club have also been really supportive in this period and have emptied all the stock from the match day kiosks, so that we can add some additional goodies to the packs, including bottles of pop, chocolate and crisps.

Whilst we would normally tell our local people to eat these treats in minimal amounts, due to our healthy lifestyle projects including Fit2Go and FitFans, a little bit of a good thing doesn’t harm anyone in a period like we are currently enduring.

The staff have been amazing, with 26 of our team, putting themselves forward to volunteer on this service and a couple of our team, Jen Crofts and Zoe Cunliffe have taken a coordination role to make sure all our orders are in on time and deliveries ready for the rest of the team to collect and send out.

The service is being delivered from our new Education and Community Centre and for people to register their needs, please contact the central line via email on helpneeded@blackpool.gov.uk or call 0808 196 30 80 Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and our team will be out to see you as soon as we can.
Also, if anyone is aware of people that may benefit from individual or family packs in this period, please send them the information or register their needs too.

It’s important that everyone comes together during this time, so we hope anyone needing help is identified, so that we can get them help as soon as possible.

Stay safe everyone and stay positive.
Kind Regards
Ashley Hackett