Practical ideas to help with staying physically and mentally well during the winter months

Heating your home and energy saving

Finance and bill support

Money Makeover

Eating well

Staying healthy

Heating your home and energy saving

Temperatures in the early months of the year drop and our homes can suddenly feel a lot colder. This combined with shorter days and being at home more due to the pandemic restrictions, we are using more electricity and gas than usual. This can mean our bills rising considerably. Heating your home is important to keeping physically well but there are ways that may help keep costs down.

• Check to make sure you aren’t paying more than you should for your electricity and gas. There are plenty of websites to help you to do a comparison and switch to a cheaper tariff or provider. Ofgem have some information about how to do this.
• The Energy Saving Trust has lots of information about how you can save energy and keep your home warm. Here’s a link to their seven top tips.
• The Money Advice Service also has information and advice on how to save money on your energy.
• If you are struggling to pay your gas and electricity bill, then speaking to your provider in the first instance may help to resolve the situation. The Warm Homes Healthy People project offers free advice and access to free energy saving measures for your home.
• Citizens Advice also has lots of information

Finance and bill support

If you’re finding bills hard to juggle or have debt you need to tackle, support and advice is available to work towards making your finances better.

Here are some websites that can provide debt advice, ways to help and contacts to sort financial problems.

• The Money Advice Service has help and information
• Step change provide free confidential debt advice
• Citizens Advice can help with debts and money advice

 

Give yourself a Money Makeover

• Have a look and see if you could make savings on your gas and electric, internet, insurance, mobile phone and credit cards. If you are out of contract you could be paying a lot more than you need to be. Doing a bit of ‘life admin’ could help you save money. These pages from the Money Saving Expert could help you with this.
• Make a budget if you don’t already - Work out what you have coming in and going out and see if there are any areas where you can make savings. There are budget planning tools available that can help you do this. Try out the Budget Planner from the Money Saving Expert.
• If the money saved isn’t needed to repay debt or for day to day living expenses, you could save it for something to look forward to in the future. As having a treat to look forward to can boost your mood.

Staying healthy

There’s lots of things we can do to stay healthy both physically and mentally and boost our mood day to day, like eating well and doing regular exercise.

There are also lots of other little things that you could try to give yourself a bit of self-care to look after yourself. You will find some suggestions on our self-care page.

Eating well

Eating well can help our boost mood and brings benefits for our long term health. Cooking may not be for everyone but healthy meals are achievable.

• The Better Health Campaign from the NHS has tips for eating well for less as well as an Easy Meals app (from Google Play or from Apple App Store)
• Life can be busy, making it difficult to all eat together, batch cooking and freezing individual portions can help make life a bit easier whilst not wasting food. Social media groups and communities can be a great resource for finding recipes to try.
• The Change4Life campaign aims give parents support and tools to need to make healthier choices for their families.

NHS Still Here to Help

The usual NHS services are very much open and available. If you feel unwell or suspect something may be wrong, then please speak to your GP at your local surgery. At the moment you will probably be offered a phone consultation before an appointment at your surgery but doctors are still available and will see you if necessary.

Ignoring or not addressing a concern you may have can lead to worry which can make you feel in low mood as well as not getting you the care you may need.

If you feel unwell at a time when your local surgery is closed, then the 111 phone service will assess you and will arrange for you to see someone if necessary.

Pharmacies can help with a wide range of minor ailments and illnesses and also offer advice. They are happy to speak to you and point you in the right direction of the care you need whether it is an over the counter medicine, sorting a prescription you may have or advising that you see your doctor.

If you are finding things hard you are not alone and there is help available. Please reach out and speak to someone.

If your life or someone else’s life is at immediate risk, contact 999

If you need to speak to someone due to a mental health crisis or experiencing thoughts of suicide help and advice is available here.