Wellness & Activity Home
This is Quality Protects Children’s first bespoke Wellness& Activity-based Children’s Home.
Nzuri House is working alongside children in the care system who are struggling with identity, self-confidence, obesity and body dysmorphia.
Obesity and poor self-regulation can be symptomatic of many issues. At Nzuri, we feel our holistic approach to young people’s wellness, provides an enabling environment where young people can begin to challenge, repair and change their lifestyle. By ensuring healthy weight management we can improve self-esteem.
Nzuri House
Nzuri is a 6-bed mixed gender home. Nzuri recognises that all children can benefit from the power of activity and exercise, with lifestyle coaching around diet and nutrition. We feel this benefits especially those young people who have sedentary behaviours and unhealthy lifestyle choices.
We provide the environment for children to begin to challenge the ‘mess you ups’ ‘MUPS’ that can damage their self-worth. Activity and fun form the basis of the home, recognising how instrumental it is to children’s development in the form of play, attachment, confidence and relationship building.
Our Service
The home is based around PACE Model (see below diagram): –
- Playfulness
- Acceptance
- Curiosity
- Empathy
The home has an experienced and skilled management team, who have over 40 year’s childcare experience between them. A Social Worker and skilled Residential Manager have the support of Clinical, Education and Activity Teams.
The Teams
The Care Team:
Are PACE Trained, focusing on strong meaningful attachment through PACE style parenting, including activity that promotes wellness and meaningful experiences for our young people.
Education Team:
Lawrence House School offer a creative curriculum, offering a full range of subjects and experiences, individualised to each young person. Lawrence House School was given outstanding for personal and social development of its pupils.
Clinical Team:
Led by our Clinical Psychotherapist, our team of Psychotherapists, Counsellors and Assistant Psychologists support our children through the robust assessment process and bespoke clinical interventions. Our Clinical Team lead the UK only SPARCS Trauma-based therapeutic intervention programme, achieving ‘Outstanding’ in our therapeutic community at Lawrence House Therapeutic Home. Working with a range of interventions our Clinical Team have helped young people identify their MUPS ‘Mess You Ups’ and identify personal goal setting for self-regulation and ‘letting go’.
Our Wellness & Activity Team:
Physical activity, Sports and outdoor activities are a central part of the life of the home, led by a skilled team of mental health and physical activity manager, outward bounds coordinator and coaches promoting mental health and well-being. The team have the utility of our local aquatic centre, a narrowboat and power boat, plus 55 acres of Woodland Forest in Moel Bach in Wales.
The Practice
In launching our new provision, Nzuri House worked alongside a Local Authority Commissioning Team who had difficulty finding a suitable placement for young people with complex needs and serious self-harming behaviours, who had regular hospital admissions and was clinically obese with acute concerns from the paediatric team.
As part of the commissioning of the service to meet his needs, QPC designed a Wellness Service. To enhance our provision, we partnered with ZEST 24 a specialist personal training organisation that helps individuals improve physical health diet and wellbeing.
Partnerships
Nzuri House is proud to have partnered with ZEST 24 to ensure the best quality introduction to the lifestyle change.
In conjunction with Nzuri House and our own personal trainers, Zest 24 have developed a ‘Superstar Mover’ Programme. This is a three-tier approach to improving movement and activity for children.
In order to embed this programme and enhance staff commitment to PACE, Zest and QPC ran a bespoke weekly training camp for all residential staff. We focused on competencies around PACE and our activity Superstar Mover programme.
Our Training & Competencies
- Attachment – basic and strategies
- Achieving and maintaining a secure base
- PACE informed parenting
- Motivation – intrinsic motivation for engagement in exercise
- Behaviour Change Techniques for changing activity attitude and behaviours
- Nutrition – creating and promoting healthy food that calorie specific, balanced and bespoke
- Learning and understanding correct exercise the techniques and fundamental movement pattern for children
This retreat was purposeful and designed as a two-pronged approach. To upskill knowledge, improve practice and for staff to gain real-time experience of wellness to enable good modelling, attitudes, behaviours and create empathy for change.
The staff of Nzuri are empowered to make the right choices in relation to health and improve the lives of our children.
Testimonials
Staff
“After the wellness retreat with Zest, I feel so much more confident in approaching the subject of health and being proactive in what I do. I feel like I can inspire the kids at Nzuri as I lost over 10lbs myself here and now I know what it feels like to do this, the hard work, and motivation, but it can be fun like it is here”.
“Learning about PACE and motivation, I know I can make a real difference. I understand the importance of activity in a playful way now, and how to really get to the inner reasons of why a child will want to take part in exercise, sport or a game. It has changed the way I think of how to make the day to day life of the kids’ fun and entertaining”.
“Learning about the importance of nutrition and how to bring together this with activity, not only made me feel healthy but also gave me confidence. I know what I’m putting in my body is going to benefit me and with that, makes me feel good about myself and my new lifestyle”.
In particular, each staff member went through an upskilling of understanding the key of health and nutrition linked with physical movement through Hayley our LifeStyle Chef. Hayley has acquired over 20 years’ experience as a retreat chef. She has been in the industry with 12 years of this refining practice and bringing together yoga with the art of cooking. Staff have acquired knowledge to provide children with the knowledge to prepare nutrition that has depth and sensitivity, which allows them nourishment and a healthy lifestyle. Hayley’s combination of yoga and food brings together a balance and harmony, with integration on all levels for a lifestyle with nutrition that is calm, fluid and centred.
Food Preparation at Zest Training
Clinical Training at Zest Camp
Physical Training at Zest Camp
Our Narrowboat
Our Woodland Forest in Wales
LIsa Gittens – Manager at Nzuri House