The unexpected challenges of running a charity during a worldwide pandemic has led to some surprising, and positive, outcomes. PALS’s manager, Helen Randall, explains how a chance experience using Zoom in her personal life has created a whole new future for PALS... It seems such a long time ago now, when we realised with a heavy heart that we needed to stop running sessions for our members and their families, as the risk of coronavirus took hold across the country. PALS’s raison d’etre is to provide activities for young people with physical disabilities - face to face activities, with lots of close contact. For a couple of weeks, we didn't know quite what to do - it seemed impossible that we could provide any kind of service that would meet our members’ needs, if we had to follow social distancing guidelines. But then I began to use Zoom - an online video chat service - in my personal life. Having never heard of it before coronavirus changed all of our lives over night, I began to wonder if we needed to give it a try with our "PALS". I thought it would be a bit of a long shot - for many of our members, verbal communication can be really difficult. Plus, how on earth were we going to entertain children, who have so much energy, through a screen? How wrong I was! With some creativity, and with the cooperation of our staff, volunteers, and parents, we have done all sorts of things, from discos and I-spy, to making Ferrero Rocher and having goats hop on to visit us!
It really has been amazing and we haven't looked back since. We have increased the frequency of our sessions and are now “Zooming” twice a week with our ‘Fun Factory’ children, aged 5 to 11, twice a week with our ‘Rockets’, aged 11 to 18, and fortnightly with our 18+ members. Engagement from our families has been really encouraging and we are seeing more of our members than we ever did before the pandemic hit. Video chat has been a lifeline for our members - and for me personally! As restrictions start to lift, we’re busy planning how we can get back to a ‘new normal’, and meet up in person. But we have every intention of keeping a virtual platform in PALS moving forward - it means we can continue reaching our members who aren’t always able to make our after school or weekend sessions. While this pandemic has been incredibly challenging, I’m very thankful that we’ve kept the spirit of PALS alive, by doing what we always do: believing that, if you’re determined, you can achieve anything. To keep up to date with what PALS is up to, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Get in touch by visiting our website.