The Southern Health and Social Care Trust has set out the new visiting arrangements following the announcement by Health Minister, Robin Swann, that changes to visiting across all care settings would come into place from Monday 6 July.The revised arrangements support people to visit their loved ones in hospitals and care homes, while balancing the ongoing risk from Covid-19.
 
New Arrangements:
 
·         Virtual visiting remains the preference and no-one feeling unwell or with symptoms of COVID-19 should visit. All HSC sites have access to free Wi-Fi and our staff will help set this up on the patient’s device. Please be patient as our staff will have to prioritise clinical work and patient care.
·         Patients or next of kin can nominate two people who are permitted to visit them.
·         Only one visitor is permitted a day and for a maximum of one hour as set out by the Department of Health.
·         Children under 16 years are not permitted to visit unless there are exceptional circumstances and it has been agreed by the Nurse in Charge.
·         Visitors, and those attending appointments, are asked to bring their own face covering and to wear it at all times. No access will be permitted without a face covering.
·         Visiting arrangements for maternity services have changed. Partners, or a nominated other, can now attend Early Pregnancy, booking, 20-week scans, labour and birth.*
·         Use the hand sanitiser provided before and after entering both the Hospital and the Ward/Department.
 
*Please visit www.southerntrust.hscni.net for full visiting information and guidance.
Restaurants will remain closed to the public given the short duration of visits and to assist in maintaining social distancing.
The Trust wishes to thank the public for their co-operation and support during the COVID-19 pandemic

Good Relations Week Goes Virtual for 2020
 
The Community Relations Council has announced that Good Relations Week will go virtual for 2020 and they are encouraging local groups and organisations to get involved as part of the virtual celebrations.
 
This year Good Relations Week will run from Monday 14th to Monday 21st September 2020 and bring a dynamic programme of community relations events and digital content to a new virtual audience.
 
The theme for the free online showcase is ‘Celebrating Our Journey, Embracing Our Future.’
 
The Community Relations Council is encouraging local community groups and organisations, statutory bodies and local councils to get involved and host an online event or to create a piece of digital content that will demonstrate the spirit of good community relations in 2020.  Junior Ministers Gordon Lyons and Declan Kearney would also encourage local groups to get involved.  You may view the video on TEO’s Twitter account if you follow the link below:-
https://t.co/ENlW3KNIdA
(https://twitter.com/ExecOfficeNI/status/1275046308798173186?s=09)
Events might include an online workshop, a Zoom lecture or panel discussion, a collaborative podcast, a virtual musical or dance performance, storytelling, a work of individual or community art or craft or a photography exhibition capturing the here and now of your community, or your vision for the future.
If you have archive material, it could be a compilation video of film footage, photography, or interviews from our 30-year history.
Please get involved in making this year’s virtual Good Relations Week 2020 a modern celebration of Northern Ireland’s diverse culture and heritage.
Register your interest at www.goodrelationsweek.com
 
If you need any more information, please get in touch via email at: grw20@asgandpartners.com
#GRW2020 

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has today announced that a further 94 rural villages and towns have been added to their UK roll-out plan for 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology over the next 2 years and all of them will be in Northern Ireland.
 
The latest announcement forms part of the operator’s on-going commercial deployment in N.Ireland, which recently extended coverage to 360,000 premises (up by 100,000 since January 2020 alone) and aims to reach 525,000 premises (60% coverage) by March 2021. By comparison today’s update includes a build programme that will run even longer, until March 2022.
Overall, 124 locations across NI have now been included in Openreach’s build programme and the company is currently covering 750 premises every day. The fact that all of this is being done via a commercial project is important and reflects some of the operator’s recent advancements in civil engineering, which have helped to bring the per premises cost of deployment down to a more manageable level.
 
To support the build programme, they have also announced that they are recruiting over 100 apprentice engineers across the region between now and March 2021. Our new recruits will be joining the team at a really exciting time and if anyone is interested in applying, they can find out more on their website.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/07/openreach-add-94-rural-villages-and-towns-to-fttp-broadband-plan.html
​

A new funding opportunity for eligible groups in the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector opens on Monday morning! 💷
The call is to help fund core running costs of eligible organisations. Groups who successfully applied for earlier funding (call 1 2020/21) for core running costs will not be eligible to apply again in this call. Applications open at 9 am on Monday 8 June and close at 12 noon on Friday 26 June.
For more info and details on how to apply, visit: https://bit.ly/2XBhisw
For queries on capital or revenue grants email: fap@armaghbanbridgecraigavon.gov.uk or tel: 075 1560 7480.