Knighton Community Hub

1.    Introduction

This project was developed to address the following issues:

• Rural isolation 
• Lack of local services 
• Access to information
• Withdrawal of services 
• Low qualification levels among the population
• Poorly paid jobs
• High levels of child poverty
• The need for a focal point for services 

For the purposes of this project, health information was defined as information which supports people to live a healthy lifestyle in their community, so this includes community information about organisations, clubs and societies which provide social interaction, overcoming loneliness and isolation in this remote rural area of East Radnorshire. The project also supported with job seeking, benefits and housing with the ambition to contribute to overall health and wellbeing.

The project understood that there are many people in the remote rural area who need support to be able to access and interpret quality information, particularly in this era of “fake news”; the project want to help them to develop the skills to be able to identify and use reputable sources of up-to-date information. 

The project is a partnership between the Knighton and District Community Centre, a registered charity and the Powys County Council Library Service. The County Council Library has been co-located in the Knighton Community Centre since 2017. The opportunity to maximise the benefits of the partnership work with Powys County Council, and PAVO our Council for Voluntary Service together with other public bodies and smaller voluntary organisations was given to us by the award of funding from the Arwain-Leader programme.

2.    Challenge

The implementation and management of a new service has been extremely challenging during the Covid pandemic for the following reasons:

1. It has not been possible to re-open some of the planned services because of the Welsh regulations about Covid;
2. Where services have re-opened, they have been limited.
3. There have been different regulations applying to the library and the community centre. 

3.    Solution

Most of the work during the periods of lockdown and partial closure of the centre took place via Zoom, email or social media. A previous Facebook page devoted to the Coronavirus response was renamed ‘Advice from the Hub’ and a regular newsletter was hand delivered several times to all households in the area by volunteers. The project also altered their ways of record keeping.  Due to receiving the Arwain grant, it was stipulated participants must sign in with pen and paper – the project decided to abandon this method due to the health risks and logged all activity on survey monkey to lower the risk of transmitting the infection. 

4.    Benefit

The project worked very closely with the County Librarian on the project. She has been able to signpost us to other departments and her knowledge of the range of services in Powys is very good and she has been able to help us develop the service.  The project has also been able to help the Community Centre to manage the recovery of services after the end of the pandemic.

5.    Result

As a result of the project, we have been able to develop new services at our Tuesday and Thursday Drop Ins. Issues with alcohol and drug abuse were identified as a result of emergency re-housing of people with drugs/alcohol problems during the pandemic and we were able to negotiate with a drugs/alcohol charity