Engage, Educate, Encourage & Empower
Living in a cold home can have devastating effects on people’s physical and mental well-being, increasing the social divide of communities and contributing to social injustices across Wales. Working in partnership with communities and local organisations to support people to heat their homes more affordably, and tackle health inequalities is at the heart of the Enhanced Healthy Homes, Healthy People projects.
Our team and partners provide a range of support to people across Wales and South-West England through meeting residents to ensure their basic needs are met. By discussing the needs of the individual and those in their household, our team and partners can provide tailored support, specific to that person to ensure that everyone has access to safe, sound, secure, warm housing where they can grow, work and play in.
‘We provide support via HHHP+ as we have found that the more you talk the more you find. Understanding the impact your environment has on your mental health and wellbeing is huge and especially at the moment. We link the support that is provided to residents so that it supports residents to make a house a home. So how do you make a house a home? The world Health Organisation approach is that the dwelling is the physical structure, and the home is the social, cultural and economic structure created by the induvial. So, what we do is enable residents to make a house a home’.
JOANNA SEYMOUR, HEAD OF PRARTNERSHIPS AND DEVELOPMENT
The work of Healthy Homes, Healthy People+ focuses on engagement, education, encouragement, and empowerment of households. We do this through a range of projects, including Healthy Homes, People Lives & Communities, a project set up in collaboration with ClwydAlyn and TGP Cymru. HHPLC is aimed to work in partnership to improve the health and wellbeing of residents in North Wales.
‘HHPLC is a project where Warm Wales is working closely with ClwydAlyn, Team around the tenancy thanks to funding from Energy Redress Fund to support residents of ClwydAlyn, Team around the tenancy and the wider community with all things Energy. Energy Awareness, Support and Education closely focusing on people who have recently moved into a property or are new to living independently. Along with working on an energy focused support we also support the people with all issues regarding the wellbeing and making the home healthy.’
ALED JENKINS, PROJECT CO-ORDINATOR
The HHPLC mission is to deliver in-depth services to 3000 households across North Wales offering specialised living support and interventions.
- Partnering with TGP Cymru team means that we can ensure support and education is provided to our young persons in the tenancy sector to support them establishing their first home.
- Healthy Homes, People, Lives and Communities also works to roll out energy savvy training and light touch energy advice to 300 frontline officers to embed education in all our activities.
- We have created a centralised interventions directory to deliver a holistic approach and combat all forms of poverty to residents and our communities to open cases for our residents to monitor and support the ongoing health and wellbeing in the community, potentially linking in with GPs and the Health trust by sharing interventions
We noticed a gap in energy support and education, many are unaware of what support exists or what support they’re eligible for. Through HHPLC our Community Workers and partners can help engage, educate, encourage, and empower communities to alleviate fuel poverty and avoidable health inequalities.
In 2021 our enhanced Healthy Homes, Healthy People model has supported more than 598 households to have warmer, safer, healthier homes and saw a 50% increase in client life satisfaction. While for some, a warm home may be something that is taken for granted, for too many it is a luxury they cannot afford, and as energy prices continue to rise, projects such as HHHP+ and HHPLC and the support they can offer becomes ever more critical.
