Pill Trust, creating a hub for community and family.
Invest Local group Pill Unity has worked hard to focus on building community resources and connections for young people and young families in the area.
One of their most beneficial moves so far has been to support the introduction of a Community Development Worker, Bethany. Bethany’s role is being part funded by Pill Unity for the next three years with the remaining funds for her role being raised through donations by the local charity, The Pill Trust.
I recently met with Bethany to discuss her role, what’s involved and how she’s building a network of support and lifestyle enrichment for residents and young families in the area.
I opened the discussion with Bethany by asking her to give us a brief outline of where her role is based and what the primary focuses of her job are.
“My role is very much located in Pillgwenlly, Newport. Our charity The Pill Trust, as the name suggests, is entirely focussed on joining with the Pill community to help meet their needs and in particular my role has a young families focus.”
Bethany tells me that since starting her role she has been active in introducing vital new support and social groups into the area to help young parents and carers network.
“On arrival the first easily observable need that presented itself was for stay and play provisions for those with young children. I run a baby group on Mondays and a toddler group on Tuesdays. The baby group is a small yet special space for carers to engage with their little ones through sensory play, song and movement, as well as find mutual support. As the group grows it will be a great platform to invite health visitors and early learning workers to come and share advice.”
We go on to discuss how Bethany wants to grow a sense of ownership of the group with its regular members and how she hopes one day to be able to offer further skills and development opportunities to one of the group’s members as a group support volunteer.
“The toddler group runs in a bigger space, St Stephen's church, and I have great fun in the hour before rearranging all the furniture, getting out all the toys, setting up mark-making activities, the baby zone, teas and coffees, snack prep... it's a lot of work but I am deliberately holding out on getting a volunteer at the moment. As time goes by and relationships grow, I'd like to invite someone from within the young families community to invest in group with me, as opposed to get someone in from the outside. I also find that the smallness of my workforce empowers the group dynamic, as we all collaborate in clearing and tidying at the end. I want the regulars to feel ownership of the group, not that it is a provision they passively receive.”
At this point, Bethany highlights the crucial importance of people in the community having access to support networks like this, a space where they feel safe to talk and reach out, and how sometimes this can bring to light the need for help that could otherwise go unnoticed, stating.
“These groups are important to my role as they create community spaces for me to build relationships and discover the more subtle layers of need. For example, I now also discreetly run the Freedom Programme (a domestic violence education programme) as the need requires, and I am creating holiday provisions to cater for the families in the break.”
As the understanding of what a vital asset to the community these groups are becomes clearer through the conversation, I return to the idea that Bethany wants to give the community a sense of ownership over these groups by asking her what methods she currently uses to get the families networking, and how she sees these networks developing in the future.
“Both the children's groups I run have corresponding WhatsApp groups. I would love to develop these into really useful networks where the parents can share other events and activities in the area, as well as advice, resources and support. At the moment it is myself who is spearheading this kind of communication – I put up any helpful free holiday activities, educational videos, even playdough recipes. But I hope to encourage a culture of sharing and support from the whole group. That kind of collaboration only makes us stronger, and particularly for new parents can make us feel less overwhelmed and isolated. I think these kind of natural communities and connections took a real hit during covid lockdown, so it is great to help re-foster them.”
In addition to these resources she has introduced to the community, Bethany has already run and has further plans for running more community events. Creating a space for the whole community to come together and celebrate in a sense of joy and empower the residents with access to a calendar of events that will fight isolation and loneliness. “ I arrived early October and my first job in the role was to organise a community party! Our charity is in partnership with St Stephens church, who wanted to host a Halloween alternative event. I ran a 'glow party' – a non religious celebration of light, and it was fantastic to see the wonderful diversity of Pill in the families who came and had fun on the theme. I hope to run other community family events – ideally one per season. This Spring holiday I am running a 'breakfast and boardgames' event over the two weeks, as during the holidays it has become clear the need is more for regular frequency of activities to help parents give shape to the day, as opposed to a one-off big event. For this reason, the Summer event will also aim to run over a longer period. Autumn will be the glow party once more, and this year for Christmas I would like to host a Christmas tree festival in the church – an invitation for the local groups, charities and schools in the area to all decorate a tree to display in an exhibition with other stalls and tombola, providing a low cost festive activity for families as well as educating them about what services are available to them, and a chance to strengthen community spirit and pride.”
With much of Beth’s daily work discussed, she mentions an exciting and large-scale project that she is currently leading, focusing on the refreshing of the St Stephen's church outdoor play space, which, as the project develops Bethany hopes it will deliver an extremely valuable community asset to the local residents, young parents and children in the area.
“We looked at putting in a plan to install a traditional playground set up but, the price was way out of budget and the proposed result felt frankly uninspiring. Rather than construct an expensive playground with prescriptive, closed-ended activities, removing any of the grass and wildness that has crept in to create a sterile, blank space, I saw this as an opportunity to try something different. A dynamic, explorative space with the mud left in, with open-ended activities which stimulate imagination, creativity and interaction – both with other children and their environment. I have two young children myself, and the best play I see is when they are running around with their friends with sticks poking holes in the mud and making beds for ants from daisy petals, not getting me to push them endlessly on the swings. And so, I came up with the idea to create a space that had layers. The first layer is simply a safe basic footprint. Safe places to play in Pill are so scarce that even just a safe child-friendly plot of land would be a great new asset for the children, so to just fix the fence, remove the rotten parts of the existing play area and put down woodchip over the degraded wet pour rubber would be an exciting development. The next layer is to bring in new playful elements which are still secure enough that they can be accessed unsupervised. I am visiting the local primary schools to find out what they'd like. So far it has been awesome to see the kids really get the vision of the kind of play space we're going for – they have made no mention of slides or swings, instead want a mud kitchen, water play area, tunnels, sand pit, music making station, something to climb, somewhere to hide. It is an ongoing dialogue that I'd like to keep going throughout not only the creation of this layer of playful installations, but onwards into the final layer too. The final layer is for the interactive, evolving element of the space. I aim to host play sessions where I can bring out loose parts play and further activities and games under my supervision, and these can change and respond to the children's interests and input.”
It’s clear that Bethany has already made huge improvements to the lives of residents through her work and community engagement projects so far. With her plans for the redevelopment of the St Stephen's church outdoor play space, and the growing supportive family network community she is nurturing to empower with a sense of belonging and connectivity, it’s understandable that Pill Unity are proud to say they have had a hand in supporting Bethany into her role. Indeed, Bethany’s quick work in creating new services and identifying the need for extra support in the community, just goes to show the true value of investing in community workers who can not only create connections between local community organisations and groups, but moreover who can invest time and energy into developing strategies and lay down plans for incredibly beneficial new community assets to come into existence.