A regional 0800 number that was set up by Civil Defence to support the community during the Covid crisis is now being scaled down after what is being described as a huge success.
Nelson Tasman Civil Defence Emergency Management group controller, Roger Ball, said the regional 0800 that people needing urgent assistance used to get food, medication, or other supplies, was designed to be a safety net.
“We didn’t want anybody falling through the cracks.”
Roger describes the emergency number as a ‘touchpoint’ for people. “Not everybody could get through to frontline services, so we put the 0800 number together so people could talk to someone local and get help.”
Throughout the crisis, the welfare hotline received over 560 calls and assisted people throughout Nelson, Richmond and the wider Tasman region. Roger says the point of difference for the welfare hotline was for those who had trouble accessing food and critical supplies during Alert Level 4, including those over 70s who were asked to stay at home but may not have had a support network of friends and family.
Some of the calls the hotline received were requests for food, goods and services. Other calls were from people looking for urgent accommodation or needing help with mental well-being. In these cases, Civil Defence staff were able to connect them to an organisation that could help meet their specific needs.
Rapid Relief, Urban search and rescue teams and civil defence staff all worked on the ground to assist those who needed help, whether it was people who couldn’t get to the supermarket and needed food or urgent prescriptions filled from a pharmacy.
Roger says that the volunteers who worked tirelessly during Alert Level 4 did a fantastic job.
“I really take my hat off to those who were volunteering in those situations,” Roger said. “We were aware that neighbours, friends and family were supporting each other, along with church groups and iwi, but we didn’t want to take a chance that there were going to be people falling through the cracks,” Roger says.
“We didn’t want people to go a weekend without food because they couldn’t get to the supermarket.”
Roger says that the volume of calls that the welfare hotline received showed that the community was really looking after each other.
As restrictions have eased, the welfare hotline is no longer taking calls, but the model of having a local welfare hotline is one that Civil Defence will look at for future emergencies.