Helps

Pets were a huge help for our young people last year with 14% mentioning them (evenly split between boys and girls). Most who wrote about ‘pets and parents’ put their pets first! Family and friends were the biggest help to us last year. They were mentioned by 37% of adults and 28% of young people, with family being the most helpful for adults.               Girls missed their friends more than boys did. An additional 8% of adults and 1% of youth mentioned specific actions people had done to help for example - ‘people being generally kinder’, letters, phone calls and other such encouragements. On top of that a further 3% (adults) and 2% (youth) specifically cited the NHS or vaccines as being their biggest help. Food or being able to sleep more were the biggest help for 1 in 20 young people.
        Of those benefitting from more sleep 2/3 were boys and 3/4 of those helped most by food were girls. 4% of adults found work colleagues the biggest help, this is mirrored by 4% of young people citing their teachers as their biggest help. Unsurprisingly 7% of adults mentioned technological communication like Zoom, WhatsApp and social media as helping most and 15% of young people said the same.
         10% of young people said Gaming helped them the most. Of them, almost all were boys showing us that 1 in 5 boys aged 11-18 in our community found gaming the most helpful. Fighting / war games being by far the most common games named. No adults mentioned gaming as having helped them, though some parents might have been grateful their children were being occupied, while they tried to work from home! 9% of our community found sports and walks of the most help, with adults being mainly helped by walks and young people by sports.
         24% of adults who completed a survey said that their biggest help was their church or their faith in God. This is predictable as church buildings were one of the places people could collect survey forms, as well as in shops, pubs, cafes and public building all over Ringwood. But local churches have reported that lots of people who don’t normally attend church have been watching their services online during the pandemic.