Co-Designed & Collaborative
Two of our key working principles here at Active Calderdale are that projects should be co-designed and collaborative whenever possible. It is, therefore, an important step in our feedback loop to hear our partner's first-hand accounts of active in action.
As part of this process, Active Calderdale recently spoke to John Lee, Registered Manager at St Winifred’s Care and Nursing Home about the barriers staff & residents have previously faced in getting more active.
St Winifred's Story
St Winifred's Care and Nursing Home is a residential nursing home for the elderly over 65 years old. As a care and nursing home, one of St Winifred's priorities is to keep the staff and residents active which contributes towards a healthy and happy community. Registered Manager John has gained vital insights from St Winifred's efforts to implement an active environment and highlighted age, mobility, and accessibility to community resources as significant barriers to his residents getting active. Staff have also felt things such as time and finances have got in the way of them being more active in the past.
Working with Active Calderdale, John describes some of the ways in which some of these barriers have been addressed to support residents and staff to move more.

"We have taken part in the Active Calderdale Rastrick Around the World Challenge and more recently the Rastrick Pole to Pole Challenge. These challenges provided an opportunity for anyone in and around Rastrick to be active in any way they chose whilst giving people a sense of community, working towards a shared goal as part of the challenges.
We've encouraged and supported staff and residents to use community resources, one example of this is how we've linked them in with The Space @ Field Lane which has a variety of offers to improve health and wellbeing.
Staff have continued to be active outside of the workplace, mainly by enjoying walking. We've found residents are more confident in undertaking physical activity and there's greater confidence, better mobility, improved mood and reduced levels of anxiety among staff and residents."
John Lee - Registered Manager at St Winifred's Care & Nursing Home
Continued Support
Following these challenges, St Winifred's has given plenty of thought to how they can continue to support both residents and staff in keeping up their activity levels. The staff have continued with the theme of a challenge, yet this time designed and delivered by the care and nursing home themselves. Staff are currently taking part in 'a race to a million' in which staff are tracking their steps and the first member of staff to reach a million steps will receive a prize. The challenge is currently going well and there are plans for this to become an annual event.
If you are a partner with a story share or would like to become a partner of Active Calderdale, please e-mail us at ActiveCalderdale@calderdale.gov.uk and have your say.