Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic started last year, subcommittee members of Chester’s Long Term Recovery Task Force rolled up their sleeves and got to work analyzing how to meet the increased social services needs of the Chester community.

As a testament to the group’s efforts, and to help ensure a continuity of its activities, the town is receiving a $4,000 grant from the Community Foundation of Middlesex County (CFMC).

The new funds will help the town build on its existing social services technology infrastructure, to help connect with residents during the pandemic and increase their access to needed services.

Kim Megrath, who is the facilitator of the Social Services, Spirituality and Emotional Wellness Subcommittee, announced receipt of the grant at Chester’s Jan. 27 Board of Selectmen meeting.

She discussed how the Chester Emergency Fund was recently renamed the Chester Cares Fund to broaden its applicability and how new software, supported by the CFMC grant, will help improve the tracking of donations to the fund.

“The opportunity to be accountable and to be able to report to the community at large and to individual organizations regarding how grateful we are and how this community is using these funds is incredibly important,” said Megrath.

In addition to tracking funds, the new software, named Charity Tracker, helps organizations with a variety of data collection needs and other tasks related to social services.

Based on her conversations with other towns that use the software, Dawn Parker, a member of the subcommittee, said it makes activities like grant writing much easier.

Users of the program “could get reports on where their support is going and where their gaps are, so then when they are looking for money to support the gaps, then that information for whatever grant is being written, is all right there,” said Parker.

The subcommittee has also developed a resource list that works with the Charity Tracker software, to help ensure that services are not duplicated and that certain needs related to housing, treatment or food needs, are not overlooked.

The importance of volunteers in helping the subcommittee achieve its goals was also highlighted at the meeting.

“We looked to other models of mutual aid, which is the use of volunteers within the community to create more touch points for citizens,” said Allison Abramson, executive director of the Tri-Town Youth Services Bureau.

As an example, the subcommittee enlisted volunteers to make calls to Chester residents aged 75 and up, to help them register online for COVID-19 vaccinations, and to help them get transportation to the vaccination site.

As the project entailed reaching approximately 300 residents, as reported by Megrath, it emphasized the importance, not only of volunteers, but a prioritization of “some policies and procedures to do that,” while ensuring confidentiality, said Abramson.

“If we can think of ways to build on what is already working well, utilize people in town who have expressed an interest in volunteering, and train them appropriately, we would, I think, have a very, very successful and replicable program,” said Abramson.

Chester’s First Selectman Lauren Gister praised the efforts of the subcommittee members in coming up with solutions related to the town’s long term recovery efforts, helping residents get COVID-19 vaccines, and their overall work supporting the social services department.

“These are difficult times with COVID, but the fact is that regardless of the times, and whether we have COVID or whether we don’t have COVID, this is the work of our town, to support our residents and this is an integral part of that,” said Gister