Veteran Spring Social 2022

2022 is a big year for First Choice Housing Association, with an important drive to improve health and wellbeing for all Tenants and staff. With this in mind, we hosted a wellbeing event for ex-Armed Forces Tenants in North Wales, plus their family and friends.

The 'Ty Ryan Spring Social' was an opportunity to bring those living at the scheme together with support networks and local services for an afternoon of socialising, pizza eating, and free haircuts. We hoped that the afternoon would support a community feel at the scheme and promote an increased sense of belonging for all.

The 'Ty Ryan Spring Social' was jointly funded by The Armed Forces Covenant and our own Community Involvement Grant. We met the following objectives of The Armed Forces Covenant Grant:

• To support members of the Armed Forces Community (AFC); • To support community integration for members of the AFC; • To improve/support health and wellbeing of the AFC; • To reduce isolation for members of the AFC; • To support any local initiatives for the AFC.

"The Chop Box", a mobile barbering initiative, had some really positive health and wellbeing benefits for Tenants. Lots of people took the opportunity to have some 'me time' in the barbers chair. For some people, it was the first professional haircut they had had in a long time and, with The Chop Box being local to Wrexham, Tenants took away contact details so that they can make use of the service in the future.

Jordy's Pizza brought their wood fired pizza pickup to provide fresh pizzas for Tenants and their support networks. With 4 different kinds of pizza available, everyone had full stomachs at the end of the day!

We were over the moon to see so many people join in at the 'Ty Ryan Spring Social' - not even the cold and wet weather stopped us. It not only gave Tenants an opportunity to socialise with each other, but also with us as their Housing Association and other support services in the area, such as Woody's Lodge, Help for Heroes, and Wrexham Citizens Advice.

FCHA & Keep Wales Tidy Garden Project

Keep Wales Tidy run the 'Local Places for Nature' initiative that offers a range of free garden packages with the intention to reverse nature's decline and boost well-being throughout communities in Wales.

First Choice were awarded some of these garden packages, allowing improvements to the garden space for tenants and giving nature a home. All tenants were involved in participating or supervising First Choice staff and tenants' support staff with planting various herbs and wildflowers in their gardens to create a small wildlife friendly garden filled with a variety of habitats for pollinators to thrive.

Keep Wales Tidy supplied us with fruit and herb garden packages for 2 properties in Neath and Cardiff. Keep Wales Tidy also provided the tools and equipment for us to be able to develop the gardens with ease. Included in a fruit and herb garden package:

Five fruit trees Ten soft fruit bushes Ten herb and pollinator plants Fruit tree handbook Peat-free compost Gloves Hand tools (fork, spade, secateurs, trowel) Wildflower seed containing 24-nectar rich UK native species

Lynette, who's garden has been mentioned in previous blogs, was incredibly excited to get involved. She helped dig holes and plant the produce in the her garden and is looking forward to seeing what comes out of the garden in Neath.

Kathryn, the Project Officer for Keep Wales Tidy in Neath and Jessie, the "Local Places for Nature" Coordinator attended as well, overseeing how the garden was being developed and provided essential information to the tenants on how to properly use the tools, soil and plants that were provided to give them the knowledge to get the best out of their garden!

We would like to thank Keep Wales Tidy (especially Kathryn and Jessie), support staff and First Choice tenants for helping us give nature a home at our properties, increase biodiversity, and improve wellbeing for tenants and their support networks.

We have 2 more projects in Neath and Powys as well as trees being delivered to all 4 of the properties in the next few weeks as well!

Garden Project Slideshow

Tenants Talks Autumn 21

This autumn, we completed our first set of Tenants Talks since November 2019! We were so happy to be back engaging with our tenants face to face again. Housing Management staff Nigel, David, Eve, Donna and Mo visited a total of 58 tenants in Cardiff, Wrexham and Newtown to catch up about life after lockdown, Health and Wellbeing and many other topics…..

Lockdown Lives

Most of the tenants were upset that they couldn’t see family, although some did mention that they missed the pub! Now that lockdown restrictions have eased, many of them are back to seeing family and friends and having a nice drink.

A lot of the tenants found that they were walking around more, painting, reading and gardening. Many of our tenants have also started to connect with others online, with many of them receiving new tablets and laptops thanks to the hard work of Dave and Digital Communities Wales who were providing equipment to help people become more included.

Health & Wellbeing

Eve, our new Health & Wellbeing Coordinator attended the Cardiff Tenants Talk and introduced some health and wellbeing topics that were beneficial for the tenants.

All tenants completed a Health and Wellbeing survey about how they like to spend their time, what they like to eat and other lifestyle questions. Their answers will help First Choice gain an insight into how we can help improve tenants' wellbeing in mind and body.

Future tenant events

Housing Management have been hard at work organising and planning further tenant events that were introduced to the tenants. Some of these events include bowling, discos, and more tenant talks.

We also opened the floor to suggestions from the tenants about what kind of event they would like to see in their area in the future. These included a bonfire party, the Elvis festival, beach parties, zoo trips, extra discos, quizzes, walking and cookery lessons. Housing Management will look into organising some of these events in the future.

Raffle

In the past all of the raffles have included sweets and chocolates. This time, we introduced some healthier options such as pedometers and educated tenants on how to use the new equipment.

Gig Buddies Cymru

Dave and Nigel had the honour of introducing Gig Buddies to many of the tenants there for the first time. Gig Buddies Cymru is a befriending scheme that matches people with a learning disability in South Wales and North Wales with a volunteer who shares the same interests, so they can go to gigs and events together.

Tenants with First Choice can be a part of gig buddies so sharing that information with tenants will hopefully allow them to go out to events that they may not have felt comfortable going to before without a buddy.

Community Involvement Grant

We handed out grant forms that offered funding for community events, one off sporting events and other activities that benefit the community. This will allow First Choice to financially support some activities and events in the areas tenants live in.

Tenants’ Voice newsletter

Finally, we handed out previous newsletters and spoke to tenants about how they can get involved in contributing stories, hobbies and recipes to share with other First Choice tenants.

We were really pleased to hold our Tenants Talk meetings and see our tenants face to face again. We are so thankful for all of the tenants that attended and hope to see them back for the next events we hold along with some new faces.

Gallery