Great news. On the 7.7.23, the Friends of Maghull & District (FOMD) applied for funding from Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner, ‘Neighbourhood Resilience Fund’. Consequently, we discovered on 11.9.23 that we have been successful in securing the maximum £1000, for the oversubscribed fund, that will part fund a public noticeboard as a catalyst for our latest and largest environmental project – The Maghull NHS Wellness Dell.

We Met the Following Criteria:

  • Community cohesion
  • Enhancing the role of volunteers
  • Improving the community environment and wellbeing
  • Proactively engaging/involving people underrepresented in NW e.g., BAME, LGBTQ, people with disabilities, or young people’s voices
  • Building or enhancing local networks and relationships

The Maghull NHS Wellness Dell: Introduction.

 This social/environmental project is the largest we have undertaken to transform an inaccessible cherished green space belonging to the NHS into an accessible evidence-based place of wellness that will engage every aspect of our community either in its construction and maintenance to its tranquil enjoyment, in the heart of our communities bustling and rapidly developing centre.

The robust attractive noticeboard will communicate support and engagement at every level in Maghull’s highest footfall area, providing a legacy noticeboard that will encourage and invite support.

Since we lost our only community newspaper in the form of the Champion newspaper that was delivered free weekly to 160,000 homes locally, it has been difficult to engage the whole community particularly those who are digitally excluded perhaps because of our higher demographic age group. We have strived to resolve this by creating our recent website and a quarterly community magazine but a noticeboard in this high footfall area will hopefully encourage engagement with this exciting project both now and beyond.

The community work and future community maintenance will be achieved through supervised volunteer engagement from multi agency health care referrals, through to community engagement and completion of the plans demonstrated by evidence-based physical, psychological wellness outcomes organised by Hope University.

 The Main Project Components:

  • Creating an unobtrusive perimeter gravel path to enable access for all, whilst enabling visitors to safely access the Dell to enjoy its beauty whilst exercising around the circumference and benefiting their health.
  • Creating a long narrow stream feature meandering down the natural slope, ending its journey in a small shallow pond (surrounded by a sturdy beautiful metal fence) or Well. There is considerable evidence of the health benefits associated when nature’s blue (water) meets green (vegetation) 2.
  • Creating two perimeter picnic areas, to enable people to meet, view, and dwell in the Dell.
  • Undertake the planting of themed plants and utilises the natural resources from NHS planned tree maintenance e.g. branches to line a path, tree trunk to create bench.

Benefits

  • The cherished NHS Dell Project will make a difference by protecting, making accessible & engaging the whole community in its creation & enjoyment in the heart of Maghull. There is overwhelming evidence of the health benefits of combined blue & green spaces that we hope to subtly enhance to help the community to ‘Dwell in the Dell’, whilst encouraging wildlife habitat, eco-education & conservation.
  • Benefiting Children (0 to 15), Disabled people, LGBTQ+ people, Men, Older people, People on a low income, People with mental health and wellbeing problems, Women, Young people (16 to 24) and specifically benefiting those through social prescribed referrals: Bereavement, Domestic violence, Drug and alcohol addiction, Loneliness and isolation, Mental wellbeing, Social mobility.
  • We will be engaging all these parts of our community through NHS social prescribed referrals and other health and social partner organisations. Our expectation is that they will be engaged from the commencement of the project through to the establishment of a maintenance group, whilst others will simply enjoy the health benefits of the outcomes.

#fomdcic #environment #Maghull