Why This Work Matters
Building resilient, connected communities through local, dignity-led support, practical action, and pathways to long term stability
Listening to Our Communities, Responding with Care
Across Llanelli and Carmarthenshire, many individuals and families are facing increasing pressure around the cost of essentials such as food, heating, housing, and everyday living. But the challenge is wider than material need alone — it also includes low income, isolation, reduced wellbeing, and the difficulty of navigating complex support systems that can feel overwhelming.
These pressures affect not only individuals, but households and whole communities. That is why the response must be more than short term relief. It must also strengthen long term stability, connection, and resilience.
At Myrtle House, our work has grown out of listening to our community and responding in practical, relational, and place based ways.
Why this Work Matters
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Llanelli and the wider Carmarthenshire area experience significant social and economic pressures that affect health, wellbeing, and long term security. National measures such as the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation show a strong concentration of disadvantage within parts of the Llanelli area, highlighting the importance of sustained, locally rooted support and resilience building approaches.
Census findings show that many households locally experience deprivation across areas such as income, employment, education, and living conditions — factors that influence opportunity and stability over time.
Across Carmarthenshire, poverty levels sit above the Welsh average, with many households experiencing severe financial strain. Without early, joined up support, this increases the risk of repeat crisis and long term inequality.
National income benchmarks also show a growing gap between the cost of basic essentials and available income through benefits, creating ongoing shortfalls for many households and increasing reliance on emergency food support — which should be a last resort, not a long-term solution.
Sources include Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, Census data, and Joseph Rowntree Foundation income standards.
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Emergency support plays a vital role in protecting people at their most vulnerable moments. But experience and national learning both show that crisis response alone cannot create lasting change.
People need timely help when things go wrong — and they also need practical guidance, skills, relationships, and opportunities that help prevent repeat crisis. Food support is essential when needed, but long term resilience grows through joined up, ongoing, community based support.
Our work is designed to respond in the moment and strengthen stability for the future.
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We believe resilience is built locally — through trusted places, strong relationships, and accessible support. A place based approach means people can find multiple forms of help in one connected community setting rather than being passed from service to service.
At Myrtle House, food support, money guidance, wellbeing activities, skills development, creative programmes, and community connection are designed to work together. This makes support more human, more accessible, and more effective over time.
By bringing services and relationships together, we help reduce barriers, strengthen trust, and support whole person wellbeing.
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Our projects are shaped by listening to the people we serve. Community insight and lived experience help guide how support is designed and delivered.
People consistently tell us they want more than emergency help — they want dignity, connection, practical tools, and opportunities to move forward. We continue to learn from these voices so our work remains grounded, responsive, and relevant.
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Our aim is not to create reliance, but to create pathways — pathways to stability, confidence, participation, and opportunity.
Alongside immediate help where needed, we focus on strengthening confidence, practical capacity, and community connection so that fewer people face repeated crisis. This includes money support,skills workshops, community meals, wellbeing activity, volunteering opportunities, and resilience-building programmes.
When people are supported with dignity and practical tools, long term change becomes more possible.
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Resilient communities are built through partnership, trust, and shared effort. No single organisation can do this work alone.
We continue to work with local partners, volunteers, lived-experience contributors, and community members to strengthen the foundations of resilience across our area — so that support is available, dignity is protected, and hope grows.
Together, we are working toward a future where people and communities are not only supported in hardship, but strengthened for the long term.
Our Role
Through our Community Life Hubs, skills based workshops, pay-what-you-can community meals, and joined up money and wellbeing support, Myrtle House provides place based, wraparound help that supports people in the moment while strengthening longer term stability. Our focus is not only on responding to crisis, but on helping reduce repeat need by building confidence, practical capacity, and community connection. Early reductions in emergency food parcel use suggest that this joined-up approach is helping more people move toward greater resilience.
This place based model brings multiple forms of support together in trusted local settings, making help easier to access, more relational, and more effective over time. Together, these connected approaches are helping build a more resilient community — strengthening people, households, and local support networks for the future.
We take a whole community approach, recognising that financial pressure, wellbeing, skills, family stability, and social connection are closely linked. Alongside practical support, we offer opportunities for learning, participation, and confidence building so people can address underlying pressures as well as immediate needs. This includes early years childcare provision through our nursery, which supports child development, enables parents to work or train, and strengthens family stability as part of long term community resilience.
Our support is open to anyone facing financial or personal pressure — whether linked to income changes, family circumstances, health, or wider life challenges. We work in partnership with trusted organisations, including Community Money Advice through CMA Connect – Myrtle House, to provide specialist money guidance and practical financial support. Through our Pathways Project, we create accessible routes into skills development, volunteering, and community participation, helping people grow independence, confidence, and long-term security.
No one in Llanelli should have to live without life’s essentials. Working alongside our partners and community, we are building pathways that support people through hardship while strengthening long term stability and resilience.