Community Gateway and the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences launch first Pain Awareness Day in Grangetown

Community Gateway were excited to work with Richard Day and Graeme Paul Taylor from the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences to launch the first Pain Awareness Day at Grange Pavilion on Friday 14 September.

The day, which was linked to international pain awareness month, was a drop-in event allowing local residents to come and talk to professional staff and Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy students about persistent pain and learn about resources to help manage pain.

Sessions during the day included: ‘What is pain?’ Myth busting, ‘Love activity/Hate exercise?’ session and an Art for fun workshop. The day was also an opportunity for local residents to share ideas on what would help them to manage their pain at a local level.

Richard Day from the College of Biomedical and Life Sciences said:

"The Pain Awareness Day was a very enjoyable event. It enabled staff and students from the School of Healthcare Studies and the School of Medicine to engage with members of the community with the complex issues surrounding and affecting living with persistent pain. Even though rain may have kept a few people away we did receive a number of community attendees who brought their own experience and thoughts with them and provided great insights and ideas into how the University could work more closely with different communities to support individuals”

Grangetown residents came along to share their personal experiences and offered advice and resources to one another. With recent governmental directives aiming to create an emphasis on supporting people to manage their own health and wellbeing, events based within the community, sharing online resources and signposting the support already there as well as finding out what people feel the community needs goes a way to addressing these future directions.

Community members that were in attendance commented that they really enjoyed the day, with the art workshop generating the most enjoyment and interest from both community members and students who enjoyed working together.

Richard said:

“Running the day for the first time has been an invaluable opportunity for the organising team to learn so much more in relation to community engagement. From making cups of tea to decorating the room and sharing and talking with members’ of the community the benefit of getting out into the community and truly engaging was clearly worthwhile. As staff members organising the event, we have also learnt loads, and would love to share our experience with other staff and aim to work to create future opportunities to bring together communities and students from healthcare programmes to run other days and events.”

Graeme Paul-Taylor, also from the College, added:

“The opportunity to build on the day and develop a longer lasting relationship with the communities of Grangetown is really exciting. We are planning to work closely with students in relation to future opportunities for community engagement”

The Community Gateway team looks forward to working with Richard and Graeme in the future on other events and hope to provide more opportunities for students to enhance their student experience by working more closely with their community.