Our Wellbeing Service provides an alternative to traditional day care for people with a disability. The focus is on providing people with opportunities to maintain and develop skills and gain the confidence needed to get the most out of life and be as independent as possible.
This is achieved by offering a range of indoor and outdoor activities in a safe, stimulating and welcoming environment.
It’s the ‘sibling’, of sorts, to our other Day Service over in Failsworth – MILES@Ena.
The Wellbeing Service site at Chadderton Hall Park is fantastic and allows for so much creative activity, particularly for those who enjoy working with their hands and love the outdoors.
We have a small, skilled on-site team working with attendees from 9am – 4pm, Monday – Friday through the week.
We are really excited to bring you some news of something that we have been working on together, in order to bring our lovely new garden area to life.
Our regular Wellbeing Service attendees including Richard, Michael, Lee, Darren, Nathan, Colin, John, Thomas, Kelly and co’ have been designing and building picnic tables and furniture over the last few weeks and months. We want to share their stories and progress.
Let us introduce you to Matthew and Robert, who with some guidance from our support team have built their own table which brings even more colour to the ever-colourful Chadderton Hall Park!
A couple of words from Jeanette – who was the main support to Matthew and Robert as they took on this project…
"Through this activity, Matthew and Robert learned to work as a team as well as developing their individual practical skills too. They had a plan (which on occasion did have to change due the odd mishap and the materials and paint available) and they saw it through to completion and a brilliant end result!"
Having made a plan they needed suitable materials to work with. Both the Honeywell Centre and Transweb (who are based on Vulcan Street in Oldham) kindly donated some wooden pallets for us to use for these projects - perfect for what these creatives had in mind.
This partnership is a fairly new one in comparison to some of the other long-standing friendships that exist at the service, but that didn’t hinder the creativity one bit…
Once the basic construction of the table was complete, Matthew and Robert wanted to make it their own. They discussed and drew their design on paper, before working out how to apply it.
First things first, they measured and marked out the design onto their table using pencils before applying masking tape to the lines drawn. This separated the different areas of the table-top. Then they set about painting using the preferred palette of black, white, red and green.
Just a few of the skills developed through this project:
- Project planning and design
- Health and safety evaluation and risk assessment
- Repeated use of various tools and equipment needed for the job, with necessary support (including cordless drills, screwdrivers, sanding pads, etc)
- Painting and finishing
- Listening, compromise and teamwork
- Patience to follow instructions and a plan
These pals were really pleased with the outcome and how their table turned out…
Matthew - "I liked designing and building the table - it's the best thing I've ever done!"
Robert - "I liked the green, red, black and white colours we used and enjoyed working as a team."
Alongside others at Chaddy Park they have been sitting out at these bespoke tables through the summer – which has been a sunny one this year…
Everyone at the Wellbeing Service is quite modest about their creations and there’s more to come, but we hope you agree that Robert, Matthew and the team should be immensely proud of their work.
#MadeInOldham
