Chat: Exercise: Food: Support During Covid-19

We are delighted to have worked in partnership with Living Sport who funded a small project to help us reduce the negative impact of Covid-19 last year. The aim was to increase physical and mental wellbeing and decrease loneliness and isolation, by supporting wellbeing through fitness, good nutrition and connecting to others.

With the funding, we provided information about chair based exercises and healthy eating to 30 of our Day Services users in Peterborough and Wisbech. Our Day Services have been suspended during the Lockdown periods and this has had a significant impact upon the people who regularly attend, whom for many, this is their only support. Our staff and volunteers have continued to keep in contact with all our service users by telephone or Covid secure doorstep or garden visits to check on wellbeing.  This project gave us the opportunity to support and encourage more activity and engagement.

It’s important to keep active for health and wellbeing; doing strength and balance exercises are particularly good to help prevent falls. We were able to give people information about some strength and balance exercises, as well as information about falls prevention. We also gave people a small book of healthy eating recipes cards, which were favourites supplied by members of our Day Services some years ago. You can download these recipes in the PDF link below.

The regular contact, with a mix of chat, exercise and food talk gave us all lots of fun and laughter.

“I have enjoyed the visits from the day centre staff, and the information about the exercises is very useful. I have tried a few exercises in the leaflet but I really miss the exercises we do at the day centre. They used to keep me from seizing up. I can’t wait for the club to open again.”