Feedback from United Welsh

Feedback Letter from United Welsh

Hi Dorothy

Nice to hear from you. I’ve been following Happy to Chat on social media and saw that you are now registered as an official charity. That’s great news and hopefully will continue to grow.

We’ve had some real success with Happy to Chat. As you know, we decided to initially launch it in one of United Welsh’s older person’s housing schemes in Cardiff, which is an older person’s sheltered housing scheme with 30% immigrants, some of whom struggle to understand the English language.

Undaunted though, we had an official launch in July and have had a session a month since, all of which has been well attended with anything from 8-14 people attending. At the launch, a couple of residents were allocated as Happy to Chat “reps” and wear their badges most days in the scheme to encourage others to chat, and buddy up with new residents so they are not left alone in their flats.

However, the most interesting result has been outside of those monthly sessions.

We have a community lounge and small kitchen at the scheme. I introduced 24/7 availability of free tea/coffee/sugar/biscuits (with a little funding we’d raised), set up a “Happy to Chat Corner” in the lounge and let all the residents know they could come to the community room any time they wanted and help themselves to a drink. I also let them know that if they sat in the Happy to Chat corner, they were inviting other residents to come and chat, and there was no need for anyone to worry they were disturbing someone in their thoughts.

The result has been incredible. Our community room has gone from only been used when I’m there holding some kind of event to having noisy, chatty residents using it every day, including weekends, men as well as the women (who have traditionally been difficult to engage) and all helping themselves to drinks and biscuits, making new friendships and now organising their own events, such as curry nights and movie nights.

One particular gentleman had not left his flat in two years and was nervous of mixing with other residents. He saw my badge when I called on him one day, invited me in and told me his concerns (a lot based around confidence). Having resolved a few other issues so there were no physical barriers in the way, I worked on his confidence and in early September he agreed to come downstairs to meet some of the residents in the community room if I collected him.

Having collected him, he thoroughly enjoyed the event we had and came along the following week. He’s made at least two new friends and isn’t feeling lonely or isolated any more. We’re looking forward to seeing him at an International Older Persons Day event we have next Tuesday.

We’ve now decided to launch Happy to Chat in all 15 of our sheltered housing schemes, and last week I had a meeting with my team, handed them some badges and information. They will all be launching it at different times between now and Christmas.

I am launching it in another of our schemes, Ifor Jones Court, on Tuesday. This scheme has its own challenges, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Thank you so much for not just a great idea but enabling us to help empower older people to start doing things for themselves and reduce their loneliness. It’s been life changing for some of them.

We are really looking forward to continuing working with you in the future.

Best wishes

Denise

Denise Hammond-Webb

Senior Connect Facilitator

United Welsh