Promoting health and wellness with Melin residents
On Tuesday 6 February, we hosted our annual ‘Love Your Health & Wellbeing’ event at Cwmbran Stadium. The health and wellbeing event is specifically tailored towards our sheltered scheme residents, with a range of activities, games and experiences all designed to promote physical and mental well-being.
Written by Will
—09 Feb, 2024
The event
Over 70 residents were in attendance from 11 of our sheltered living schemes from across south-east Wales. They were greeted by Melin staff from our communities, communications and independent living teams, as well as staff volunteers from our Zest group.
After a welcome tea and coffee, they were met by a range of options to get stuck into at the event, these included:
- Curling with Dragons RFC Community
- Football fun and competitions with County in the Community
- Circus skills and balloon modelling with Masquerade
- Animal petting and handling with Animals Interactive
- Massages from Petrena
- Craft felting with Eva
- Badminton and table tennis (we hear that Diane Hughes of Castle Court played ping pong for Wales)
- Quiz
- Bingo
There was something for everyone and the time flew by as residents got stuck into the range of activities on offer. Light lunch was included and despite the copious amount of sandwiches, there was no slacking off in the latter half of the event!
The why
Fiona Williams, Melin’s Principal Communications & Culture Officer, who organised the event, shared the rationale behind ‘Love Your Health & Wellbeing’.
She said: “We had a wonderful time in Cwmbran Stadium with our scheme residents. Health and wellbeing is so important to Melin, our residents and staff and we want to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to access and learn more about the things we can do to improve our mental and physical health.
“We have Zest fest for our staff and run family activities when we do Zest in the Park on National Play Day, but we feel it is important to have an event specifically designed for our older residents as well.
Statistically, people report lower levels of health from the age of 65 onwards and 22% of older men and 28% of older women are affected by depression. What’s more, is around a fifth of people over the age of 65 live alone. These types of statistics show why an event to showcase health and wellbeing for older people is so important, especially when the focus of mental and physical health campaigns is so often tailored towards younger audiences.
A selection of photos from a fun-filled day
Your feedback
We really enjoyed the day and were keen to hear what our residents thought of it too. We were thrilled to learn that 100% of the feedback forms we gave out said that residents would come again to a future event. We were also thrilled to see that the average resident rating of the event was 4.8 out of 5, with a whopping 90% of attendees giving it top marks!
Residents at Waterside Court in Torfaen said: “We had a fabulous time. We go every year, and they only get better, thank you.”
In addition to seeing how residents enjoyed the day, we were keen to learn about which activities you loved the most and the most popular ones were:
- The quiz
- Animals Interactive
- Bingo
- Curling
We weren’t surprised to hear that the cute animals were so popular and of course Helen and Alan from our Communities Team always do a great job at running a fiercely competitive quiz and bingo session!
Of course, we want to improve the event for next year, so we noted that a few of you mentioned the temperature in the room was cold. We thought so too and will feed this back to the venue. We also noted that a few of you wanted to see some cake on the buffet next time and that sounds like a great suggestion to us too!
Lastly, we wanted to know if there were any activities residents would like to see at future events. Popular choices included:
- Line dancing
- Yoga / chair yoga
- Archery
Some fantastic suggestions and we will see what we can do for next time.
My residents had a fabulous time, and one who was most unsure and nervous loved it so much she asked when the next one was!
Thank you
We would like to thank all of the residents who attended for getting stuck into the activities and making it a really special day. We are grateful for your honest feedback too. We would also like to thank the partner organisations and others running activities for making it a jam-packed event. Lastly, thanks to the team who made it possible!
