Proper monitoring for initiatives

Whatever initiatives you come up with need to be properly monitored to see that they are actually working. Good intentions alone are not enough.

For example, the shielding text service promised me information and priority access to supermarket deliveries. The text service failed to register me for over a fortnight. There was no information online about what was happening and no way to report the failure. The council helpline that I was urged to call also knew nothing about the text service or what was happening. Even once registered, the promised access to supermarket delivery took another week, and then another week for one of the supermarket registrations to actually work. Five weeks after being encouraged to shield I finally received my first supermarket delivery.

We appear to be past the first of, what is likely to be many, "peaks". Vulnerable people of all kinds will need support and enabling actions of many kinds. Promising the right things but failing to check whether or not they are actually working should not be good enough.