A new app has been rolled out across Greater Manchester to help match volunteers with vulnerable people in need of support during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The app has been developed and launched to support an ongoing need for volunteers to support citizens with a range of duties from collecting medicines to food shopping.
The Community Hub Application is now being used in Bury and Rochdale, where users can log in and support can be matched with citizens needs.
The application was developed by Bury Council, ANS and Microsoft, and has been supported by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The app is hosted on the Greater Manchester Digital Platform, and provides local organisations with a dashboard view of activity and demand. The platform also holds a series of other applications and reporting systems, to monitor a range of factors including PPE levels, death figures, infection rates and outbreaks during Covid-19 to identify early signs of instability in adult social care settings.
Nicky Parker, programme manager, Bury Council, said: “It has replaced the need for manual spreadsheets and lots of pieces of paper and enables the Hub staff to track progress with a job. We can see how many jobs are completed or outstanding and look at the volume of requests across Bury.”
“It also helps us to match volunteers with residents on a repeat basis so that new relationships can strengthen. We are developing new ideas all the time about how we can add more functions to the app as the nature of support from the community hubs changes over time and into the future.”
Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester said: “The number of individuals that continue to volunteer their valuable time to support the most vulnerable amongst us is humbling and demonstrates how our communities rally together in times of need.”
“This community hub application has been developed to help manage the increase in volunteering and ensure effective coordination of volunteers to make sure timely support can be provided where it is needed most.”
