Welcome to the Winter edition of Impact Living’s newsletter.
In this edition, we provide updates on various articles detailing the activities our clients have engaged in since our last newsletter. This allows you to see the positive impact our support services have on the lives of vulnerable adults. While the latter part of the summer brought a mix of warm but rainy days, you will discover that there were beautiful moments for our clients and their CSS Workers to enjoy some summer fun outdoors. The newsletter features numerous photos showcasing Impact Living’s clients having fun, learning new things, and highlights the time our support teams invest in our clients, fostering belief in a better life.
As we approach Christmas, our support teams are fully engaged in fundraising efforts to enhance the holiday experience for many of our vulnerable clients. We’ve already received donations of Christmas trees, items for pamper hampers, and contributions toward pre-Christmas buffets for clients. Our fundraising team is actively seeking to fund additional projects that will enable us to provide additional support packages for clients who desperately need our support.
We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it inspires you to see that together, we can make a big difference
Didn’t we have a lovely day, the day we went to Blackpool!
Donna Binyon (Crofton Court Scheme Manager) fundraised over £100 this summer, towards respite day trips for clients (using Facebook donations to promote her cause). The first trip was to Blackpool, the extremely popular seaside destination. Support workers, volunteers and six tenants from Impact Living’s Crofton Court scheme spent the day sightseeing, having fun on rides, buying souvenirs, and eating fish and chips. One client (Suleman) won a teddy at the amusement arcade, which he was over the moon with!
Although it rained, there were smiles all round as they were all incredibly happy to have a change of scenery, socialise with each other and explore a new place. This helped some of the tenants who had been struggling with their mental health & well-being to divert their thoughts, as well as an opportunity to create some new memories. It was the first trip to Blackpool for a couple of the tenants and they were really excited to add it to their list of places to which they had travelled.
They are planning a trip to Knaresborough next, so donations would really be appreciated for this, to help towards the cost of fuel, boat rides and refreshments.
They are planning more trips for the Spring and would really appreciate donations for this.
If you would like to assist with helping to provide more respite day trips for Impact Living’s clients, then please email us at info@impactliving.org or follow the link to our donations page https://www.impactliving.org/support-us/
We also had a lovely day, the day we went to St Ives
The support team fundraised enough to take some clients on a trip to St Ives in Bingley. Some of the clients were surprised at there being somewhere so close to home that was so peaceful and they really enjoyed their visit and found it beneficial to their mental wellbeing.
Diversionary trip to Tong Garden Centre
Clients from Impact Living’s Crofton Court site visited Tong Garden Centre, where they enjoyed a wander around the Garden Centre and also a spot of lunch in the café.
Sheffield Gardening Club
During the summer and autumn clients from Wilfred Drive in Sheffield have been going to a gardening club and they love it! The gardening club is run by Green Estate Community Interest Group whose mission is to grow engaging, adaptive, and resilient urban spaces in Sheffield, the UK and beyond. Green Estates has already won The Kings Award for Enterprise in sustainable development, so this Social Enterprise is a good environment for our clients to go and learn something new, if they are interested in gardening and gardening projects.
Rounders
Our support workers organised a fun time out to go to the local park and play rounders on one of the sunny & dry days this summer, and to sunbathe and generally chill out. As you can see from the photos, a great time was had by all. These types of activities do help our clients as they are great for building interpersonal skills and helping improve both mental and general well-being. We would like to raise funds to do more in 2024.
Ministry of Food
Clients have been doing the Jamie Oliver Ministry of food courses at Inn Churches in Bradford. One of our clients really enjoyed the eight-week course and we have been encouraging him to practice his cooking skills ‘cheese and paprika omelette’ from the ministry of food in our support office kitchen, with our support workers observing him putting his learning into practice. Well done to all who attended this course.
It’s a Smoothie kind of day!
Some of the clients at Crofton Court have been making nutritious smoothies, using the blender that had kindly been donated to this Bradford supported accommodation scheme. They’re just thinking of a name for the recipe and they’re going to get a smoothie recipe diary for all of their new & exciting concoctions!
They have also been sharing their creations with the team, so this is a nice bonus! Cooking and making things together is a good way to build healthy social relationships and this is actively encouraged by Impact Living support teams.
Therapy through Art – A client’s perspective (as told be her Care, Support & Supervision Worker)
Amanda has asked me to explain some of her background, so that our readers understand a little more about what Impact Living does to support & help clients who are living with mental health diagnosis and well-being concerns. Amanda has some alcohol dependency and she is on a programme of support to help with this. Amanda also struggles with her mental health and well-being, as her father passed away and this loss has affected her deeply. Amanda says that her Dad was also creative, just like Amanda and helped her to tap into art / photoshop / photography; as well as poetry and, sketches, painting. He taught her to use various materials to create portraits and a variety of art pieces.
Amanda moved into Impact Living’s supported accommodation in 2023 and has historically had some of her work exhibited through Mind charity, as well as cellar project (now cellar trust). Amanda’s eyes light up when talking about her art and you can visibly see her passion for this; it’s obvious that art means a lot to her and is a huge part of her story and recovery journey. Amanda has recently started to tap into art once again and is keen to exhibit, although she has not felt overly confident recently and has had some feelings of not being good enough (which she is receiving support for). Some of her work is in her own words “dark” and some are based on positive memories as well as help her to cope on the days she is struggling. However, some of her art helps her to feel connected to her father. There are also some pieces of work that Amanda has done which were created in local areas including Saltaire and Bingley and these were exhibited locally.
Amanda also loves nature and is working on painting some landscape pieces that hopefully she will display in other exhibitions in the future.
Sheffield client’s Art Group
Every week a few of our Sheffield supported accommodation clients who live at Impact Living’s Wilfred Drive scheme get together to draw, paint, make things and generally have a lot of fun in the process. Sandra runs the small group arty sessions and has great fun helping our clients to explore all things arty. She has helped them to create signage for the hallway and they have had a great time this week making wreaths with a few of the tenants. Sandra says “I’m so proud of how well they all done 😁”
Just a little time each week doing something the clients enjoy makes a massive impact on their health and well-being.
Celebration!
Impact Living’s Crofton Court support team celebrated with a client earlier this summer, as she celebrated a full year out of hospital with no re-admission, just IHTT during dates/months that are challenging. This is a massive achievement for our client and is something that needed to be acknowledged. Impact Living support workers do celebrate small and large “wins” with clients, as it’s important to acknowledge milestones and also help to create good memories.
Charity abseil.
One of our clients has been extremely brave and done a fundraiser abseil for a charity that she has received support from over the years. She hoped to do something for Impact Living in the future, so watch this space!
Thank you!
One of our clients wanted to thank the team for all of their help, so he/his Dad presented some of the team with a ‘thank you’ cake to share. This was a lovely gesture and the cake was enjoyed by all.
Goodbye Nicola!
Nicola Doran worked for Impact Living for over 20 years and held various roles/posts during that time. Her most recent was after a location move to manage Impact Living’s Wilfred Drive Scheme In Sheffield over ten years ago. Nicola, her husband, and her growing family made their homes in Sheffield and were committed to seeing “first hand” the positive effects that supporting vulnerable clients has on their lives and also on other people & the community around them. The Wilfred Drive Community has always been a close-knit one and the whole of the Wilfred Drive team fosters good working relationships with local organisations & Churches in order to provide various opportunities for the most vulnerable. Nicola has decided to move on to a new challenge but we want to thank Nicola for her part in the Impact story over the years, and wish her the very best for her next adventure with her family!
How does Impact Living’s support make a difference?
I asked our support teams for their thoughts and comments on why they think that Impact Living’s accommodation and support services benefits clients and this is what they said –
Ruby & Sandra said “Our clients get to meet new people and socialise with other clients. This builds confidence in group settings and allows clients to express their emotions through artwork” and “Trying new things can be therapeutic and can help clients to focus on something else, rather than being stuck with their own thoughts. There’s no judgement and it’s a comfortable setting where clients can be themselves & feel accepted”
Jack says “I think that positive relationship building is important because it allows staff to gain the trust of service users, which in turn helps staff to recognise the different behaviours that may occur when the service user starts to become unwell. This then helps the Support Worker to better manage things with the service user, if and when they are in crisis. An example of how Positive relationship building helps staff to better support service users is; We have a lady at Crofton Court who did not trust anybody when she first came to Impact; she wouldn’t allow anybody into her flat to help clean, she wouldn’t want to go into the community with staff as she did not trust them. I have been building a positive relationship with this lady over the last few months and it has now paid off as she is wanting me to go into her flat with her on a weekly basis to help her with the upkeep of her property. This has also helped with this lady because she now comes to me when she is experiencing a decline in her mental health. She has on one occasion cut her arm deeply and instead of just leaving it, she came to me for first aid and I accompanied her to the accident and emergency department at the Bradford royal infirmary and stayed with her until her treatment was completed. Another example is we have a gentleman who did not trust himself to go to his own appointments and keep his medication in his flat. He is now engaging well with staff on a daily basis, which has resulted in him feeling confident enough to go to some appointments on his own and to control his medication and store them in his flat. He is also engaging in going out into the community more often with staff and other service users and has expressed that he would like to go for some food with staff and another service user in the coming weeks. This proves that building a positive relationship has a positive effect on service users’ mental wellbeing and their ability to trust staff to help with their recovery. It also proves that it has a positive effect on crisis management and helping to keep service users out of crisis, as they feel they can trust staff to help them make the right decisions and to signpost them to the relevant services when they need it”.
Natasha says “Being a support worker at Impact Living gives me the ability to form personal connections and trust through positive relationship building activities on a 1:1 basis. Throughout the past 5 weeks since working here, I have gained enough rapport with a client who doesn’t trust easily and clearly displays struggles with her mental well-being to help her drastically move forward. Since her recent hospital admissions, this client has had an attachment to a very large section of matted hair on the side of her long hair. This was visibly heavy and unpleasant for her. Enough trust was built between myself and this tenant for me to remove this matted section for her in the office. She displayed instant relief and expressed feeling beautiful for the first time in a long time. This was a unique experience for everyone involved at the time, who offered encouragement and words of reassurance which persisted for days, making people feel positive and proud of her.
Another uplifting experience we have had is building trust with a young tenant here, who struggles with her flat and property regarding hoarding. A relationship was built to the point where advice was taken on board to hire a hoarding cleaner and confidence from the client was felt to make this arrangement independently. Since taking this huge step forward, accessing support from staff has been more consistent and her wellbeing has improved. She has since taken a leap of faith in applying for a placement abroad for her university degree and was recently accepted. This shows that the opportunity staff have to build personal connections with tenants has a positive impact on the individual and enables us to make a difference to their wellbeing.
These are just a few examples of the work that our support teams undertake with Impact Living’s clients and is rewarding not only to the worker but also our clients, as they reap the benefits of their positive relationship building activities. If you would like to know how to donate to Impact Living to fund activities in 2024, then please follow this link https://www.impactliving.org/support-us/
