Mental Health Awareness Week is an annual campaign which aims to get people talking about their mental health and reduce the stigma around mental illness.
Research from Time to Change found that 9 out 10 people have faced stigma due to mental illness, and this stigma can have a negative impact on recovery time.
For 2020, the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness.
Find Services Near You
The Essex Map is a community asset map which aims to help people to find the groups, services, and activities which work to benefit the community. The website can be used to find guidance and counselling for a variety of mental illnesses, and there are over 130 listings dedicated to emotional and mental health.
Mind in West Essex have built a dedicated online learning platform, designed to help you understand and manage the symptoms of common mental illnesses.
The Mind in West Essex Academy includes a free course on Intro to Anxiety, as well as courses for parents and carers of both young children and teenagers to support their emotional wellbeing.
More courses will be added in the coming weeks, and are due to include topics on working from home, depression, sleep, and stress.
In response to the coronavirus outbreak, Mind in West Essex have adapted the services they offer and have created support groups using Zoom.
Sessions are available for stress/anxiety and bereavement, and will consist of a 1-hour session per week for 6 weeks, facilitated by 2 members of Mind in West Essex staff.
Stress/Anxiety Groups:
Tuesdays 10:30-11:30
Thursdays 10:30-11:30
Bereavement Group:
Thursdays 11:00 -12:00
Spaces for these groups are limited. For more information, and to book your place, please call 01371 876641 or email [email protected]
Accessible Counselling
To help people who are self-isolating and want to talk to someone about their mental health, Mind in West Essex have adapted their counselling sessions so they can be accessed via telephone or video call.
For people with a hearing loss, the systems have been tested to work with a variety of speech-to-text applications including Phonak’s myCall-to-Text phone transcription app.
For those who don’t want to have a formal conversation around their mental health, but are feeling isolated or lonely, Essex Befriends offer a free befriending service facilitated by volunteers.
During the coronavirus outbreak face-to-face befriending has been temporarily stopped, however telephone and email befriending is still available.
Essex Befriends is a cooperative project from Action for Family Carers, Mind in West Essex, Independent Age and Hamelin Trust.
We’ve launched this brilliant course called Essex Resilience* to help everyone try and cope with the added pressure and stress that the Coronavirus outbreak has brought – it will also help you identify some of the symptoms and behaviours that could mean you are being affected in this way.
Using a mixture of Facebook group units and videos that have been developed in conjunction with the Team GB Olympic Rower Jonny Searle MBE, you will also learn how to take small but important steps that could improve your physical health and mental wellbeing, even when you’re juggling working or studying from home and looking after children. You may just be struggling with the ‘new normal,’ and this completely FREE course is backed up with a Facebook group where people can connect, support each other, and exchange ideas.
Visit j.mp/ECAresilience to get started. Everything you need is inside the Facebook group.
*We don’t care if you’re not from Essex – anyone can benefit from it
If you’ve ever tried to recruit volunteers, you’ll be aware that the “feel good factor” often isn’t enough to get as many volunteer applications as you might need.
A number of organisations across Essex are finding that “payment in time” via projects such as Time Credits or Time Bank are a great way to encourage new volunteers to sign up.
What Is It?
With “payment in time” projects reward volunteers by giving them vouchers for each hour they volunteer. These vouchers can then be used for a variety of activities across the county.
How Does It Work?
As an organisation, you register with projects such as Time Credits or Time Bank and then record the number of hours each of your volunteers complete in a given time period (a month, for example).
Your in-house facilitator will then distribute the vouchers to the volunteers, who can spend them directly with the activity of their choice.
What’s the Difference Between Time Credits and Time Bank?
In short, not a lot. Both programs work in a very similar way, but may have different rewards available to volunteers. It’s best to have a look and see what rewards are available in your area before you make your choice.
You may find that some of the rewards are currently unavailable, but volunteers are able to save up their vouchers to spend later or use for an online activity.
On Wednesday 20 May, Media Trust will be running a free webinar in partnership with Twitter called Twitter 101. This session will primarily focus on organic content use (i.e. regular posts on Twitter that you don’t pay for), and will also include time for Q&A.
Media Trust have partnered with Facebook Blueprint to bring you an eLearning Pathway covering the fundamentals of advertising with Facebook and Instagram.
Julie Fosh was appointed the 840th High Sheriff of Essex in April.
She has been unable to undertake any visits to voluntary groups as yet, but is contacting groups each week by telephone to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on their work and to give support and encouragement.
With more of us working remotely than ever before, it is so important that our disabled colleagues are not left out and locked out by inaccessible communications.
Fortunately, the digital platforms and technology we use for work are at their most accessible ever, and are only being developed further as the weeks under lockdown go by.
COVID-19 has highlighted the digital communications skills, resource and budget gaps across the charity sector, and accelerated innovations and different ways of delivering services and engaging audiences.
Findings from our recent COVID-19 Comms Support Survey in partnership with CharityComms found that 97% of respondents said they would benefit from access to volunteer communications support.
Media Trust has seen a 148% increase in media and communications professionals signing up to Media Trust’s Volunteer Platform, to share their skills with charities at this time. Volunteers are offering support in social media and digital marketing, communications strategy and planning and much more.
Charities of any size or location in the UK can utilise our Volunteer Platform to connect with professionals from across the media and creative industry, who want to share their skills and expertise with you. Sign up today and let our volunteers know how they can help.
Carl Roberts, Chairman of Billericay Dementia Action Alliance, will be hosting a Dementia Friends livestream information session on Wednesday 20th May from 3pm.
During this friendly and interactive Session you will increase your understanding of dementia, and think about the small things that you can do to make a difference to people affected by dementia in your community.
The Charities Aid Foundation are holding a free webinar on how to help your charity survive and recover from the coronavirus outbreak. The webinar takes place on Thursday 14th May from 11am to 11.45am.
This live webinar will kick-off with the latest insight from CAF’s Research Team, as you discover what the polling says about charities and donors during the crisis. This will shape the discussion as we present ways to manage your charity during COVID-19:
To help reduce administrative burdens on charities, if a charity event is cancelled due to coronavirus (COVID-19), HMRC will now accept that where a person due a refund decides to donate this to a charity, the requirements of S416 ITA07 are met.
