Today, we worked together to give our community garden in Bognor Library a very much needed refresh! 🐝🌱

We want to give a huge thank you to 'My Sisters' House', who kindly offered to help us transform our space! 💜

Being outside, getting active, and getting our hands dirty really improves our mental health. We braved the cold and thoroughly enjoyed teaming up and making a difference in this lovely space. 

Today marks the end of Winter Wellbeing Week. ❄️ We hope you've enjoyed seeing what we've been up to this week! 

Today, as part of Winter Wellbeing Week, we held wellbeing checks at the Country Centre for all staff, volunteers, and people we support to attend if they wish.

Arun Wellbeing provided us with advice, guidance and support to help us make small, realistic changes to improve our health and wellbeing.

Over at MAKE, in Portsmouth, we welcomed 'Beautiful Mind Coach' Hannah! She ran a workshop that helped us understand what 'wellbeing' means and built awareness around improving our wellness. We discussed the symptoms of anxiety and what we can do to understand our triggers. We discussed strategies to manage our wellbeing better. 

In the afternoon at MAKE, we enjoyed a workshop run by Ali from 'Healing Feelings'. Our theme for the workshop was 'happy.' We discussed what 'happy' feels like for each of us, both mentally and physically, and what we do in our lives that makes us happy. We then took 10 minutes to draw 'happiness' (with no pressure on making our pictures perfect)! After our time, we shared our drawings and spoke about what they meant to us. It was great to hear how other people portrayed happiness with their drawings!

Thank you to Arun Wellbeing, Hannah and Ali for sharing your support and guidance today. And thank you to Josh, for the video below!

​As part of Winter Wellbeing Week, we have an incredible series of events for our employees, volunteers, and the amazing people we support to get involved with!

Today, we met Scooter, the dog and his owner, Kirstie! Scooter supports people in our local community through surf therapy.

Our staff, volunteers and people we support listened to Kirstie talk about Scooters' unique story - from being rescued from the streets in Portugal to now being the only Surf Therapy dog in the UK! After asking many questions, we took turns to try the specially built surfboard and beach wheelchair. 

Huge thank you to Kirstie and Scooter for visiting today!

Winter can be challenging for our health. As part of Winter Wellbeing Week, we are putting on a few activities and workshops for our staff, volunteers and people we support. Throughout the week, watch our page to see what we are up to to help support and look after our winter wellbeing. 

This morning, we met Andy's Man Club at MAKE in Portsmouth. Andy's Man Club is a free, drop-in, peer-to-peer support group for men every Monday, where you leave your job at the door and come inside to talk freely about everything and anything. Come inside, have a brew and a chat, make friends and help others too.

Find Andy's Man Club every Monday, 7-9pm at MAKE, 1 Cornwall Rd, Fratton, Portsmouth PO1 5AA.

Over at the Country Centre, we met Jan Penn, and her assistance dog, Bobbie! We loved hearing all about how Bobbie supports Jan in her life.

​Jan spoke about how she started losing sight when she was very young and had just started her nursing training. It was very gradual, so she was able to finish her training and went on to run nursing homes with her husband. It took her a long time to accept she was losing her sight, and she found it hard to start using her cane. She's had three guide dogs, Bobbi being her third. Jan spoke about how she finds it easier to see lighter colours than dark. Bobbi is 'yellow' to her, and she finds it easier to see her than black/brown dogs.

Jan goes into many schools and community groups to share awareness around visual impairment and life with a guide dog.

Thank you Jan, Bobbie and Andy's Mans Club, for sharing your support and stories with us today.