Rising to the challenge

As 2021 started, the Oxford Health Cares team faced a new challenge - how to keep spreading smiles throughout our staff groups without spreading infection at the same time.  With the increased numbers of cases and a higher level of transmission, the team took the decision to cease physical care packs going out to large numbers of teams in line with guidance from the Infection Control team.

After a lot of thinking and planning, we are proud to be launching a virtual care pack at the end of January which will be jam packed with activities, thought provoking sessions and information to support wellbeing.  The activities will all be linked in with our colleagues in the Health and Wellbeing team so that staff can access further support or ideas for activities after taking part.

The virtual events will feature:

Maya's Lab - Indian Cookery 

Creating with Care - seated dance, mindful movement and a brand new Art Club

Artscape - art projects based on the Five Ways to Wellbeing

Life at No.27 - gardening for wellbeing

thewellbeinggirl - wellness sessions, yoga and meditation

We are so grateful to Maya, Angela, Tom, Annabelle and Natalie for taking the time to get involved in our programme - the support they are offering staff across the Trust is invaluable and it's great to have such a wealth of talent, skills and compassion in our network. 

The initial sessions will run over a six week period and be open to all staff members with recordings of other activities available for those who are unable to take part in the live sessions.  If all goes well and they are as well received as we think they will be, we will look to run another set of sessions later in the year.

We are so grateful for the ongoing support that our donors have shown to the Oxford Health Cares Appeal and to NHS Charities Together for funding that has enabled us to pull this all together.  We look forward to sharing some of the feedback and developments from this new endeavour as things get underway next week.