News

One of our local children and young people has composed some poetry that we want to share. Megan, who is 14, is currently using the services at Galaxy House and wrote these poems during her stay there.

As part of the Avoiding Admissions project, Lancashire Mind has been working closely with local families to develop a new support package. The families involved have supported their child through mental health crisis and wanted to help other families by sharing their experience.

A new initiative led by Healthier Lancashire and South Cumbria is giving community groups the opportunity to apply for funding between £500 and £5000 to support projects designed to prevent suicide and reduce self-harm, which are key priorities of the NHS Long Term Plan, which was published earlier this month.

Education professionals are invited to the Schools Mental health event which is on 3 April 2019. The event is a great chance for education professionals ranging from senior leadership teams to pastoral leads and inclusion managers, to learn more about the Transformation Programme happening across Lancashire and South Cumbria

Our posts over the last week reached 1.6K people with 1.1K alone seeing our post about the first day of Children’s Mental Health Week. Our posts during the beginning of February were engaged with 190 times which was up by 123 from the previous week. As we continue to grow our social media presence, we look forward to seeing more people engage with us!

As part of your day to day jobs or the networks you are involved with, you will no doubt come into contact with many children and young people. We are looking for some of them to be stars in our videos!

In addition to the face to face engagement we have already completed, we have a survey running to help us gather information about what different audiences would like to see on our website.

So far, we have attended several CYP group meetings and have others penned in for the coming weeks across Lancashire and South Cumbria. We visited Headstart at Blackpool Town Hall and Urpotential at their base on Central Drive in Blackpool but sadly had to postpone an event in Blackburn that we couldn’t attend due to the snow.

Improving mental health support for our Children, Young People, continues to be a top priority for the County Council, the North Cumbria and Morecambe Bay Clinical Commissioning Groups and other stakeholders across Cumbria. Cumbria Children and Young People's Resilience, Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Transformation Plan sets out the key priorities and also the action plan to improve services and outcomes for children, young people and their families across Cumbria.

Time to Change is a growing movement to raise awareness of several issues facing people who have a mental health condition. They are looking to improve attitudes and behaviours around the stigma associated with mental health. The reality is that mental health can affect anyone. Statistically, one in four of us will fight a mental health problem in any given year. Having conversations about mental health helps break down stereotypes, improve relationships, aid recovery and take the stigma out of something that affects us all. There are lots of different ways to have a conversation about mental health. And you don’t have to be an expert to talk.

Christmas is a wonderful time, but it can be quite stressful for us still. Mind have created a small article with some information around work and home life this Christmas. It is aimed at minimising stress, relaxing at home and going into the New Year replenished and re-energised!