HQT Success! Watch the highlights here
About Hastings Question Time……..
On Friday 19th February Hastings Heart invited local civic leaders to answer YOUR questions on Covid. A chance to make your voice heard, it was a free event for the people of our town and one we’ll be repeating.
If you missed it, don’t miss out - here's a snapshot of what happened and if you want the full shebang, there’s a link at the bottom of the video itself.
The big event
Overall we had 100 people who joined the discussion on Zoom and over a 1,000 people on Facebook watching and contributing to the conversation.
The topics covered revolved around questions submitted by members of our community (YOU!) and they included; testing, vaccines, care staff, special educational needs, business support, food and deprivation, regeneration and development, asylum and community funding.
Questions were posed to local leaders: Sally-Ann Hart MP Hastings and Rye; Cllr Keith Glazier, Leader of East Sussex County Council; Cllr Colin Fitzgerald, Deputy Leader of Hastings Borough Council; Graham Peters, Chairman of Team Sussex; Steve Manwaring, Director of Hastings Voluntary Action, and Dawn Dublin, Director of Hastings Urban Enterprises.
The chat
As predicted, members of the community got right behind the cause! In addition to the questions asked in advance our town became extremely animated in the live chat rooms where we saw a clear demand for answers around the following themes:
Transport (to and from) testing and vaccination centres - getting help for people who can’t physically do a test and can’t get to test centres - one contributor said, “The most vulnerable desperately need support and aren’t getting it.”
At the front of a lot of minds is the speed of vaccinations in comparison to other towns - “How do we compare, how are we doing?”
There was a lot of support in the chat for local business, and people asking about access to grants.
Carers at home are feeling neglected and financially disadvantaged because they’re unable to work, care and in some cases shield - what greater support will be available to them?
In care homes we have frontline workers with questions around available mental health support and ongoing PTSD counselling. One contributor said, “The levels of trauma must be off the scale. Counselling and support should absolutely be available on an in depth and long term basis.”
Who should foot the bill and make it happen? One attendee told us, “This is a matter for central government funding and coordination, not just left to voluntary organisations.”
Families of care workers told us they felt more at risk. “It’s been extremely stressful for my daughter in-law, a nurse in the emergency department. She eventually got regular testing but it caused her so much stress and worry in case she caught it and risked her partner getting it.”
When talking about the return to schools, we had a comment from an anonymous attendee who said, "Is there too much focus on formal education and not enough on emotional support and resilience, when working with children and young people?"
People want to know about future planning for the town - specifically in relation to tourism. One anonymous attendee said, "What are the plans for welcoming visitors back (when the time is right)?" For example, “Is there a plan to make sure we get our fair share of visitors looking to holiday here in the UK, when it's safe to do so?"
Polling - what you told us
Polls to the community before the event indicated that 80% of participants felt that lockdown is doing more harm than good, 69% felt that schools shouldn’t be opening back up in March and 79% want teachers and children to be tested weekly.
Boris clearly only heard some of that.
On the polls that were put live on the night you told us that community asymptomatic testing was not only important but should be available to everyone in the community free of charge (90%). When we asked about how people feel about the vaccine most people had no concerns but what was warming to learn is that around a third of people polled said they understood why others might be - empathy and support for others (nice one Hastings and St Leonards!).
61% of people responding told us they feel care and health workers are not getting adequate support, only 3% said it is sufficient.
Who do you think is best placed to address issues around food insecurity? 40% of you told us it should be the national government and 29% said local. Schools and education were attributed 7% of the vote which is interesting given the schools campaign for more support from the government.
Strength in numbers
Our community is proud and passionate and we saw this live in action on Friday. In response to a comment from the panel about engaging “them” (meaning us) in projects you said: “Engage yourself in our projects.” The need from our audience was clear; it should be about how our institutions can serve our communities and not the other way around.
Looking forward
So many of your contributions have further spurred on our work at HEART (thank you), and we hope this summary will encourage those who participated or couldn’t make it that night to take strength from the contributions we’ve seen. A couple of final points from you, our community worth making a song and dance about:
“Can Hastings Borough Council learn from this event more about how to engage local people and have them participate in council meetings/decisions in the future?” Here, here! And yes please!
“How can I volunteer and get involved? What would be the most useful way to volunteer and give support at the moment?" This event inspired people enough to get stuck in! That’s the Hastings community.
Considerations
Holding our local leaders to account is something that we strive to do with your ongoing support. Our leaders should (and must) be answering these questions and they should be engaging with their community especially throughout a pandemic. That said, there was no obligation to attend so we’d like to take this opportunity to say we’re deeply encouraged by their participation and enthused by their dedication to continuing these discussions in partnership with our great community.
Let’s keep working on our shared sense of purpose as a vibrant community.