Help
St Peter’s and our family of Brighton churches (St Matthias and St Cuthman’s) are launching a comprehensive response to COVID-19 in Brighton and Hove with three core components: Direct Help, Resource, and Partnership.
Direct Help will be provided through three primary ministries:
- Safehaven ministries are providing healthy hot take-away meals for vulnerable people three days per week and deliveries of essential items (like fresh food and nappies) to people in isolation.
- Food Bank at St Cuthman’s Whitehawk is dramatically expanding its service to meet the increased needs, with two distribution days per week and deliveries to those self-isolating.
- The Churches Night Shelter at St Patrick’s Church in Hove is continuing to provide accommodation and healthy food for people who have been experiencing homelessness, run by a network of volunteers from multiple participating churches. Given the current risks associated with COVID-19, we are working tirelessly with the Council and other homeless charities to ensure all of our guests are being housed in council emergency/supported accommodation.
Resource
As a top priority, we are contacting our congregation members to identify both those of us in need of assistance (whatever your needs might be), and those with capacities to provide support, such as the ability to volunteer in person, drive a vehicle to collect and deliver essential supplies for vulnerable people, connect with people over the phone, or specialist professional skills such as counselling or emergency plumbing!
Partnership
We will seek to generously support wider efforts of other local charities and the government to provide essential services to people during the COVID-19 outbreak. In order to do this we are working with a wide network of partners to identify critical volunteering opportunities which we will also direct our congregation members to.
Within such a fluid context, we are seeking to deliver help with agility, flexibility and a high degree of relevance to the needs of people. This means that we will continually review our response, adapting our ministries as required to ensure they meet changing needs and are delivered in accordance with current government directives.
