Supporting learning disabled and autistic people through the tough winter months

People in Action aims to inspire and empower learning disabled and autistic people to identify aspirations, fulfil their potential and to lead safe, healthy and well-connected lives. We caught up with them about their Stay Well this Winter Grant which they were awarded to build on their previous year’s activities, supporting learning disabled and autistic people through the winter months.

 

Can you tell us a bit about People in Action?  

People in Action (Yorkshire) is a Leeds based charity, established in 1983 to benefit learning disabled and autistic people.  The charity provides a range of innovative, inclusive, person centred services which reflect the needs of the people it supports. This includes 1:1 support in the community, social clubs, learning courses and healthy lifestyle programmes. 

 

What has funding from Stay Well This Winter Grants enabled you to do? 

The stay Well This Winter Grant enabled us to deliver a 4-month Winter Wellbeing Project to support learning disabled and autistic people through the tough winter months.  We were able to fund Project Manager time to coordinate all activities, distribute food vouchers and deliver accessible information and signposting directly to our members through outreach and drop-in sessions. 

 

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

326 learning disabled and autistic people benefitted from the Stay Well This Winter project.  This included: 

• • • • Over 150 items of winter clothing and accessories distributed to members to support them through winter. 
      • 7 Winter Wellbeing Drop-In information sessions including hot drink and warm space. 
      • 30 household support fund vouchers distributed to help members access food and other essential items 
      • Winter Wellness outreach visits to 4 of our groups identified members in need of support and signposting. 

 

One of the highlights were the mini-budgets which we distributed to each group within our Changing Lives Service.  This enabled group leaders to use up to £100 to deliver their own member-led winter wellbeing sessions and included some great activities enjoyed by all members of those groups. These included soup making evenings, themed dance workshops and winter-themed activities promoting discussion around how to stay warm during winter. 

“Members loved our Club 33 Winter Wellbeing Party. We all came together and did lots of singing and dancing, exploring ways to keep active and keep ourselves warm. We prepared and shared food as a community, members learnt some affordable and simple snacks.  We spoke about how to budget over the holidays and about ways we could keep ourselves warm without spending loads on heating. Some of the examples of things the members suggested were using a blanket when watching the TV and have a dance to the radio as this would make them smile too.  As a group we have been having lots of conversations about how we can save money this has included eating left overs and swapping to supermarket home brands instead of more popular brands. 

Its been helpful to focus on these topics because most of us get our information about saving energy, budgeting and keeping warm from the internet, and this helped us share tips directly to members in an engaging and accessible way.” 

 

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

The biggest challenge we face is securing funding to keep vital services open and to respond to the emerging needs of our community.   Lack of funding limits the amount of services we can deliver to our members but the third sector is going through a challenging period and this is being felt across all organisations.  

 

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

We listen to our membership to try and understand where there is greatest need and how we should focus our services.  We have recently launched a Member Ambassador programme where we have been able to employ 8 members from our community who have lived experience.  We hope that this will strengthen our members voice when we are making decisions for the future.   

Our current funding priorities are to build stability within our current services, whilst also securing funding to support members with mental health and overcoming loneliness.  Multi-year funding is always our preference so we can build long term change and apply learning from previous years.