Celebrating the season in Wakefield’s older people’s services

A sense of festivity has been growing in the Trust’s older peoples’ services in Wakefield over the past few weeks as service users and staff have taken part in a Christmas card design competition.

Older people who are in touch with community mental health teams social inclusion groups and those at the Chantry unit at Fieldhead and Poplars unit in Wakefield were asked to design a Christmas card that could be used by the Trust for their corporate Christmas card this year.

Staff helped those service users who were interested in taking up the challenge to design their cards, using a range of different artistic mediums including drawing, collage and paint, during activity sessions on the wards and during the social inclusion groups.

There was an overwhelming response, and the winning design has now been printed as a Christmas card. All the designs created by people in older peoples services were also made into cards, thanks to the support of James Waplington, acting general manager in the service, which people will be able to give to their loved ones, friends and families this holiday season.

Paula Rylatt, specialist practitioner at the Trust said, “We had an amazing response to this challenge and I think those who took part really enjoyed designing their own Christmas card, which reflected their interests and ideas.

“The activity sessions for those on the Chantry unit were run by our activity coordinators Wendy Taylor, Carla Wright and Rosanna Ward and I was really pleased that we were able to have all 18 designs printed into cards for people to give out to those they wished to.”