Are you anxious about being able to give your kids a toy this Christmas?

Get in touch! 

Last year our Customer service team decided to launch a Christmas toy appeal to help families who were struggling financially and live in Taff homes. The team delivered over 200 presents and are now accepting requests for this year’s Wish Appeal. Please get in touch if you would like to receive a gift for your children this year. 

We’ve received lots of donations from our team, local businesses and community members for children of all ages and genders and will do our best to meet your family needs. 

We recognise that not all families celebrate Christmas and have changed the name of our toy appeal from ‘A Christmas wish’ to ‘A Little Wish’ to reflect this. We hope to launch a second appeal in 2022 for Eid and welcome you to get in touch ahead of this appeal.

Do you want to manage your Taff tenancy on the go? Then My Taff, our mobile app for Apple and Android devices, is perfect for you!

On MyTaff you can:

• Check your rent balance, statements and set up a direct debit • Request repairs

• Notify us of any anti-social behaviour

• Contact us

• Update your contact details

• And so much more…

To register, we’ll need you to provide some basic details along with your tenancy reference number – you can find this on your rent statements.

Download on Android

Download on Apple

Following your feedback, changes have recently been made to the App that makes it even easier for you to pay your rent.

We’re looking to embrace the look of technology within our services. We’re calling this the ‘Drive to Digital’. 

Do you have an idea, or something you’d like to see is try? Or concerns and questions about digital services at Taff? 

Get in touch using the contact form on our website & let our head of Digital know! 

Staff at Welsh charity and youth organisation Urdd Gobaith Cymru are preparing to welcome the arrival of the first Afghan families seeking refuge in Wales. The Urdd is working closely with the Welsh Government and partner organisations to help Afghan families who have escaped the conflict. Taff is proud to be a partner of choice in this partnership.

The organisation will look after the refugees by providing meals, accommodation with ‘en suite’ facilities and play a vital role in assisting with resettlement and planning a range of sport, arts, and educational activities to engage, support and help the families settle.

The Welsh youth movement has a proud history of humanitarian work through its annual peace and goodwill message and supports charities such as Christian Aid, Save the Children and United Purpose. Examples include fundraising to provide ambulances for liberated communities in Poland following the Second World War; helping survivors of the Aberfan disaster; supporting young victims of the Chernobyl disaster; ensuring new water wells in Sudan; arranging lorries of clothes and goods to those in need in Bosnia.

In recent years, Urdd staff and members have worked at a refugee camp in Slovenia, an orphanage in Poland and have held sports activities with hundreds of young girls in Kenya. In 2019, its residential centre in Llangrannog arranged an event for 200 Syrian refugees living locally to come together and share their experiences.

The Urdd has been working closely with the Welsh Government, Home Office, Local Authorities, Cytûn and organisations in the refugee sector in Wales to provide a strategic response to the situation in Afghanistan.

Siân Lewis, Chief Executive of Urdd Gobaith Cymru says: “This has been a huge team Wales effort across all sectors, and we are grateful to our partners for enabling us to open our doors as a refuge to families seeking shelter and safety.

“We are proud to help the people of Afghanistan and continue to share with our members the importance of loyalty to country and culture but also to humanity and higher good. As a national youth organisation, offering support, friendship and a helping hand to the Afghan community in their time of need is at the core of our values.”

Taff Housing Association is the first housing association in Wales to qualify to use the RACE (Reporting Action Composition Education) Equality Code quality mark.

To qualify to display the mark, Taff had to demonstrate it encouraged race equality in its own organisation by going through a rigorous assessment and drawing up an action plan for it to follow.

Chief Executive Helen White said that ‘working through the assessment process has helped us identify the actions we need to take to create transformational, sustainable and lasting change in how we deal with racial inequality in the boardroom and senior leadership team.’

The Race Equality Code draws learning and recommendations outlined in reports, charters, and pledges, with the aim of supporting organisations that are actively tackling diversity and inclusion challenges. It was launched in October last year as part of Black History Month 2020 by Dr Karl George MBE and a national steering group of experts in governance and racial inequalities.

TPAS Project

We need to make sure that we are continually improving tenant participation and how we listen to, and act upon, advice and views from our tenants to ensure we are providing great services to everyone. Working with TPAS Cymru, we are just embarking on a full review of our tenant engagement strategy that will ask the question, how can we better get tenants involved in helping us shape our services? Who are we not reaching, and why? Tenant engagement is a key deliverable for Housing Associations from Welsh Government so it’s important we get it right. The project will involve views from everyone across the business, our tenants and wider communities.

Who are TPAS?

TPAS are a small Wales-wide organisation that is part-funded by Welsh Government. Their primary focus is to support landlords in helping to create great places to live through engagement and having a voice.

What will be happening?

We don’t quite know where the project will take us but it is

an exciting partnership and one that we are confident will help us become a more inclusive, accessible and transparent organisation.

The Reflections Panel 

“We have just changed the name of the Scrutiny panel to the Reflections Panel as we believe that looking back and reflecting on services and making suggestions for improvement is a much more positive approach. The word “Scrutiny” conjures up scary pictures of people with magnifying glasses finding fault with everything just for the fun of it. I think it is great that Taff asks us to examine the services they deliver. I was only too happy to join and give feedback. The panel has actually won prizes for their scrutiny results and change has happened where possible.”

The Interview Panel 

“I joined the panel because I felt it was only right that tenants have a say about who delivers services to us. I have enjoyed taking part and learned a lot. One candidate commented how comfortable he felt having a Person of Colour on the panel and I think the diversity of the panel is a credit to Taff.”

The Allotment Group

“Well if I hadn’t I honestly don’t know where I would be today. I was living alone, never went out socially and feeling depressed. Then, someone took me to the allotment and it changed my life. I am now there almost every day come rain or shine. I have made some great friends and am growing my own produce”

Why Get Involved?

So you see the reasons are varied but equally rewarding. As for Taff, we get to hear first hand from tenants and residents who have got involved how we are doing in regard to our services to you. From this information, we know where we have to improve, make changes or keep things as they are for the time being. It’s all about you! And that’s how we like it.

If you would like to be a part of any of Taff’s groups please get in touch with our community investment team.

There are lots of opportunities for you to influence our services in 2022. 

Taff’s Reflections Panel and BME Group will next meet up in January 2022.  Dates are yet to be confirmed but if you would like to know more about how to get involved, don’t hesitate to get in touch.  Everyone’s welcome.

Most meetings are done digitally via zoom so you won’t even have to leave the comfort of your home to get your points across to Taff ! The dates of all meetings will be posted on our social media in advance (@taffhousing on Facebook and Twitter) 

Contact Annette.Kerr@taffhousing.co.uk for more information. 

Look out for regular pulse surveys.

These will be live on our social channels and website and will also be text to you. 

We’ll make sure these are also avaliable in other languages, in largeprint or offline too. Just get in touch ! 

Future Taff Talks Editions 

Something you’d like to see? Or is there something that’s not quite right? 

Let our Comms Officer know 

Holly@taffhousing.co.uk

View Our Corporate Plan

“At Ty Enfys the resident’s well-being underpins everything we do. We work as a team to promote well-being, ensuring that our residents feel safe, happy, comfortable, and more importantly valued.  Building positive relationships with residents gains their trust which is key to ensuring individuals are safeguarded and receive the care and support they need and request. 

At the start of the pandemic, we welcomed new residents to Ty Enfys. Staff worked together preparing rooms, helping residents move in and settle and giving them a sense of belonging. When lockdown was announced, residents were not able to have visitors at the project, all activities, supported cooking and organized outings had to stop and rules had to be followed, protecting the health of everyone. Residents shared their experiences, feelings and how they’ve adapted to living together. Resident’s recall appreciating the quiet environment they were living in, sharing that lock-down had led them to form bubbles with each other and support each other.  Daily routines such as mealtimes, a daily walk or just chatting together helped to build their confidence, forming good, continued friendships. 

One of our long-term residents at Ty Enfys, who will soon move on to her new home, has described how much confidence she has gained since moving into the project, and that she is now ready to move on, praising staff for the support she’d received and that during isolation staff always checked in on her, making sure she was ok.  She also shared how she had formed positive friendships at the project and reflected on her time since moving into the project, starting when she was pregnant, to now, acknowledging that her toddler had taken his first steps here at Ty Enfys.  

With lockdown rules starting to ease, staff have been able to restart crucial workshops which help to promote positive relationships and build important life skills. Residents have been coming together to participate in cooking sessions, cooking meals such as a roast dinner, lasagna and spaghetti bolognese. Staff also recently organized a pamper night for residents, where they got to relax and enjoy a social evening with face masks and friends. 

Whilst the pandemic has been hard, it has helped to strengthen bonds between our residents, who have expressed how much they had missed supported activities and hope that these  will now continue.”

– Deborah, Senior Project Officer at Ty Enfys. 

In 2022 a new Pathway to Board training programme will launch to support ethnically diverse candidates in gaining the knowledge and experience to prepare them to be ‘Board ready’. The partnership between Taff Housing, CCHA, Cadwyn and Linc Cymru, hopes to help reduce the underrepresentation of diverse communities within Board Rooms in Wales.

If you are interested in learning more please get in touch with Project Lead Abdi by email

AbdiS@taffhousing.co.uk