Community Involvement Grant for Walsingham Support

FCHA provided funding and support to Walsingham Support to help them deliver their 4th annual leadership conference and celebrate their 40th anniversary.

The community involvement grant is not just funding activities for tenants, it's providing those that support our tenants the opportunity to improve and celebrate their achievements.

This years theme

Walsingham Support used the funding get together for their leadership conference.

This years theme was advocacy and empowering the people they support. There were valuable discussions about how to empower the people they support to have a voice and contribute ideas that can help people with a learning disability live their best lives.

Thanks to FCHA's support

“We couldn’t make these events as successful without your support which underpins the work that you do as a valuable partner to deliver our mission. As an organisation we are purposeful in our partnerships and share these images from the day showing what you supported."

Support Suggestions

We are so proud to continue to use the CIG to support projects like this. If you have an organisation or a tenant that could do with support from our Community Involvement Grant, please reach out to Eve!

FCHA Article published in the Western Mail: July 25

No place in a progressive Wales for draconian practice of incarceration

This opinion piece, written by FCHA's Senior Public Affairs Manager Hywel Thomas, was published in Saturday's Western Mail. It calls on the Welsh Government to end the draconian practice of detaining adults with learning disabilities in hospital settings. Currently an estimated 125 adults with learning disabilities are being detained in hospitals, often hundreds of miles away from their communities and families.

An estimated 125 adults with learning disabilities in Wales are currently being detained in secure hospital settings

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First Choice Housing Association is calling on the Welsh Government to introduce a national strategy to end the unnecessary detention of adults with learning disabilities in hospital settings. Hywel Thomas explains why…

An estimated 125 adults with learning disabilities in Wales are currently being detained in secure hospital settings, hundreds of miles away from their families and communities with little or no plan for what will happen to them.

The trajectory of the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in society is being profoundly altered, often with devastating consequences, by the failure of health boards and councils to integrate their services.

Despite the establishment of Regional Partnership Boards over a decade ago, adults with learning disabilities are caught in the middle of two institutions with conflicting interests and mandates – NHS health boards on the one side and council Social Services on the other. With both organisations operating under separate legislative frameworks and under different directorships, the pathway for the care and housing of adults with learning disabilities is disjointed and inconsistent. These vulnerable people can experience delays and uncertainty as health boards and councils work through complex funding, governance and commissioning arrangements.

I take no pleasure in painting such a depressing picture of the care of some of the most vulnerable people in our society. But the reality is, the current system is broken and fundamentally flawed. Sadder still, there seems to be an acceptance, that because councils and health boards have historically struggled to work together, that changing that culture is wishful thinking.

Sometimes, when we’re so accustomed to a way of working, it’s difficult to imagine doing things differently. But that’s exactly what we need to do, because the status quo is no longer an option.

The dedication and commitment of staff working under immense pressure at our health boards and councils cannot be questioned. The absence however, of sufficiently robust integrated governance structures makes it difficult for these organisations to plan and commission services for adults with learning disabilities.

Wales may be a small nation, but that should make us more agile and adaptable to change. It cannot be beyond us to put effective governance structures in place for the provision of care and housing for adults with learning disabilities.

For any new governance structures to be effective, the infrastructure must be there to support it. To my understanding, there has never been a pan-Wales assessment, per local authority, of the housing needs for adults with learning disabilities in Wales. The absence of this critical data is contributing to a failure in the integration of care and housing for adults with learning disabilities and is likely to result in further detentions. If we don’t understand the need, how can we possibly expect to meet the demand? A simple request by the Welsh Government to the Welsh Local Government Association to undertake such an assessment would provide us with this essential data.

In October 2025, the Stolen Lives Wales, Homes not Hospitals Task & Finish Group submitted its findings to the Welsh Government. It made several recommendations to end the draconian practice of detaining adults with learning disabilities in hospitals. The former Labour Welsh Government Minister for Mental Health & Wellbeing seemed supportive in her response earlier this year but said that most of the recommendations would take significant preparatory work, resources, and investment. Unfortunately, time is a luxury that those currently detained in secure hospital settings, and their families, do not have.

May’s Senedd elections called time on Labour’s Welsh Government, and those decisions will now fall to a newly-elected Plaid Cymru government – a party that was supportive in opposition of the Homes not Hospitals campaign. In fact, their election manifesto promised to act on the recommendations of the Stolen Lives Wales Task & Finish Group. They also promised in their first 100 days, to draft legislation to place Regional Partnership Boards on a statutory footing to foster greater collaboration and resource sharing between health boards and councils.

Plaid Cymru also pledged to build 20,000 new social homes by 2030. They also promised to deliver a new Human Rights Act for Wales which if enacted could help families challenge the use of Restrictive Practice – the detention of their loved ones in hospital settings.

The manifesto pledges, upon which parties are elected, offer hope to people and therefore need to be meaningful. If we accept, at face value, Plaid Cymru’s commitment to the Homes not Hospitals campaign, this could be a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a fully integrated Health and Social Care service for adults with learning disabilities in Wales. Only time will tell.

First Choice Housing Association is calling on the Welsh Government to introduce a national strategy, under a national lead, to end the unnecessary detention of adults with learning disabilities in hospital settings. We are also calling for merged ring-fenced council and health board funding for adults with learning disabilities. This will remove considerations that currently impede objective decision-making. We are also asking the government to carry out a pan-Wales assessment of housing needs for adults with learning disabilities and to deliver that need from the 20,000 social homes promised by 2030.

Finally, we are seeking a commitment from the Welsh Government to strengthen the rights of families to challenge the use of Restrictive Practice.

We believe that a just society with a social conscience should never seek to remove any of its citizens from their community.

The show must go on! FCHA's Community Involvement Grant for Hijinx

FCHA's Community Involvement Grant (CIG) is available for projects that positively impact tenants, people with a learning disability or their communities. Recently, we contributed £500 to Hijinx, an inclusive theatre company, creating performances with learning disabled and/or autistic artists on stage and on screen.

CIG Funding supported the room hire costs of Hijinx’s Cardiff-based community and outreach groups for learning disabled and/or autistic people. This included: Odyssey, the inclusive community theatre group for adults; Telemachus, the only young people’s theatre group for learning disabled and/or autistic people aged 16-24 in South Wales; the in-house inclusive band Vaguely Artistic; and 3 Cardiff-based Drama Foundations supporting life-skills development for adults with complex learning disabilities.

The people who took part included:

• 27 adults with and without learning disabilities through Odyssey

• 14 learning disabled and/or autistic young people aged 16–24 through Telemachus

• 10 adults with and without learning disabilities through our inclusive band Vaguely Artistic

• 36 adults with complex learning disabilities through three Drama Foundations groups

In addition to members, Hijinx reaches communities through performances, with over 1,000 audience members experiencing their community work. This included 658 people attending Odyssey’s 2025 Christmas production, Christmas No.1, and more, purchasing their first ever charity single: The Spirit of Christmas

All community groups and performances are open and accessible to anyone who wants to take part, regardless of skill level or experience, and are therefore available to all First Choice tenants.

Hijinx collaborate with a range of arts and disability-focused partners to support effective outreach to the learning disabled community, including Arts CARE, Vision21, Learning Disability Wales, Mencap, DAC, Gig Buddies, Unlimited, Taking Flight, Hynt, and Get the Chance, helping ensure opportunities are widely promoted and inclusive.

In 2019, a young person joined one of Hijinx’s community groups. Before joining Hijinx they were isolated and anxious. They have now progressed from Telemachus to Odyssey and are thriving. They’ve found their voice, their friends, and their place on stage.

“I love acting and performing and I can do it at Hijinx. Everyone there is also very nice and helpful. I have gained confidence in talking to people and performing in front of them. It allowed me to achieve my dream of performing on the stage.”

(Odyssey Member)

We would like to thank Hijinx for all of the information they sent over highlighting just how far contributions to their theatre company goes. It's great to see a direct benefit to people with a learning disability and/or autism across Wales and how it opens up opportunities for people in the community to watch productions that they may not have had the opportunity to see without Hijinx.

If you know of an organisation that could benefit from First Choices' Community Involvement Grant you can contact us to provide more information:

Email: customerservices@fcha.org.uk

Phone: 02920 703 758