Hello and welcome to our Easter 2022 Newsletter,

It is a widely shared feeling that Easter signals the start of spring bringing new growth, fresh starts, and new beginnings. As the days get longer and brighter many of us experience a new lease of life and a renewed sense of positivity for the months ahead. Being able to harness this can-do attitude and desire to improve and move forward is a great opportunity for the staff and tenants to set new goals, with bigger and better outcomes.

The coming of Easter and the spring is also a great time for us as an organisation to make plans for the summer months ahead and set out our own goals and objectives for the year. Impact Property Services and Impact Living Charity continue to pursue opportunities to improve and grow our services. Our focus remains on improving these lives of our clients by finding new and innovative ways to support them to lead a more fulfilling life, living in a safe environment at one of our ever growing and expanding sites.

Our pursuit of providing the very best accommodation, opportunities, care and support never wavers, and we remain as busy as ever in delivering our services to several communities across Yorkshire. We are excited and happy to share some of our achievements with you this Easter time and cannot thank you enough for your ongoing interest and support in our supported accommodation services.

A big shout out to Sheffield United Football Club

Some of you may remember one of our recent stories about a group of clients at our Wilfred Drive site in Sheffield attending Street Soccer Academy which is a fabulous sports program set up by Sheffield United Football club. The program has now been completed and finalised with a cup tournament and final award ceremony. This program really was an excellent way to encourage health, fitness, teamwork, and community interaction for our clients. Every one of them enjoyed taking part and benefitted from the activity massively. We recommend that all our readers follow @communitysufc on social media to see more of our clients and all the amazing work the club does.

We would also like to give our Sheffield team at Wilfred Drive a big shout out for their efforts in co-ordinating the events and ensuring our clients were able to attend the SUFC program. It really was a big joint effort, and everyone really was integral in making it the success that it was.

Bjorn’s Journey to get Cyclocross on the Map

We could not put out our Easter Newsletter without mentioning Bjorn and Shibden Cycling club (SCC). Bjorn is an extremely talented young man who is passionate about his sport cyclocross. Bjorn’s love for his sport and the physical and mental benefits it gives him has resulted in Bjorn wanting more young people to get involved and experience the happiness his sport has brought to his life. Cyclocross is a physically demanding sport and the endurance and commitment that is needed to compete is mentally challenging. Bjorn however champions the many personal benefits of overcoming this and succeeding by pushing through these challenges. Bjorn understands that the feeling of achievement through hard work is not only an amazing feeling but also a great lesson in life, and he cannot express the joy he feels from all his amazing achievements.

Impact Living Charity experienced this passion first hand when we awarded Bjorn with a cheque for £2,000 and sponsorship from us to help him achieve his ambition and continue to inspire more young people. This sponsorship will make it possible for Bjorn to purchase the kit he needs, maintain, and improve his bikes and make trips abroad to compete in ‘Koppenbergcross’ – which is a tournament that takes place across Belgium, Holland, and France. This sponsorship means that Bjorn will get the opportunity to compete against elite riders while being watched by 30-40,000 spectators. Bjorn has a big desire for Cyclocross to be recognised as an Olympic sport on a world stage and we are thrilled that we have been able to help this amazing young man in his journey.

We also want to give Bjorn a huge congratulations for finishing in first place at the North of England Championships in November 21. Bjorn beat one of the best riders in Britain in this race and could not be prouder, well-done Bjorn!

Thank you to Olivia Coukham for sending us these great photos of Bjorn to share his story in our newsletter.

The Impact Community is the best community

As always all of our sites are taking the time to invest in their communities by arranging activities, spending time together and trying new things. We understand at Impact that having nothing to do and feeling bored can sometimes result in us feeling down or making decisions to fill our time that may not be positive or beneficial to us. To help combat this, Impact Living’s support workers and members of the Impact community arrange activities, take trips out to new places and bring neighbours together to enjoy time together and build positive friendships with their peers. The feeling of community and being a part of something bigger than yourself is one of the most important aspects of living a fulfilled life and we at Impact continue to invest our time and resources to make our community the best community to be a part of.

We have added in some photographs of our clients and workers taking part in community activities together. Seeing positive relationship building being successful and impacting our clients lives in positive ways is always something we love to share with our supporters.

These are pictures provided by our Crofton Court Community, who have kindly taken some photos during an activity and an outing for us to share with our readers.

The photo on the left is Jack one of our extra care workers and two clients from Crofton Court planting Bonsai Tree seeds using a Bonsai Tree kit. The group all like the Bonsai Tree and wanted one for their homes and decided that to grow this from scratch would be a great achievement.

In the photo to the right, a group of clients from Crofton Court went to Cartwright Hall which is quite local to their homes. All of them had an interest in old architecture and art and wanted to take advantage of such a historical site almost on their doorstep. This was reported as a great outing and others have been inspired to do this activity themselves.

A little bit of chocolate doesn’t hurt

Our staff teams have been working hard again to make sure that all our residents enjoy the same sweet treats that we all enjoy during the Easter period. We are sending a special thanks to Nicola Doran the Tenancy and Extra Care Site Manager for Sheffield and her team. Nicola and the team have done a fantastic job fundraising and being given donations of Easter eggs for the tenants in Sheffield and beyond also having eggs for clients outside of their area, which I think we can all agree is an amazing achievement. Nicola kindly provided a picture to share with our readers and added the note:

“There was much more but they were given out as soon as the clients saw them”

A lovely thought to think that the clients were given a little bit of sweet joy in the shape of an egg. Huge thanks to our fundraisers and donators who made this possible, no underestimation should ever be given to the impact of a small gesture.

We are sure all our clients will be incredibly grateful for their Easter eggs and want to thank the teams in Bradford and Malton for their efforts in ensuring all their clients receive an Easter egg to enjoy this Sunday. All the staff at Impact really are so grateful and share the thankfulness with you that is expressed by all our clients when they receive this gift.

“Thank you!”

To end our 2022 Easter newsletter, we would like to acknowledge that this time of year has a very special meaning for many people across the globe. However, the story and relevance of Easter varies across several different belief systems and cultures.

Impact is a diverse organisation, and our clients and staff are encouraged to have the freedom and safe space to live their lives authentically. So, we ask that all individuals from all different backgrounds enjoy the Easter break and any celebration they have.

We look forward to sharing our summer newsletter in the months to come and wish you good health and happiness in the meantime.

Below is a poem picked out by a service user from one of our Bradford sites to be included in this year’s Easter newsletter, we are sure you will enjoy it as much as we did.

Many thanks

Impact Property Services Ltd and Impact Living Charity