Resilience within our communities is promoted and people are supported to fulfil their potential by actively encouraging and supporting people who need care and support, including carers, to learn, develop and participate in society
Getting back outdoors
The Covid-19 pandemic has had a negative effect on the mental health and confidence of older adults, leaving many vulnerable to increased social isolation and loneliness. To combat this in Conwy the Community Wellbeing Team has offered support to help individuals reconnect with their communities and step back out with confidence by organising a range of outdoor activities such as social strolls and themed walks.
These sessions have been very well received, and between April and December 2022 we delivered 17 different walks across the county. We continue to work with local providers to ensure that provision continues, as the feedback we have received is that individuals are finding the walking sessions hugely beneficial, and wish for them to continue on a monthly basis.
Virtual Dementia Bus
In August 2022 our Staying Well Team hosted a Virtual Dementia Bus tour at the Conwy Business Centre. Providing a proven method of giving a person with a healthy brain an experience of what dementia might be like, the experience allows delegates to enter the world of the person, and understand which simple changes can be made to their practice and environment to really improve the lives of people with dementia. In all, 36 participants undertook the training and we received some fantastic feedback after the sessions.
I would recommend this training to anyone who has a family member who has dementia, I’m so glad I came today.
Thank you so much for organising this training, it was fantastic and I have learnt so much.
What’s next?
We have organised for the bus to return in March 2023 to deliver the new ‘inclusive’ Virtual Dementia Tour. This involves delegates moving through the usual tour into a new environment. Here the training provider demonstrates what life could be like if all the necessary changes were made to make the environment as comfortable as possible for the person living with dementia.
We will be hosting two sessions; one at the Conwy Business Centre in Llandudno Junction for members of the public who have a loved one living with dementia, and one for Social Care staff, which will be held at Llys Elian residential home.
Strengthening Families Team and Pre-birth Support
There are targeted resources within the Strengthening Families Team to provide pre-birth support to those parents who are referred to Children’s Services who present a high risk of having their babies removed from their care. Often, these parents have experienced previous care proceedings and the removal of children from their care. These pregnant women are vulnerable for a variety of reasons; for example, due to an existing mental health condition, they are teenage parents, victims of domestic violence, poverty or homelessness, substance misuse or by being care-experienced themselves.
Using the pre-birth support model, the aim of the Strengthening Families pre-birth intervention is to:
- Work with parents as soon as the referral comes in where the unborn baby is open for a pre-birth assessment
- Assist parents to address the concerns that have necessitated a pre-birth assessment
- Build a positive relationship which is central to successful outcomes
- Providing support with social work assessments offering advice and guidance
- Refer early to specialist support services, for example, perinatal services and substance misuse services
- Refer to Family Group Conferencing to identify appropriate support
- Provide interventions for parents to address barriers to successful parenting
Interventions are often based on identifying Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), support to understand the impact of ACEs and building personal resilience and coping skills. In addition, trauma-informed interventions help to improve parents’ health and wellbeing, which can impact on their caregiving capacity.
Interventions are often based on identifying Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), support to understand the impact of ACEs and building personal resilience and coping skills. In addition, trauma-informed interventions help to improve parents’ health and wellbeing, which can impact on their caregiving capacity.
The Recovery College
The purpose of the Recovery College is to support people’s self-management of mental health difficulties through learning and education. Most colleges are co-produced by people with lived experience and people with professional expertise.
The Mental Wellness Team were successful in their bid for UK Government’s Community Renewal Fund (UKCRF), which was instigated as an opportunity for short-term projects as the first step towards implementing the UK-wide Shared Prosperity Fund.
The project was established with the aim of consulting, and seeking partners and beneficiaries to help create a recovery college in Conwy. Our vision is:
A co-produced recovery college for the county of Conwy, which enables people to restore hope, build resilience, connect and create a community, and sustain themselves to have a satisfying and purposeful life.
We ran a series of workshops and events with our partners at Conwy Mind to introduce the concept of the Recovery College and co-production, culminating in a planning session to map out our next steps. The illustration on the next page was captured by a graphic artist in real time, reflecting the discussions held on the day.
What were the challenges?
The main challenge was our inability to recruit to the post of College Coordinator, who would have provided focused capacity to the project. This meant that the project was managed on top of day jobs, which undoubtedly impacted on the number of workshops we could offer.
There were also challenges in terms of the short-term period of the funding. A key lesson learnt was that fostering relationships with people and partners takes time but is fundamental to building strong foundations for future work.
Delivering in-person sessions following the pandemic also had an impact, as some people’s confidence in attending face-to-face was slow to build and capacity was further hindered as Covid-19 was still prevalent.
We therefore also created an online survey, so that people were able to input their views. Overall, 86% of people felt that the recovery college would be beneficial to supporting their mental health and we have a preferred set of courses that people would like to be developed as part of the college offer.
What’s next?
We have put forward a bid to the Shared Prosperity Fund, which is the second tranche of funding by UK government, to enable us to recruit to posts to help build the college going forward. We are also planning to bid for Big Lottery funding so we are able to commission a variety of third sector partners to get the college up and running.
We are working in partnership with the Library service to refurbish the first floor of Colwyn Bay library to create a safe and welcoming space where we can begin to deliver recovery education courses and wellbeing sessions, such as Creative Journaling and Shared Reading.
Allotment Service
The Vulnerable People Service continues to manage the allotments which provide a therapeutic and safe space for individuals who use the service. We are currently looking to develop them further, and part of this is opening up the allotments to all those individuals who use the service including Care Leavers and the Mental Wellbeing Service.
What were the challenges?
Encouraging attendance and participation has been challenging.
What’s next?
We will be consulting with those who currently use the allotments in terms of the service they receive and what can be improved. We will be shadowing the staff who manage the allotments so that we understand the service. We will be promoting the allotments to all users of the Vulnerable People service.
Summer of Fun 2022
The Summer of Fun is one of the Welsh Government’s Covid-19 recovery programmes, and the activities funded provide opportunities for children, young people and families to re-engage with friends and others to promote social skills, speech, language and communication, and improve mental health and wellbeing following the pandemic. This year over £186,000 was allocated from the Welsh Government for Conwy’s Summer of Fun programme. A total of 27 projects were supported, including volunteers and local businesses. This provided over 870 free activity sessions over 13 weeks from 1 July to 30 September 2022. Over 10,000 people attended during this time. Eirias Park play day attracted over 1,500 children and over 850 adults in August 2022 and was even featured on the 6pm ITV news! One of the exciting projects developed for Summer of Fun was a film which was created of the Summer of Fun activities:
What were the challenges?
Applications received from groups and organisations to provide activities were greater than the funding available. A panel was convened to assess the applications and to share the funding as equally as possible across the county, according to location and the different types of activities such as culture, play, sport and creativity. Some applications were awarded reduced funding for a reduced number of sessions due to the amount of funding available.
What’s next?
At present it is unclear if Summer of Fun funding will be made available in 2023. There is currently no allocation within the Welsh Government budget information released. If funding was to become available, we would continue with the same processes we have developed and used over the past two years to allocate funding and invite applications from a variety of external and internal partners to provide activities.
Developments in our Family Centres
All five of our Family Support Teams, based in Family Centres, continue to work with families to provide early help, and to develop activities and initiatives to meet the needs in the local communities. This year we have been:
- Working with a researcher from Bangor University to develop a pathway of support, a toolkit of interventions, and training on child-parent/carer abuse called ‘New Chapter’
- Establishing five Disability Family Workers; one in each local area
- Responding to a pattern of harmful sexual behaviours in a community by putting on a Parents Project session with the Lucy Faithful Foundation
- Working with schools and youth support services to deliver awareness sessions about exploitation, gang culture and internet safety
Canolfan Ffordd Douglas in Colwyn Bay has been open for a year, and has seen many exciting developments, and Eryl Wen Family Centre in Llandudno opened its doors after a refurbishment this year. More on this below.
Refurbishing Eryl Wen
Following consultation in 2019-20 we utilised the Welsh Government’s Flying Start Capital Funding for our north area Family Centre, Eryl Wen in Llandudno, to be fully refurbished.
The doors closed in February 2022 and re-opened to the public in October 2022. We now have more space to welcome families, including:
- Welcome area
- One to one rooms
- Playroom
- A kitchen for family cooking activities
- Multi-agency meeting rooms
- Training rooms
- Great outside space to play
- Lovely garden area with fruit trees
- Car parking
We included features to reduce running costs and reduce our carbon footprint, such as a high standard of insulation, energy-efficient heating system, and energy-saving lighting.
What were the challenges?
Refurbishment took longer than expected due to supply chain issues and difficulty obtaining the contractors for the works.
Encouraging families back into the centre for group activities following Covid-19 restrictions was difficult. We started our groups with reduced numbers to increase confidence, and now that families are more confident, group numbers are increasing.
What’s next?
We’ll be engaging with the local community to identify what families need. We’ll then work with local partners to develop sessions for families, based on what they have told us.
We plan to develop a small allotment area to grow our own fruit and vegetable to share and cook with families.
Support for Carers
One of the priorities in the Welsh Government strategy for unpaid carers is around improving carer assessments, specifically to enable local authorities to deliver timely, effective statutory assessments that are responsive to individual needs of unpaid carers.
Carers Wales’ national “Carer Aware” scheme has provided a valuable opportunity to work with staff at all levels of the Social Care and Health systems throughout Wales, to create meaningful cultural change to benefit unpaid carers in Wales. To date, 17 Conwy staff have participated in their training sessions. The scheme has funding for a further two years and therefore will continue to positively influence staff towards more effective support for carers.
Unlike other authorities, Conwy has an in-house Carers Team which can undertake carer assessments in cases where it may be beneficial for someone other than the Social Worker of the cared-for person to do it. This has been an advantage within Conwy, and is recognised by third sector partners who work across the region, as being a particular strength within Conwy in terms of how carers are supported. We also commission Hafal (now part of Adferiad) to undertake carer assessments and provide support in relation to mental wellness, and Credu to undertake assessments and provide support for young carers.
However, demand has been steadily increasing and our in-house team has been carefully managing a growing waiting list since the Covid-19 pandemic, and have begun a pilot scheme to work more closely with the multi-agency Community Resource Teams. This will elevate the importance of supporting carers, and provide a more holistic response. Initial findings are positive, in that a wider range of qualified staff are now taking on more carer assessments, our Community Wellbeing team are supporting more with low-level support and signposting, and the waiting list was reduced by one third in just a couple of months.
Pre-pandemic, analysis had shown that on average, more carers refuse the offer of an assessment than those who accept one. This is often due to the difficulty people have in self-identifying as a carer, when they see themselves as simply being a family member, and fulfilling expectations of ‘duty’ as a wife or husband, son, or daughter, etc. This appears to have shifted, in that throughout 2022, 330 assessments were completed, with just 198 being declined. The post-pandemic demand may have skewed this trend somewhat.
Getting a carer’s assessment can help you to discuss the help you need as a carer, and lead to some extra support being available to you.
Consultation with carers regarding support for those living with dementia
Conwy has a Dementia Forum, which is attended by key players from Social Care, Health and third sector partners. The group has recently begun what will be a series of regular meetings with a group of carers, in relation to their experiences of caring for someone living with dementia. One of the issues the group highlighted in our first meeting was around the support provided following a diagnosis of dementia. These issues will be explored and used to influence the way services (both local and regional) are delivered, to hopefully achieve the right balance between providing the right information at the right time, in a way that feels right for each individual carer.
Digital inclusion within disability support networks
The North Wales Together Technology and Digital Strategy was developed in 2021 and is now being rolled out across the region. The strategy identified the barriers to digital inclusion and steps required to address those barriers. In short, digital inclusion is impacted by access to equipment and connectivity, access to support to use equipment, and poor levels of confidence amongst those who support people with learning disabilities and their families and carers.
Paul Mazurek, Planning and Development Officer has worked alongside Conwy Connect (who have been funded both through operational services and via the programme) to promote use of technology and access to technological approaches. He has worked with Conwy Connect to loan or gift equipment to individuals, support individuals on a one to one basis to develop skills and confidence, and support individuals to access online resources and activities.
Paul is in the process of working with Conwy’s Workforce Development Team to roll out training that addresses, for example; online vulnerability, radicalisation. This area has been identified as an issue and concern across the region. This begins in March in Flintshire and will be quickly rolled out to all. They will look to create further training on the back of this set of sessions.
The ‘Online Harms, Grooming, Learning Disabilities and Autism’ workshop is designed to raise awareness of online harms, especially grooming, for those with a learning disability, and autistic people. It looks at how to intervene and support those at risk. Online modules are delivered via Zoom, with an experienced tutor. The online sessions are highly interactive and comprise tutor input, discussions, case studies, polls, small group work and reflections on assignments.
The Conwy Connect Transition project has worked with individuals by delivering:
- Two hybrid youth club sessions per month to encourage digital inclusion
- Six online information sessions with professionals to discuss transition topics
- Stop it Now training from the Lucy Faithful Foundation, looking at digital resilience for parents and carers
- Two disability managers have trained around the Active Support apps and discussed introducing them to two projects
What were the challenges?
People are keen to engage but particularly within services, staff struggle with time and capacity to build up skills and confidence. Pressures on the workforce mean workers understandably have to prioritise direct care tasks, meaning technological development falls down the list of jobs to be done. Reach and access to support staff and networks is a challenge due to dispersed settings. This impacts on engagement and people’s ability to embrace and utilise technology, as they will not always be aware of the programme and its potential resources. Increased access to technology brings increased risk of inappropriate behaviours online and increased vulnerability to exploitation and radicalisation, hence the need for the training highlighted above.
Once digital access is provided, support needs to be ongoing to help individuals maintain engagement with technology. Equipment will be gifted or fitted. The first time it stops working there is a risk of dis-engagement.
What’s next?
The programme is piloting a suite of training for individuals, families and the support workforce. That will be rolled out in Conwy next year.
Paul will revisit setting up a digital group in Conwy. Care Connect have now identified someone to take over the tech work within the transition project (funded by programme). Care Connect are a key enabler to getting this work done because of their community contacts.