Projects supported by Chester-le-Street and District Area Action Partnership 2023/24

Chester Cares and Shares (If U Care Share Foundation)

This project aims to help businesses and organisations promote positive wellbeing and improve mental health across the AAP's communities. A gap in provision was highlighted through the Durham Mental Wellbeing Alliance, and the AAP were able to respond due to wider mental health work taking place and an understanding that the best approach to suicide prevention is promoting wellbeing.

This is a pilot project, with a key aim of identifying wider opportunities. There will be two key areas of work:

• Community awareness: This will be led by a member of the support team and includes a variety of face to face and online events with businesses across the AAP area. There will also be consistent positive messages on social media and in print. The project include getting businesses involved with the 'Inside Out' campaign, which promotes people sharing their emotions and getting help when they may be struggling.
• Training: This will be bespoke, with flexible delivery methods. The focus will be on how to promote positive wellbeing and look after our mental health, as well as supporting those bereaved by suicide. This recognises that large numbers of people are affected by suicide across the AAP area. This important element is necessary to prevent further deaths and promote positive outcomes. Additional support provided to employers and organisations based in the AAP area will include immediate indirect telephone support which is not currently funded (we can currently support the member of staff but do not have the funding to support the employer). This project will allow drop-ins in organisations as well as scheduled appointments within our existing service.

Aspire to Learn (Aspire)

This project is offering personalised learning and support experience for women across the AAP area. The focus is on helping women make positive life choices and provide them with the tools to get there. Since Covid-19, data shows increased numbers of women being referred and self-referring to Aspire with issues including poor mental health, social exclusion, unemployment, poverty and an increase in disclosed domestic violence and abuse. This trend is reinforced by the referrals made to Aspire by partners in the Durham Mental Well Being Alliance.

This highlights a need for a pilot project which offers people extra individualised support to help them move forward and make positive life choices, encouraging women to become socially and economically included. A programme has been developed, with small group numbers, to offer support and activities. It offers a weekly one to one support session to plan, and then track personal progress towards clear goals, and a classroom-based session to try out a range of activities to develop good mental health, such as gardening, art, cooking, exercise, and craft. All the activities are decided in agreement with the woman in the group. This approach has ensured that the programme is personalised to them.

The course is run by highly experienced and qualified teachers who have many years experience working with women dealing with multiple issues.  It hopes to increase confidence, develop 'people' skills and encourage the group to support each other. The funding will also cover an on-site creche facility In the same building, to allow women with pre-school children to participate fully in the programme.

Warm packs (Pelton Community Centre)

The community buildings subgroup has raised the issue of how to support members of the community who will be unable to access the warm spaces locally. The community response to Covid-19 and Storm Arwen showed there was a need in the area to give out packs to those who would not normally attend a community building. Getting warm is especially an issue for people who lose power or cannot afford to heat their homes. The partnership agreed that 'warm packs' would be put together, to hold at centres across the area and given to those who need them.

Packs will include: socks, a blanket, gloves, a soup cup, a hot water bottle, emotional wellbeing tools, light exercises to keep warm, support leaflets, a timetable of available warm spaces in the area (to help combat social isolation), and credit union information. 

The items are parcelled up by Pelton Community Centre. Once this is complete, community buildings will be able to collect a number of packs to store at their own centres to be used when needed. Although there will be no referral route to the packs, community buildings providing warm spaces will make their own judgement about who receives a pack. The centres will support those hard to reach by working in partnership with support services to identify those most in need. This work will be done alongside partners such as Karbon Homes, Durham County Council, local councillors, other community groups and other relevant services. Advertising will be done with local doctors and pharmacies to ensure we reach those in need. 

Heaven's Kitchen (Lumley Community Centre)

The aim of the project is to support residents most in need and affected by the increase in the cost of living and ensuring that residents of the AAP area have access to warm food and food supplies. 
The project will do this by funding an increased kitchen capacity, so they can provide a bigger luncheon club offer. This provides a cooked meal and the opportunity to socialise with others and support residents' well-being.

The project will also improve the areas such as the foodbank, mini-market and community fridge, so it can reach a wider communities across the AAP area.

Durham Works (Durham County Council)

DurhamWorks is a partnership programme for vulnerable groups of young people aged between 16 and 24 (and some older people with disabilities) living in County Durham. It has been funded by the European Social Fund and supported by the European Youth Employment Initiative. Funding was available until December 2023, by when we will have supported 15,000 young people, many of whom live in the AAP area and fall into the following categories:

• Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
• education health and care plan
• moderate learning difficulty to profound and multiple learning difficulty
• speech, language and communication needs
• physical difficulty
• alternative education, and pupils that missed out on education
• looked after children
• care leavers
• young parents / caring for own child
• completing sentence in the community or previously in custodial sentence
• homeless / in supported accommodation
• mental health difficulties

DurhamWorks provides everything that young people need, including one to one support and getting the skills, qualifications and experience they need to enter into work, volunteering, further learning, or training.

The project aim is to set up a Chester-le-Street AAP Specialist Training and Equipment Budget (Flex Fund). This budget would be used to supply all the unemployed young people in the area with everything they need to start work, college, or training, in their chosen field, if they show a commitment to the project. The budget could be used for specialist equipment and courses that are not generally available. It will also have a Discretionary Fund element to be used to give wider access to training. In previous years these flexible fund pots of money existed, but as we leave the European Union, this money is no longer available.

N E First Credit Union

This project is to deliver financial surgeries to help residents to get support and advice around finances. Due to the cost of living crisis, we are worried that many low income families will resort to high-cost lenders or even worse, illegal money lenders who are active in the area.

A large part of the project will be the promotion of these services and the support available through a targeted leaflet drop to residents. It will also work with a wide number of partners and provide them with promotional information to distribute to people most in need of financial support and advice.

Leaflets will offer guidance on the safer alternative of using a Credit Union and give residents examples of the difference in the cost of borrowing money from the Credit Union rather than a high-cost lender. They also encourage people to save with the Credit Union, build up their financial independence, and a loan from the Credit Union will also help to improve their credit ratings. The leaflets will outline all the benefits of saving and borrowing from the Credit Union, providing details of how to become a member to join and borrow. The funding would be spent on designing, printing and delivering a leaflet to each household starting in February 2023. A single item delivery enables greater attention, rather than being overlooked by 'other' leaflets.

Information surgeries at community centres raise the visibility of NEFirst as an ethical, financial organisation. Being able to find out about them means residents can save responsibly. The project supports residents in taking control of their finances, build financial resilience, leading to improved health and wellbeing. Residents can avoid high credit lending such as illegal lending and access interest free loans through local and government funded initiatives.