The success of this partnership event in its aim to connect people and services from across a range of public sector and VCFSE organisations and our two counties, was evident from the audible and visual buzz in the room created by the chatter of over 70 people and the activity around the stands with stall holders sharing leaflets and information.
You know your objective has been achieved when someone who walks in saying “Well, I am here, but I’m not sure who I can connect with in this room” later walks up to you as you’re speaking to a colleague and says, “Excuse me I really need to speak to this person”.
The morning opened with an activity designed to encourage the people attending take action to look after their own mental health, share ideas and pick up new ideas on self-care from the action for happiness calendar.
Amanda Wright, manager of the Wellbeing and Recovery College set the scene for the event by emphasising why the mental Health Foundation chose action as this year’s theme for mental health Awareness Week:
“Whilst awareness is vital, real change comes when we take action to too. Together we’ve come a long way on mental health, but we can’t risk going backwards. There’s still much we can do to prevent people becoming unwell in the first place….take action for yourself, for someone else for all of us.”
Amanda also outlined how important it is for each of us delivering services that we think about how we use the term prevention, but we all have a role to play whether we are
- preventing people from dying too early by promoting the suicide prevention Orange Button scheme;
- preventing crises from happening, veterans support services, or people getting needlessly stuck in hospital, for example the work of the Early Intervention team and Carers and Communities;
- Preventing long term conditions from getting worse, demonstrated by the work of community organisations such as Simply Limitless; or
- prevention at the grassroots level helping to stop people from becoming unwell in the first place, for example Young Adult Learners, Young Solutions and Active Herefordshire and Worcestershire; and Community First’s UP: Upstream Prevention programme.
Feedback from attendees also tells us that another successful feature of the event was the range of organisations represented. This started from maternal mental health covering all ages, including that of young people, veterans’ and men’s mental health. The link between physical health and walking and mental health was emphasised by the closing activity of a riverside walk. With information about local services set up to support those with recently recognised mental health conditions such as hoarding and different actions that can support good mental and emotional health such as co counselling adding to the mix. Attendees also heard from organisations that are supporting others to promote health and well-being activities including those which prevent poor health and illness.
Lucy chick senior public health practitioner from Worcestershire County Council summed up the event with comments that were echoed in the feedback about the value of learning more about what services are available across both Worcestershire and Herefordshire to support people and the importance staying connected.