Walsall Council is to receive £432,500 from the Government to deliver a new Community Champions scheme to support those most at risk from COVID-19 and boost vaccine take-up. This funding allocation follows an announcement by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick on 25 January 2021, where over £23 million has been allocated to 60 councils and voluntary groups to expand communications on COVID-19 with at-risk groups.
25 January 2021
A new “Laptop Loaning” scheme is helping those without the means of accessing PCs for use of job searching and career development.
The census will be held on 21 March 2021. While results will be available the following year, all personal records will be locked away for 100 years and kept safe for future generations.
For the first time, the census will be run primarily online, making it easy for most people to complete the questionnaire on any device — whether that be a computer, a mobile phone or a tablet. Local census support centres will be offering help, while paper questionnaires will be available for those who need them. All census staff will operate in line with the Government’s latest COVID-19 guidance.
15 January 2021
This Saturday marks the birthday of Sister Dora who was originally from Yorkshire but was sent to Walsall in 1865 by way of her religious order and spent the rest of her life pursuing a pioneering nursing career in Walsall.
Walsall Council will open a COVID-19 symptom free testing centre on 18 January 2021 to carry out fast lateral flow tests that identify critical workers who may have the virus, but may be unaware because they have no symptoms. A proportion of people have no symptoms and yet the virus is found to be present on testing and so they are in danger of spreading it to others without knowing. The twice weekly tests will initially be for council critical workers to protect residents from inadvertently coming into contact with the virus. Plans are also under way to extend the programme to include other critical workers including essential businesses, the voluntary sector and targeted communities in the borough.