As we all know, over the last few years, the UK and the world has been exposed to the biggest health crisis of our generation known as the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which has affected many of our daily living and working lives to the extreme including effecting our own personal mental and physical health. For a lot of us we have had a massive support network around us from friends and family to working colleagues and academic teachers and lectures, but for many of us as well this was not the case.
For some care experienced people across the UK, they have been seen to except and deal with the strange new changes that the government imposed on all of us during the lockdown, which caused massive impacts on their mental health and physical just like people who weren’t in care but what emotional support did care experienced people receive during the pandemic to help them adapt to the new changes of lockdown.
From my own experience of being a care experienced person, during the pandemic, the amount of support that was around was massively reduced, due to companies and organisations closing and working from home, but the one piece of support that was still around for me during this hard time was the support of my personal advisor. I can remember that during the pandemic, my personal advisor tried to keep in contact with me and other care leavers to make sure that we had everything we needed but also making sure that we were okay as the pandemic might have affected us mentally and impacted on our mental health.
In a latest report published by ‘Coram Voice’ entitled, The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Care leavers wellbeing’, it showed that during the pandemic there was a ‘reduction of contact face to face with care leavers, but this was made up with virtual contact via zoom and teams.
During this time, me personally, I was feeling extremely anxious as all I was thinking was what If I did catch the virus, what will I have to do and so on. My anxiety was all over the place at the time just like many other people’s across the globe as well, but the one thing that I was happy about to have during the pandemic that kept me from feeling lost and having a breakdown was being able to have weekly catch-up zoom calls with other care leavers and friends. For me personally having these calls made a massive impact on my mental wellbeing and from what I saw in friends and other care leavers in my local authority, it helped them as well.
However, even though we have had the support and emotional support from our social workers and personal advisors during the pandemic, the one piece of support that many of us had during the pandemic was the help of friends and close relationships that we held at the time.
In my experience during the pandemic, this was the same for me as even though I was miles away from many of my friends in my hometown due to being in higher education at university, I still had the support of those around me but also my friends over zoom calls.
So, even though the pandemic has been the worst historical event for many of us within our lifetime, the amount of physical and emotional support that we all received during this time in my opinion has been outstanding, as for care experienced people our lives were turned upside down massively, but from my own experience as a care leaver, the emotional support we got during this hard and anxiety filled time helped massively.
By Anonymous Care Experienced Blogger
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