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, Matthew, Robert, 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 Lee and Darren who with some guidance from our support team have built a brilliant, Manchester United-themed table! In fact, the table goes very nicely with their England football team chairs that they made last year during the Men's European Championship...
A word from Sharon, a Support Worker in the Wellbeing Service...
"The chairs were a great idea at that point because we were still in ‘bubbles’ due to COVID-19 restrictions. We made chairs so that everyone could sit and socialise together (with a gap between chairs of course!) outside at Chadderton Hall Park. It was the themed chairs that actually inspired the idea of the themed picnic tables that we have planned and built since."
So, before we show you the finished Manchester United table, here’s how the whole thing came together…
Both Lee and Darren are massive United fans and have been for as long as we can all remember. They talk about their beloved reds most days and so they quickly came to an agreement when choosing a theme for their garden furniture.
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.
These two long-time friends really work well together and both of them bring many skills to whatever project they are working on. When constructing this table, they stripped the pallets down completely and rebuilt it adding additional slats to make it work the way they wanted.
Everyone at the Wellbeing Service does things slightly differently, and to be honest that’s just how we like it!
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
We get plenty of visitors to our corner of Chadderton Hall Park and they have all been so impressed with what Lee and Darren and have created. Even the Latics, City and Liverpool fans have been complimentary!
Finally, a word from the lads themselves…
Lee: "This is our picnic table. We designed it for Man United, and painted it."
Darren: "My name is Darren, this is my table all about Manchester United."
Everyone at the Wellbeing Service is quite modest about their creations and there’s more to come, but we hope you agree that Lee, Darren and the team should be immensely proud of their work.
#MadeInOldham
