Growing opportunities with Cultivate
Cultivate, New Hope’s horticultural therapy and wellbeing service, has developed considerably since its inception in the early stages of the pandemic. From the simple beginnings of providing meaningful activities for New Hope residents as they were confined to a single service during periods of national and local lockdown, Cultivate has grown into a key part of New Hope’s service delivery providing a comprehensive range of activities to support people in improving and maintaining their mental health. Alongside the now fully-fledged horticultural therapy programme offered to residents in New Hope accommodation services, many new and exciting workshops and activities regularly take place including a selection of trips to local leisure and activity centres as well as trips out into nature.
Generous support from Restore Hope, Top Golf and D20, Watford’s board game café, has allowed the Cultivate team to take groups of people recovering from homelessness for trips out away from the places they normally are, places that they may associate with a chaotic period in their lives or past addictions. Different perspectives can come with different places, places that cannot be connected to past traumas.
“It’s good to just do something normal again.” – a recovery services resident.
Each activity is chosen to be restorative, light activities where residents can get some relief from their stresses. They are often a chance to play, to be creative or to be competitive in a playful way and to find new ways of managing feelings when things do not work out they way they hoped. These visits also provide opportunities to reconnect with the local community and be mindful of the wider social skills needed when in environments away from their normal environment.
Alongside the external opportunities, Cultivate have arranged a number of ‘Community Connections’ events at the Haven, New Hope’s drop-in service, to get to know people early in their support journey with New Hope and identify opportunities with New Hope and external support services to meet their needs. Sessions tend to be based around a learning opportunity combined with a social space to allow residents or drop-in service users to interact with the life-skills element as little or as much as is comfortable for them, or even just to be there for the atmosphere if that is what they choose. A recent life-skills workshop in cooking skills was used in this way where residents with past careers in catering supported others of all levels in cooking while some service users came to try some of the food and to spend time with their peers. These events allow for a place to relax and grow for anyone supported by New Hope and accommodate different abilities, experiences, personalities, strengths and skills. Coming up, there is an animal workshop in which service users will be able to meet a variety of pets and experience the value of spending time with others and animals alike.
