Before Tokyo, there was the LYPFT Ward Olympics: keeping spirits up in a pandemic

The third in a series of stories we’ll be sharing to look back at the achievements of our staff and teams during the Covid 19 pandemic.

For many of us, the past year will have been one of the most challenging we’ve faced in our lifetimes. Both our personal and professional lives have been turned upside down and we’ve had to deal with a huge amount of change, loss, and uncertainty.

But time and time again, our people have responded with resilience, flexibility and bravery, rising to many different demands and challenges.

As restrictions ease and we look forward to brighter days ahead, we want to share the incredible efforts of our teams, services, and staff, who have either stepped out of their comfort zones to keep things going, or continued to do their day job in much harder circumstances, to enable us to keep being there for those who need us most.

Throughout a summer of celebration, we intend to shine a light on their ongoing successes, and the big and little things they’ve done, and continue to do, to make life a bit easier for service users and colleagues. 

This doesn’t mean we’ll forget the challenges we’ve faced or those we’ve lost.

But it’s also a reminder of what we can continue to achieve, together.


While all eyes may be on Tokyo today as the 2020 Olympics are finally set to formally open, we’re taking a look back at one set of games that did go ahead last year.

The LYPFT Ward Olympics were created by our Occupational Therapists at the Newsam Centre to help tackle the psychological impact of the pandemic, lockdown, and increased social isolation.

They ran for four weeks in April and May 2020, with staff and service users from wards across the Trust competing in daily activities.

Traditional sports were shunned in favour of the less conventional keepy-uppies, Origami and a ‘Jigsaw Sprint’, while continuing to follow social distancing and infection control guidelines. Competition was fierce and a medal table that was updated throughout the tournament kept our competitors on their toes.

Each ward chose a country to represent and at the end of the tournament Team GB (Westerdale Ward at Clifton House in York) were announced as the overall winners at a virtual closing ceremony. The silver spot went to Scotland (Bluebell Ward at Clifton) and the Bronze to Barbados (Ward 6 at the Newsam Centre).

Vicky Search, an Occupational Therapist from our Low Secure Forensic inpatient ward at the Newsam Centre, said: “In what would have been an Olympic year, we developed the games as a way of supporting our service users to take part in meaningful activity, and encourage a sense of togetherness between wards in these challenging times.

“Having our services come together to compete against one another also gave us the opportunity to connect virtually with each other, which has been crucial in combating the increased social isolation our service users faced due to lockdown restrictions. We wanted to bring a sense of fun and community spirit for both our service users and our staff teams.”

One of our service user participants added: “The activities have helped us because it’s keeping us occupied. It’s brought the lads together and it’s been really fun to do.”

Well done to all involved!