Following the government’s announcement on the evening of January 4th, we know that many in our community have questions about how they will continue to connect with Outside Edge during the next month. At this point, we can confirm that all of our activities, including blended sessions, will go ahead as planned from Wednesday, January 6th.
During this challenging time, the physical and mental health of our service users, staff and the wider community is of utmost concern to us. The latest government guidelines continue to make an allowance for formally organised support groups that provide mutual aid, or any other form of support, for people in drug and alcohol recovery to remain open with up to 15 participants. Therefore, we have worked with our partners in Public Health and venue delivery partners to ensure that we will be able to continue offering Covid-safe, socially distanced in-person activities throughout the upcoming period of lockdown.
Although we will be able to continue to offer this essential service for some service users, we strongly encourage as many people as possible to access Outside Edge activities online and to only attend in-person if it is absolutely necessary. To that end, we will continue to make sure that all of our activities are accessible online and over the phone, as we have done over the past 10 months. If any of this information changes over the next month, then current service users will be contacted via email and SMS with updated details. New service users and friends of OETC should continue to check our website and social media for updates as the situation evolves.
For now, we will only be offering a blended delivery (if you can’t attend online) for the following groups listed below:
- Edge Two (Mondays)
- Write Now (Wednesdays)
- West London Drop-in Drama (Wednesdays)
- Women’s Drama Group (Thursdays)
To keep you as safe as possible we have made additional safety measures to our workshops, including compulsory booking a minimum of 4 hours in advance of a session, reduction in capacity resulting in increased distance between participants and face coverings must be worn during all activities (unless a service user has a valid exemption for this requirement).
Find out more about what to expect here!