Well-Being Group

Our Coffee Morning runs at the Hall on Thursdays from 10.30am to 12.30pm.

It was started several years ago with the aim of providing a safe place for people experiencing loneliness, or difficulties as a result of caring for family members or friends. Information for carers and where to access help is always available.

Groups, couples and single people meet regularly to chat over coffee and biscuits - all are welcome. We make a small charge of £2.50 per session to cover the refreshments. Contact Lorna Pyke on 01379 677796 for more information.

The group is part of TIBENHAM CARING, an ongoing project to look at how we can make the village more sustainable for people. Apart from during the lockdown period, we have held annual events where we invite members of the community and representatives from various services to discuss how we, in these rural communities, can do more to help ourselves and each other.

Our first event, " Think Carers", was held in March 2017 with representatives from Norfolk Carers, The South Norfolk NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, Health and Well Being, Mental Health, Social Care, Harleston Information Plus, the Early Help HUB Long Stratton, Voluntary Norfolk and others. This was our chance to network with agencies offering help and information that we could share with friends and neighbours, and to have our say about issues that concerned us relating to health and well being within Tibenham and the local area. This successful event provided much information and identified support for many of those who attended.

As a result we arranged a series of Well-Being sessions over a period of five weeks, with support from a Development Worker from Norfolk County Council, which gave participants the tools to build physical and mental resilience.

Our second event in March 2018, based on "The Five Ways of Well-Being" followed up these weekly sessions. This event concentrated on people and how we can improve our lives. Once again representatives from the NHS, the voluntary sector and suppliers attended and helped make this a successful event.

Arising from this we were able to start a "Light exercise Class" which is held at the Hall every Tuesday at 10.00am and which is attended by a regular group who are mostly over 50, but everyone is welcome, of any age or gender.

We held our third event in March 2019, this time concentrating on Rural Isolation and concentrating on connectivity through internet, phones and learning as a way of improving our well-being. A grant was obtained for a scheme of Digital Buddies to help people learn to use their phones and tablets to improve their skills and communications, and we have since bought some computers for use in teaching our residents.

Following the end of lockdown, our fourth event was held in March 2022. This was an opportunity to review what had changed during the pandemic and see what else we could do. Excellent feedback and suggestions were received and we have continued with some of the ideas raised at similar events in 2023 and 2024.