• Over 5000 phone calls to check customer welfare during the first 2 months of lockdown

• 43 team members redeployed to support customer wellbeing

• New Community Development Team developed to help more people

The impact of Covid-19 has and will have lasting impacts. At the outset, like many organisations, we tried to understand what more we could do to support the people and communities we serve in West Wales. With 3000 homes across multiple communities, ateb established a Welfare Team made up of a number of team members from various different disciplines. Together, the Welfare Team quickly established that it was contact with another person that was the highest commodity for people cut off due to lockdowns and shielding etc. The regular calls got up to the hundreds very quickly and ranged from a few minutes to over an hour. The team didn’t want to replicate other support networks already doing a great job in the community, so we started to refer and support customers from organising food parcels to requesting care packages.

The work of the Welfare team had a lasting impact on those who participated. Philippa, who now works in our finance team commented,

“It was really difficult hearing some of the stories but it was reassuring that I was helping. Our customers were so grateful for a chat, it helped me to put ateb’s work into context and how we really can make a difference through often the simplest of actions”.

Our experience from the last year of the Welfare Team’s work has been to hardwire some of the approaches into our day-to-day services. Our current strategic plan was updated to reflect ateb’s need to deliver more welfare services with its partners, to its communities and includes investment for new posts to support these activities full time.

Whereas there have been many negatives about the last year, by taking some of the small positives, we may be able to change things for the better in the future.

Nick Hampshire
Chief Executive
ateb Group Limited

ateb Reflections are a look back at some of our key considerations and achievements from 2020.

To download a copy of Reflection 3 – Supporting our communities please click here.

ateb Group consists of