Sadly having watched the press conferences over the last few days, I’m afraid that we don’t yet know when Extratime can safely re-open. We are of course carefully monitoring local authority advice, which as you probably know is that lockdown is working, but COVID-19 numbers remain too high to lift restrictions.

Of course the good news is the vaccination programme is well underway, so we can be optimistic, but we are not yet able to say when Extratime clubs and schemes will be able to run.

[email protected] and other options

While the physical doors are closed, we’ve been getting creative to bring more of Extratime to you at home.

Thank you if you are one of the many families who have taken the time to respond to our survey. I know how tough it is to find any time, so I really appreciate this. If you haven’t yet, that’s also fine as we’re keeping the survey open for a bit longer to capture as much feedback as we can. Please contact us if you’d like the link.

Rebecca and Brett have started to work through the survey responses to help us tailor something more personal to meet children and young people’s specific interests. In the meantime, the club teams have set up some really nice new activities, either live on Zoom or on pre-recorded on YouTube. These include;

• Extratime & Friends live workshops, including weekday and Saturday sessions will be running until at least mid-February. As well as the usual favourites, Bell Tree Music Therapy have also joined the programme to run interactive music sessions. You can sign up for sessions to the end of January here.

• YouTube channel has lovely new videos from the After School Club teams which should be followed by Youth Club videos next week. Extratime YouTube

• Virtual After School and Youth Clubs have started well so we’re planning to run each club once a week to begin with. If you’d like to participate, we’ll send you a link to your child’s club session each week;

Mondays – Woody After School Club 4:30 pm
Tuesdays – Hawkins After School Club 4:30 pm
Wednesdays – Youth Club 5:00 pm
Thursdays – Hill Park After School Club 4:00 pm

The teams are looking forward to seeing everyone!

• Activity Packs: Our Venue Lead Sophy has been working on the first of the new virtual / online activity packs and we’re hoping to share the first of these on the website soon.  The survey feedback is helping to shape physical activity packs too, so these will also be coming soon.

• Phone calls: As you may know, over the last week our Venue Leads Ellie, Chloe, Reed and Giorgina have been contacting people by phone to touch base with you in person. This is to say hello, see how things are going, and to make sure you know about the support available for you from Extratime.  Crucially please let contact us if you need any extra support.

• Portslade Village Centre: We’ve also begun to contact families who have expressed an interest in the ‘single household sessions’ at the Centre. If you would like to do this and you haven’t let us know yet, please get in touch.

I’ll be in touch again to update you as soon as we know more, but in the meantime please let me know if there’s anything else we can do to help you and your family. I know how tough things are, so I want you to know we are all still here for you.

Warmest wishes

Sam