Lunch Clubs with Leeds Irish Health and Homes

We recently spoke to Leeds Irish Health and Homes about their work and their Lunch Clubs grant. 

Can you tell us a bit about Leeds Irish Health and Homes? 

Leeds Irish Health and Homes is a Health and Wellbeing service that supports people with a variety of support needs and promotes independence through our ethos and core values of care, culture, and community. We support people from the Irish and wider community across the city. We work with anyone over the age of 18 but do work with predominantly older people. We offer a variety of services such as weekly luncheon clubs, community support, outreach, and housing support. We work in partnership with Live Well Leeds, the social prescribing team, and Public Health.  We also offer a successful cultural programme and Intergenerational programme visiting schools and delivering cultural workshops. We celebrate our heritage and culture through our events and activities such as Tea dances, group activities, cultural celebrations such as St Patrick’s day and St Brigid’s day and have produced many anthologies. Supporting many people to engage with their culture and combat any loneliness and isolation is a great achievement for Leeds Irish Health and Homes. We also have a successful Digital Inclusion programme with people in their 90s using iPads and learning to navigate their way around the net becoming digitally connected. We also support people with Irish Passports and Irish Pensions enquiries and offer regular welfare reviews with our client group.       

What has funding from Lunch Clubs enabled you to do?  

The funding has enabled Leeds Irish Health and Homes to support those most vulnerable and be able to provide a warm meal full of nourishment. It gives many of our lunch club members a real sense of purpose and something to look forward to each week. It also gives Leeds Irish Health and Homes the opportunity to promote our health campaigns. We deliver digital inclusion surgeries and digital health hubs, provide gentle exercise sessions with Buster, and have recently delivered some chair-based yoga.  The lunch club has given us the opportunity to bring people together and to connect people with their culture and each other, building friendships whilst supporting many to overcome their loneliness.  

Can you tell us about the impact of what you do on the people you work with? 

It’s increase in overall wellbeing; we have witnessed first-hand an improvement in peoples physical and mental health. Many feed back on a regular basis just how much the lunch club means to them and that they would be lost without it. The exercise sessions we deliver encourage movement, the digital sessions we deliver encourage stimulation and have been a great support to those with any memory issues with some of the apps and games they can play. Knowing we are providing nourishment to those that wouldn’t normally have a hot meal is very rewarding and has a positive impact on most of our members. Raising awareness of health campaigns has also impacted many. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you face as an organisation?  

Funding is a constant worry sadly, as we are living in very difficult times and it’s a tough climate at present. There is much more competition. People’s needs are becoming more challenging, and we receive more complex cases due to the lack of services currently available. The of lack of funding concerns us – that we won’t be able to provide support to those in real need. So many people depend on our service and depend on our weekly luncheon clubs. Costings and overheads are increasing all the time.    

How is your organisation preparing for the future, and what kind of funding is needed? 

Core funding would provide the comfort blanket we all need, but we are very aware that times have changed, and most funding available is from year to year. We are always planning and do record strategic plans. We continue to source other funding opportunities that enables Leeds Irish to continue our work and develop our current offer. We have recently purchased a new building and hope to eventually deliver our luncheon clubs and provide a health community space for the community and the local area around us, this will support us to save some money and won’t be paying rent for spaces to deliver lunch clubs and group activities.