About us
FWCH has as its mission statement ‘To bring the community into the care homes and the care homes into the community by building friendly relationships with residents and staff.’
Our motto is ‘Friendship, Companionship and Laughter’
How we started:
2006, March: A national day conference at the Focolare Centre for Unity, Welwyn Garden City: ‘Soul Matters- The Spiritual Needs of Older People’, organised by the World of Health group of Focolare presented and considered the various ways spiritual needs were being met by older people themselves, and by others for those who could no longer fulfill those needs for themselves. It was clear that everyone has spiritual needs, whatever their beliefs.
2006-2008: Four follow up meetings considered the situations of the frail elderly in the family, in the community and in care homes and a summary of these meetings was produced as a booklet
2008-2011: A small local group, including the ‘Soul Matters’ organisers, met regularly to consider how more could be done to meet spiritual needs in local care homes for the elderly.
2011:A Meeting entitled ‘Spiritual Care for the Elderly in Care Homes- Who
provides it?’, was held at the Focolare Centre for Unity, to which all
churches and care homes and relevant organisations in Welwyn Garden City and
Hatfield were invited. During discussion, it was pointed out that loneliness
was a major spiritual need and that coming along to have a cup of tea and a
chat was a relevant way of meeting it.
From this a steering group was formed and the name Friends of Welwyn Care Homes adopted.
A pilot ‘tea party’ was started at one care home, and as that was very successful, the steering group started to recruit volunteer visitors, and arranged some basic information and orientation meetings for them.
By November , we were visiting 5 local care homes, adding a sixth in March 2012
2012: We wanted to continue to emphasise the need to support people with dementia spiritually and so in February, we held ‘The Spiritual Life of People with Dementia’ , an inspiring meeting led by Sue Stilwell, MHA care home Chaplain. A similar meeting was held in November.
2013: Steering group continued. It was decided to seek affiliation with Welwyn Hatfield Council for Voluntary Service which entailed drawing up a Constitution and policies on Safeguarding, Equality and Diversity and Health and Safety and forming an elected committee.
2013 May :First AGM and election of a committee which includes members recently retired from social and health care.
2014-2024: Until the pandemic we continued to visit the 6 local homes, run dementia information and volunteer orientation sessions and have an aAGM and a an annual social evening for our volunteers.
The pandemic meant we had to suspend our activities and simply kept in touch by the provision of ‘goody bags’ for residents and staff.
The care homes re-opened slowly and thus our activities restarted slowly. Our visitor numbers had decreased , though not due to Covid. We now visit 4 care homes regularly and are actively recruiting so that we may offer teams to two more homes.
What we do:
There is a team of visitors for each home. At first we used the ‘tea party’ model for all the homes but over time, each team has developed the style of visit that best suits the team and the home. Chat over tea and cakes feature in several but there may also be sing songs, joining in with percussion instruments, or quizzes. One to one chats are a feature in two homes, particularly appreciated by those who are unable to leave their rooms. We have been able to bring in groups of children occasionally to sing for the residents. Sometimes we are able arrange for a few residents to attend an external event .
We could do a lot more if we had more visitors!
For more information go to our ‘Have you time for tea? Page.
