Every new referral to mental health charity Jami since March has in some way been related to the pandemic, reports its chief executive Laurie Rackind.
To him, that is not a bad thing, a response he quickly qualifies by explaining that he is more concerned about those not coming forward as the pressures of the lockdown, self-isolation and job and financial worries take their toll.
He expects demand for Jami’s services to continue on an upward curve at a time when charity finances are under enormous strain.
“We are a 98 per cent voluntary funded organisation so of course I’m concerned about the economic impact, as well as the mental health impact,” he told the JC this week. “We’ve budgeted for a significant drop in our income [25-30 per cent] at the same time as having to budget for considerable extra expenses to meet demand.
“In a couple of areas we cut back on our plans for service delivery. But in other areas we’ve had to respond to demand by increasing it.
“Our trustees have absolutely accepted that we have got to use reserves. In broad terms, we are going to be offering significantly more services through this next year or two on a reduced income.”
Jami kept its hubs open for as long as public health guidelines permitted. But the lockdown required an urgent and comprehensive risk assessment of its 1,300 service users.
This determined that around 350 would need regular support, initially through phone contact.
Staff were redeployed — for example, Jami’s events manager became one of the team cooking and delivering meals, and often, tablet devices, to some of the most isolated. “We were looking to use Zoom and a lot of people didn’t have the tech. So we had to provide them with it.”
Mr Rackind also pointed out that some of the socially distanced chats with service users in the stairwells of their apartment buildings had highlighted safeguarding issues.
With the closure of facilities such as the Head Room café in Golders Green, the move to online programming had been successful —“we were a case study in Computer Weekly” — reaching more service users.
“For example, a woman in East London said: ‘Oh, I’ve always liked the café programmes but I can’t get to North-West London.’ The groups are a complete mixture. We’ve had people from Bournemouth and Birmingham; someone from the States and someone from Israel.”
Sessions were normally for around groups of a dozen, with two facilitators.
Mr Rackind noted that the closing of synagogues and the over-70s being told to stay at home had affected “some of the most active people in our community — always out and about doing things, a higher number of them living alone and retired. We predicted for them that the impact of lockdown was really going to be significant and we are seeing a prevalence of referrals from that age group.”
But the charity was also supporting students, a university programme having been introduced before the lockdown.
Although not being able to see loved ones has been a key issue among the general populace, “a lot of our service users are isolated anyway. For many of them, the key contact was with Jami volunteers and staff members so these were the most important things we had to replace.”
A couple of service users had died in recent months, a sad if hardly surprising statistic given the 1,300 people on its books, “some of them quite elderly”. Mr Rackind said the deaths were not Covid-related.
However, “some of the things we’ve had to support people with no IT skills on are how to dial into a lavoyah or a shivah — those kind of skills. The carers and family support group has been really significant.”
The charity’s social workers and occupational therapists were “reporting a 55 per cent increase in hours spent directly supporting people. The café programme has increased sessions by 35 per cent and there has been a 46 per cent increase in attendances. So there have been a lot more people using services, albeit different services.”
As restrictions eased, the challenge was to “not just revert to services in the same format as before” but also to maintain some of “the digital platforms that enable us to do much more.
“We are budgeting for 15 more staff to join Jami from now until the end of the financial year in March,” Mr Rackind added. “We have had three staff join during lockdown. I’ve now got colleagues I’ve not physically met.”
He hopes the most recent Head Room enterprise — a Mill Hill outlet retailing items upcycled by service users at Jami’s Borehamwood warehouse — will be back in business. There might be further opportunities to showcase the charity’s work. “The high street is going to look a very different place. It’s a good time to take advantage.”
And Mr Rackind has a keen personal interest in the Golders Green Head Room reopening, having promised furloughed café staff that he would not have another coffee until they were back on the premises to serve it.
