More than 150 families and individuals have received support from a newly-established help group in Cumbria.

Carlisle's SWWATCH group, Scotby, Warwick, Wetheral and the Cooperative Hearts, has been delivering medication to those ill, shielding, self-isolating and the elderly since the start of lockdown.

Volunteers say they'll keep going just as long as they are needed.

The group was established by Wetheral and Holme Eden vicar Graeme Skinner at the start of the lockdown.

Using a grant from Cumbria County Council it quickly printed and hand delivered a flyer to homes across its patch offering the prescription service

Stephen Higgs of the group said deliverers were sometimes the only human contact some of those shielding had.

He said: “Our volunteers are often engaged in conversation as it may be the only person from the outside world that person has seen. Our volunteers have understood the need for that.

“The volunteers have been so generous with their offers of help and those on our database have been very generous with their thanks for what’s being done. We’ve had people trying to pay us, but that’s not what the service is about.”