Sue Chalkley's Intro - Stakeholder News May 2021

It has been an eventful 12 months since I joined Golding Homes in March last year, just three weeks before our lives and the way we do business changed forever with the first Covid-19 national lockdown. I don’t think any of us believed at that time that we would remain in different degrees of lockdown for more than a year but, we at Golding have been working hard to help both our customers and colleagues through this challenging time.  I’d like to give you an update on our response as well as some of our key news. 

We are working with a number of our partner organisations to provide support and I would like to thank all of you for helping to make a positive difference to our customers.  

At the start of the pandemic we decided to reach out to all of our customers, making phone calls to check in with all of them, providing support where possible, as well as signposting them to essential services.  

In January we wrote to all our customers signposting them to free local mental health support, as well as reminding them of our tenancy support and workwise services which can help with debt advice or finding work. I’m also delighted to say that there is currently still funding available to customers via our Golding Giving hardship fund which has helped over 350 households in the past year. The scheme provides a quick (within 24 hours) and simple one-off grant of up to £100 to customers struggling with bills, food or essentials, as a result of covid-19.  

We’ve also been providing free home school packs and food hampers to families in need, and continuing to make wellbeing calls to older or vulnerable customers to check in and offer support, which includes free lifts to vaccine centres.  

We’re pleased to have provided over £45,000 funding from our Covid response fund to 32 local charities, organisations and community projects who are working to make a positive difference to our communities. 

I’m particularly proud of the resilience my Golding colleagues have shown, in adapting quickly and working hard for our customers. We continue to listen to our people and encourage flexible working, as well as providing financial support for home working equipment and support for mental health and wellbeing. It’s vital to ensure our teams are supported and can continue to do their best, so we’ve also been running a new campaign, “What about Shirley?”  This is based on a customer who was completely unaware of the pandemic, until our wellbeing call to check in with her last year. I’m happy to say that call was just the start and led to further support from a variety of teams and support services, which has seen Shirley move from a home where she lived in one room, to somewhere more suitable where she is receiving on-going support from us and other local agencies. The campaign is really helping to inspire our teams to always put our customers first. 

Every three months I also hold CEO freephone days, where customers call me direct to discuss concerns or make suggestions for service improvements. In March I spoke to 38 customers about a range of services which continues to provide me with really valuable feedback on what we are doing well and where we can do better.