Issue 17 - Catch up with PCP, projects and services

Issue 17

An Introduction from Carol Gaskarth

Hi all, for this edition of the Project Newsletter it’s only been two months since the last Newsletter and so many great things have happened, here’s just a sample!

We’ve welcomed Lindsey Wood to the team as a new Senior Leader and Wellbeing for Life Manager, she’s certainly hit the ground running and has been out and about meeting staff and volunteers and seeing delivery in action.

In Sunderland we were thrilled that Anna decided to take the role of Project Lead, she’s done a cracking job in the interim and we know she’ll be fabulous!

The Workplace Health Team celebrated the fantastic work of County Durham businesses who achieved Better Health at Work Awards supporting over 43,000 employees last year – and what better way to get the party started than with the wonderful Jack Drum Arts sharing their epic Samba beats.

Continuing the awards theme South Tees Healthwatch pulled yet another amazing STAR Awards event out of the bag. Every year the team go over and above to recognise and thank local people who make a difference for people accessing health and care services in Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland. The vibe in the room was full of positivity and hearing the personal accounts was inspiring.

And I’m sure you will know we won the Community Champion Award at the ‘Make Your Mark’ Event –a brilliant achievement for each and every member of staff, this award recognises the contribution we make as a charity – well done Team PCP!

In the last couple of weeks we’ve had our 12 month assessment for Investors in People, maintaining Gold status, the Assessor feedback was extremely positive, and building on our quality standard success….hot off the press (well almost) PCP was awarded Silver for the Investors in the Environment Standard – an outstanding achievement indeed! This was our first ever assessment and we jumped straight past bronze.

We always say PCP is ever changing and evolving; we certainly don’t stand still thanks to the passion, dedication and skill of our amazing teams. I can’t wait to share the organisations 2023-24 results with stakeholders at our AGM in July, it’s always a privilege to celebrate the difference each

PCP awarded Community Champions at the 2024 Make Your Mark Aycliffe Business Awards

PCP were recently awarded the Community Champions award at the 2024 Make Your Mark Aycliffe Business awards, in a fantastic evening showcasing all the incredible businesses within Newton Aycliffe.

Aycliffe Business Park were looking for organisations that care about the local community whilst taking focused action through both the company and staff.

The organisation provided vital information to Aycliffe Business Park, highlighting the organisation’s work within the local community, and the organisation’s charitable work.

County Durham's COVID-19 recovery battle: research calls on services to take action

As the world grapples with the ongoing challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, County Durham emerges as yet another community facing the long road to recovery. A recent piece of work from the PCP research team has shed light on the impacts of the pandemic on individuals' lives and the pressing need for continued support and community recovery efforts.

The findings of this study align with the broader understanding of COVID-19's effects and the strides being made in pandemic recovery efforts. It is evident that County Durham shares in the recovery struggles witnessed across the UK. The resilience of its people has been tested, with many still

This isn't just an award for the organisation, but an award for all staff within PCP. Without the hard work and dedication of each member of staff at PCP this award wouldn't be possible, a huge thank you to all staff for making this possible.

Read the story about us receiving the award here

grappling with the lingering effects of Long COVID, significantly impacting their quality of life.

Read more the full story from our research team here

Find the full report and findings from the study here

Sharon’s Story

For Mental Health Awareness Week our Love to Knit lead volunteer at the Pioneering Care Centre, Sharon, told us her story.

Sharon has faced tough challenges over the last couple of years, and she talks about how PCP and the knitting group has helped her overcome these challenges.

We would like to thank Sharon for telling us her story and allowing us to share this.

Watch the video here.

Slow Stitch Meditation Course

Try something new with our new 'Slow Stitch Meditation' course! A free four-week course that invites you to go on a creative adventure. Practising mindfulness whilst creating art, taking you to deep relaxation.

Join us from 25th June - 16th July, every Tuesday, 1pm - 3pm at the Pioneering Care Centre.

Healthwatch South Tees Multicultural Event

Our Healthwatch South Tees teams invite you along to their multicultural event!

Join the team on Thursday 4th July, from 12pm to 5pm, at the Methodist Asylum Project in Middlesbrough, to discuss health and social care needs in the area. If you are local, come along and share your experiences!

Find out more here.

To enrol onto this course please text Jenny on 07919064741.

“I work full time as a Research and Communications Officer for Healthwatch County Durham (HWCD) and have done this since May 2023, before this I was a Research officer with PCP for two years before moving over to HWCD. Before PCP, I worked as a support worker in supported housing for people with learning disabilities, which really gave me the passion to help others and help them get the best out of life that they can.

Doing research was a bit of a change but knowing that through my research, and PCP in general, this was giving back to the community and working on improving people’s lives, which was important to me. Now as a Research and Communications officer I get to support my team in engagement, research and updating the team news in health and social care, I work behind the scenes quite a lot but I do get to join in with community engagement and attend events with the team to take pictures. I am also in charge of the social media channels for Healthwatch County Durham, which means I get to create posts, graphics and update the public on health and social care news and events in County Durham.

I really enjoy creating lots of different graphics and posters for the team. I also pull together the e-Bulletin which goes out monthly, again sharing health and social care news and updates on what the team have been working on. I am always snapping photos and asking the team for (sometimes) random requests, but it’s great to be creative and to see how far the team will go - I think they’re coming around slowly. However, they are always very grateful and appreciative of what I do for them and they work with me to produce assets for the public, whether it is for the website, physical, social media or the e-bulletin.

Another part of my role is minute taking in board meetings and team meetings and writing them up to send out to the team and the board which can be quite a big task! Recently, I completed my Enter and View training, which is a programme we have within HWCD where we go into health and social services to gather patient feedback and produce a report on what is done well and recommendations to improve, which I have enjoyed getting involved with and being able to engage with the public.

I also work at Together 21 on a Saturday morning with children who have Down Syndrome which is really rewarding and the community that has built around it is really lovely. On a Thursday night I also volunteer for Options Social Club which is so fun, they arrange lots of activities and it’s great supporting the service users. The volunteers and staff are brilliant, and we have such a laugh. They all seem to have a lovely time and I enjoy giving something back. t where we went to ROF 59 and climbed the climbing walls. Again, it was lovely to see how as a team we all were so supportive of each other and cheered each other on. We got to test our skills and bravery!”

Read Vic’s full story here

Our Wellbeing for Life service recognised for volunteer experience

The team at Wellbeing for Life (WBFL) received the County Durham Volunteer Kitemark award for the third time in October 2023 in recognition of their continuing work with volunteers from across the county.

The County Durham Volunteer Kitemark is awarded by Durham Community Action (DCA), to organisations who demonstrate a commitment to their volunteers, and a dedication to providing a high-quality volunteering experience for both their volunteers and their service users. It is a free quality standard to recognise organisations and services for overcoming the barriers to volunteering.

Bill Oxbrough, Capacity Building Volunteer Officer at WBFL, said: “People choose to volunteer for different reasons some want to give back to a community that has supported them, some may want to improve their CV or access additional training, for others it can be a way to reduce social isolation.”

Read the full story here

Workplace Health Celebration Event

On Thursday 30th May, 38 County Durham businesses gathered at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Durham City Centre to celebrate workplace wellbeing.

Organisations taking part in the Better Health at Work Award came along to receive their awards from our team, including Durham Constabulary, St Cuthbert’s Hospice and County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust.

Attendees enjoyed speeches from a variety of guest speakers, as well as a fun performance and interactive session with Back Beat Samba Band and Jack Drum Arts.

Thank you to all who came along to the event!

We would also like to say a big thank you to Smart IT for sponsoring this event, and supporting our team in improving workplace health.

Read the full story here.

"After the lockdown I wanted to help people who had experienced stress during the pandemic. So many of us were looking for a 'new normal', and the possibility of helping others gave me a sense of meaning as well as hope. This led me to volunteer for the County Resilience Team in Durham.

"During training I learned about PCP as an organisation and was impressed with the charity’s compassion, dynamism, and commitment to excellence. I wanted to learn more about an organisation that could be strong in all these areas at the same time, and I wanted to be part of this. I was delighted when my application to serve as a Trustee was supported.

"The County Resilience service offers support to adults who have low to mild difficulties with their emotional and physical wellbeing. A member of the team will have up to 12 regular meetings with an individual, typically meeting every couple of weeks. This might be in a café, community centre or out for a walk – somewhere public. The Team also offers some group meetings.

"Everyone is an individual and we take a person-centred approach.

Although many experience conditions such as anxiety, depression, and phobias, we don’t treat these but support people through them. We help people identify goals and provide a listening ear as people rehearse and develop their own ideas.

"PCP has partnered with other organisations to bring a range of skills to the team.

"When I first started, I was introduced to my volunteer supporter Lynda Dixon who works for Northern Learning Trust, one of the partners. Lynda gave me my induction including access to a wide range of training and on-going support. My training has included developing skills for a helping relationship, equality and diversity, mental health awareness, risk assessment, data protection, and safeguarding. I enjoy learning.

"PCP involves Trustees in decision making and in overseeing the charity at a strategic level. There is a genuine commitment to good practice in charity governance, a regular cycle of meetings, and meetings are friendly and well organised. Everyone is encouraged to contribute and to ask questions. The time commitment for the Trustee role averages about 7 or 8 hours a month.

"PCP is a complex organisation. I learned a lot from looking at the website and reading the annual reports. I was impressed by the Trustee Information Pack – this gave me confidence that the approach had been thought through and was sound.”

Read Mark’s full story here.

Stockton-on-Tees Community Wellbeing Champions Well Aware Sessions

Our Stockton-on-Tees Community Wellbeing Champions recently hosted three ‘Well Aware’ Wellbeing Wednesday sessions!

The team organised different activities each week, taking place at Primrose Hill Community Centre in Stockton. Activities ranged from chair-based exercises, a ‘Knock Out Depression’ boxing taster session, smoothiemaking and arts and crafts.

Local services also attended these sessions, providing information and support around a range of health and wellbeing topics.

Thank you to all who came along!

Healthwatch South Tees Star Awards

On Wednesday 24th April, our Healthwatch South Tees teams held their 5th annual STAR Awards ceremony. The event continues to grow, and this year they received the highest number of nominations ever, 72 in total, 55 of which were eligible for the 2nd stage and considered by the judging panel.

The day was all about demonstrating how local services are responding to the needs of those they support. This has not only improved experiences for local people but increased the quality of services they receive.

It's also been great to see more care nominations this year, which allows us to celebrate and acknowledge the amazing support that is delivered in this sector across South Tees.

Congratulations to all who received a Star Award!

Find out more about Healthwatch South Tees and their Star Awards here

Our Lived Experience team are here to help

PCP leads the creation of lived experience structures within the county wide system. Working across the county with voluntary sector partners to bring together a team of lived experience leads for specific local areas.

Lived Experience involves bringing service user voices into the conversation, allowing their voice to shape change and transform services. People with Lived Experience are often regarded as ‘experts by experience.’

Their role sits within the Community Mental Health Transformation programme. The transformation is a five year national programme to improve the lives of people who need emotional wellbeing support the way they’re supported in their local communities.

The purpose of the Lived Experience team is to seek out people within County Durham who have experience of using mental health services and hear what they, or their carers, have to say. They then collate this information, gather key themes, and take those to local steering group meetings where we can influence the decision-making process.

Find out more about our team here

County Durham Resilience team walk for Mental Health Awareness Week

The theme for Mental Health Awareness Week this year was movement - moving our bodies to improve our mental wellbeing.

Some of our County Durham Resilience team took a stroll around Hardwick Park during Mental Health Awareness Week, to encourage everyone to move their bodies and spend time in nature.

For more information, and to find out more about our County Durham Resilience team, click here

Our Healthwatch Stocktonon-Tees team attend ‘Meet The Governors’ event

Our Healthwatch Stockton-on-Tees team recently joined the Tees, Esk & Wear Valley (TEWV) NHS Foundation Trust ‘Meet the Governors’ event.

People gathered at ARC Stockton Arts Centre to find out more about TEWV's Trust Governors, who represent the interests of people in the local community and share their experiences.

Lynn Swainston, Healthwatch Stockton-onTees Engagement Officer represented the service at the event, and met with over 60 people to discuss their health and care queries.

Welcoming Lindsey Wood

Our new Wellbeing for Life Manager, Lindsey Wood, joined the team on 29th April.

Many of you will know Lindsey from her work with East Durham Trust. Lindsey brings a wealth of community development and leadership experience and she is already well connected across County Durham with partners and stakeholders.

We’re excited to have her join our passionate and enthusiastic team to take Wellbeing For Life forward as we move into the new era of the 10-year contract.

Be sure to extend a friendly welcome if you meet her out and about.

You can find out more about the event, and our team’s involvement here.

Hydrotherapy Pool and Options Redevelopment Updates

The redevelopments of the Pioneering Care Centre have made significant progress since the last edition of this newsletter!

The hydrotherapy pool now has a roof! As seen in the photos, the structure of the roof has been placed, and is almost complete.

The plant room for the Hydrotherapy pool has now also been fitted by Barr and Wray.

For the Options room redevelopment, the windows are now in, and the internal fit out is in progress!

Keep your eyes peeled across our social media platforms for more updates.

Cancer Awareness team lead sun awareness workshops

Throughout the month of May, our Cancer Awareness team visited a variety of organisations, providing sun awareness workshops for Sun Awareness Month.

Andrea from the team visited places such as Durham County Council Meadowfield Depot, Auckland Park Hospital and Lanchester Road Hospital, to share important information around sun safety and how to reduce your risk of skin cancer.

The team have a variety of different cancer awareness workshops they can deliverplease contact Andrea on andrea.mackrell@pcp.uk.net for more information!

Healthwatch South Tees Community Pharmacy Resource

Our Healthwatch South Tees teams have worked with the Community Pharmacy Tees Valley to put together a useful resource.

This resource explains how a Community Pharmacy works, what services it provides to the community and important information on prescriptions.

If you work with, or know of, any service users that you think this could be useful to, the resource is now available to be shared with the public.

You can find out more, and access this resource here

‘Love to Knit’ dressing gown donated

Our 'Love to Knit' group has donated one of their dressing gowns to Mary, Healthwatch County Durham board member who is nearly 95 years old. She loves her dressing gown and really appreciated receiving one.

Our ‘Love to Knit’ group come together to knit squares, which are then sewn into dressing gowns. These gowns are then donated to members of the public, who have been nominated by one of their peers.

Want to have a go? Our knitting group crochets every Thursday, 1.30pm - 3.30pm, with free refreshments available, pop along and have a go at knitting!

Our Healthwatch South Tees team want to hear from you!

Our Healthwatch Middlesbrough and Healthwatch Redcar and Cleveland teams are running a survey around women’s health and GP menopause support.

The team want to find out how many GP appointments are being used for perimenopause/menopause and follow up appointments, in the hopes that GP's will look at providing a specialist service.

The survey is mainly for those affected by the menopause who live in the South Tees area, but the team would also like views from around the Country.

You can access the survey here

Staff Pet Profiles

Bluey - 2 Years Old

Bluey is a Blue Gill Leucistic axolotl. Axolotls are a type of salamander so he spends his life in the water They are nocturnal, have weak eyesight and are sensitive to light so they need dark places to hide in their tank

His staple diet is dendrobaena worms and for a treat he gets live river shrimp

Bluey’s favourite things to do include chasing, and eating, live river shrimp and relaxing on his hammock

Owner: Pippa Gard

Phoebe - 11 Months Old

Phoebe is a Chihuahua puppy, aged just 11 months old Rae got Phoebe from a breeder, and has raised her since.

Phoebe’s favourite things to do include “climbing on my face to eat my hair, harass everyone on walks for pets, wearing her jumper, walkies and spinning”.

How adorable!

Owner: Rae Dixon

Macmillan Joining the Dots

HOPE training

Our Macmillan Joining The Dots team held their free ‘HOPE’ training course across the months of March, April and May!

HOPE is a course developed by Macmillan Cancer Support and Coventry University to support you after cancer treatment. Each course is run by a health and social care professional and a trained volunteer who has a personal experience of cancer.

The team delivered this course at Healthworks in Easington, as well as Tesco in Consett and Butterwick Hospice in Bishop Auckland.

Attendees of the course left the team some very positive feedback!

One attendee wrote “The course gave me something to focus on and look forward to”.

Another stated that the course helped them “understand that some things we feel are normal and that we are not alone.”

Find out more about Joining The Dots and how they can help you, here

Callum’s Story

For Volunteer’s Week, we spoke with Callum, who has been a volunteer at PCP for a number of years now.

Callum sat down with us to share his story of coming to PCP and becoming a lead volunteer for our Befriending group.

We are proud to be supported by 433 volunteers, who gave up 9,405 hours of their time in 2023-2024 to help make a difference for communities. This amount of time equates to an in-kind contribution £112,860 using the Real Living Foundation rate as a benchmark.

Thank you to Callum and all of our amazing volunteers.

You can now watch Callum talking about his story here

Our Men’s Pie Club begins!

Our Men’s Pie Club has begun! Taking place at the Moses Project in Stockton-on-Tees, every Tuesday, from 1pm to 3pm, as part of a closed group.

The Men’s Pie Club encourages men to come together. It’s all about tackling social isolation and improving mental health. It’s for guys who live alone, or feel alone, or just need an excuse to get out more. There’s no stress and no pressure. Just a bit of cooking.

Members of the club come together each week, trying out different pie recipes and learning new skills!

Find out more here.

Over the last few months, Primrose Lodge have hosted a variety of activities for their residents.

For World Cocktail Day, they enjoyed making and drinking mocktails.

For Mental Health Awareness week, they went for some nice walks, Wear it Green Day was celebrated by staff and patients, and they had a BBQ.

They also had a few special visits from Nell, the therapy dog!

Great work team!

Fun at Primrose Lodge

Wellbeing For Life service visits Amazon

Nikki, Jules and Tina from our County Durham Wellbeing For Life (WBFL) team were at Amazon’s Bowburn factory during their "wellbeing week".

Everyday of the week, Amazon invited in different local health and wellbeing services, to provide important information to their staff.

Our team were invited, alongside our Cancer Awareness team, for the day. WBFL offered important information to staff around sleep hygiene, menopause and healthy eating.

The Cancer Awareness team provided information about different kinds of cancer and provided tips on how staff could protect themselves.

Healthwatch Sunderland shine a light on Youthwatch volunteers

For Volunteers Week, we spoke with our Healthwatch Sunderland Youthwatch volunteers about the work they do, and how they help their local community.

The volunteers spoke about their positive experiences of volunteering, including how their volunteering roles are preparing them for their future, helping them build their confidence, gain valuable experience and meet new people.

You can watch them speak about their time at Healthwatch Sunderland here

Care Partnership (PCP) For any enquiries regarding this publication, contact jenny.lee@pcp.uk.net