Healthy Waterford Wellbeing Campaign – Staying Socially Active

Waterford Social Prescribing Service - Niamh Flavin and Fiona Laffan

Hi, our names are Niamh Flavin and Fiona Laffan and we work on the Waterford Social Prescribing Service working across the City and County of Waterford.  Social Prescribing is a free support that aims to reduce social isolation and loneliness and improve people’s overall health and well-being.  This is done by providing social outlets and supports for people in their community.

Now more than ever we feel this service is needed.  People are extremely isolated and lonely. A lack of social and human interaction is causing distress and poor mental health among so many.  At present the Social Prescribing service is linking with its clients to support them in the following ways;

• Wellness packs have been sent out to all clients. Included in these were mindfulness CD’s, garden seeds, deck of cards, mindful colouring, colouring pencils and activities, stress balls, sudokos, crosswords, Free An Post Postcards, general mental health and well-being local support information etc. These have been very well received by all.
• We support people to access online mental health and well-being programmes ie. Aware, South East Recovery College, HSE Stress Control among others
• The service supports people with technology to enable those who want to, to get online and on social media platforms.
• We liaise regularly with our local community response teams for grocery and medication collections for clients, Call to Chat, among others.
• Our service is supporting clients to access education and training and grant applications
• We offer regular phone support to our clients which supports connectiveness and decreases the feeling of isolation and loneliness.
• The Social Prescribing service identified mental health and well-being and physical health as two reoccurring themes among our clients that needed to be addressed. In doing this we set up a weekly zoom exercise fitness class for our service users. We also set up a 6 week GROW mental health programme.
• A weekly joke club is also running to keep the spirits up and some baking through zoom with a cuppa tea together after has proved a great hit.

Some helpful tips to share

Tips for developing a routine:

Over the past few weeks your routine may have been affected by the impact of the coronavirus. With this disruption to our daily lives it is important to try and keep a routine. Having a routine can help to give us a sense of stability and structure to our day. It can also help reduce stress.

• Get up and go to bed at regular times
• Write a list of things to do for the day
• Pace yourself, if cleaning out your clothes start with one drawer at a time
• Set a regular time to do certain things, for example, phone a friend every evening, walk every morning.
• Stay connected: Phone a family member, someone from your club/men’s shed/active retirement group. Write a letter or card to someone.
• Get some exercise, stretches, dance to your favourite music
• Read a book, listen to music, Bake/cook something new, gardening, knit/crochet, relaxation, meditation etc.

Tips to supporting Mental Health and Well-Being

• Worry Time: Set aside a time each day for you to worry. Give yourself 15 minutes.  In this time write down your worries.  If possible discuss your worries with someone, name your feelings and try to problem solve to look at how you can overcome them.
• Thought Challenging: Write down any unhelpful thoughts that you are experiencing. Think about these and try to come up with more helpful and positive ones.
• Activity Planning: Set aside time to plan enjoyable and achievable activities each day.
• Well-Being: Look after your own well-being, cook healthy meals, limit screen-time and get enough sleep and exercise. Be present and live in the moment as much as possible.
• Imagery: Imagine yourself in the future where things have turned out in a positive way, perhaps returning to a social activity you previously enjoyed.
• Three Good Things: In the morning write down 3 things you hope to achieve that day, in the evening write down 3 things you achieved that day.

Try some of these and see what you think!! The Social Prescribing service has had to adapt to the current situation.  The social supports which we previously would have had to refer people into (ie. women groups, men’s sheds, gardening, exercise, art classes etc.) is for now not currently there.  We do feel however we are achieving the outcomes we set out to achieve.  Through the supports offered above and the feedback from clients we hope we are reducing social isolation, improving self-esteem and lowering stress and anxiety.

If you would like to know more about the service or discuss any aspect of the above please feel free to get in touch.  We are open for new referrals and look forward to connecting with you.

Niamh Flavin Waterford City (089)2501413  [email protected]

Fiona Laffan Waterford County (0894917360 [email protected]

Rob Walpole - Services Manager with ALONE

Services Manager with Alone Rob Walpole spoke to Damien on Déise Today about advice for those who are coming out of cocooning, how to keep safe during Covid restrictions, staying connected while continuing to cocoon and the services offered by Alone.