Maldon District Council worked with partners to offer their local community an extensive storage container filled with household essentials.
The initiative
During the COVID-19 pandemic, local partners in Maldon, from a range of different sectors, came together to support their community through that crisis. As the emergency response dissipated, demand for such support did not. Local partners realised that residents were needing support on cost of living pressures as well as other issues such as mental health, domestic abuse, and benefits advice.
A formal partnership agreement was set up between Maldon District Council, Maldon & District Community and Voluntary Service (CVS), Salvation Army, local Housing Association, Citizen Advice Bureau, and others to respond to this need. Partners set up a shared database and referral system in order to more effectively map need and signpost clients to support available. This is also including a data sharing agreement.
Central to this partnership working was the creation and running of storage container stocked with items including include food, childcare and household items, cooking equipment, warm packs, supermarket vouchers and other essentials.
The container was sourced, funded, and gifted to Maldon & District CVS to run by the district council. The council have kept monitoring requirements to a minimum on the container in order to ease the workload of voluntary sector partners, however an inventory check is required.
Maldon & District CVS ensure the items are topped up and use a network of supporting volunteers to manage the container’s use, however any organisation within the partnership can access its resources.
The container enables partners to buy in-bulk and store over longer periods of time. This is particularly helpful when funding streams supporting the project are short-term, such as the Household Support Fund.
Partners have been able to spend the funding required within the short time period and provide support over a longer period of time. For example, the local housing association has recently bought multiple slow cookers for in-need residents across the district. Slow cookers use less energy to run than an oven and as such is a welcome good to be providing residents struggling with cost of living pressures now and over this winter.
Local partners share information and assess patterns of need during quarterly update meetings.