Mum's group bring joy to care home residents with homemade wellbeing packs

The Key+ fund project is designed to develop the skills of young people while they complete social action projects to help people within the community.

The first stage of the Key+ fund included the young mum mentors organising a trip for the other mums within the group to a farm. This enabled mums and children who may be living in poverty and struggling with finances to have a lovely day out that they might not have usually been able to afford.

The young mums mentors increased their organisation and communication skills during this project and felt confident to take on the second stage of the Key+ to obtain more funding.

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The second stage of the project the young mum mentors organised and hosted a Christmas Party for past and present young mums and their children including a DJ, party games, presents, and a buffet.

For the third stage of the project the mums decided to give back to their community by designing wellbeing packs for residents at Harton Grange Care home. They chose this care home as Bright Futures have previously worked with this home, partaking in intergenerational activities with positive outcomes.

The mums contacted Marius Sidoriuc, the activities co-ordinator for the home to find out about how many residents were in the home so they could make enough packs.

The packs included a cup and saucer with tea, coffee, milk and sugar in, biscuits, sweets, a calendar with pictures of old South Shields Landmarks on and a puzzle book with pens. 

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Bridie Young-Coutts, Project Worker at Bright Futures said: "The mums and children thoroughly enjoyed this experience, although it was an emotional afternoon. The residents were so grateful and really enjoyed meeting the young children." Following the visit Marius sent over an email thanking the group for attending: "It was so wonderful today to see the children and young mothers. Absolutely fantastic, our residents loved it. Also we thank you so much for the donations to our residents."