World Mental Health Day 2022: Tameside Lakes Challenge – supported by the National Lottery

To mark World Mental Health Day 2022 on 10 October, we’re sharing stories from across our services where local fundraising and donations is supporting our work to make recovery reality.

Our local services are at the heart of everything we do in Making Recovery Reality.

We know our staff, people we’ve supported, people with lived experience of mental ill health and businesses often want to give something back to the charity and the service that supported them. As one of the largest mental health charities in England, we’re grateful for anyone who donates or raises money for Richmond Fellowship. But where do your donations to the services we run go?

Our services will often organise fundraising activities themselves, but often, we receive donations and grants from organisations.

For example, a group of individuals from Richmond Fellowship’s Tameside Supported Housing service enjoyed a fantastic 5-day outdoor challenge holiday in the Lake District, thanks to a grant provided by the National Lottery.

People using the service had the chance to participate in an array of different challenges including caving, scrambling, zip-wiring as well as piloting a boat.

After exploring the outdoors, the group enjoyed cooking together and showing off their talent in an impromptu song and dance.

They ended each day relaxing by Lake Windermere and a wonderful starlit sky.

All those who attended received support from the service in Tameside to manage their own mental ill health.

Garry, a person who went on the experience, said:

“It was great to be in a team encouraging each other and relying on each other. It was hard pushing myself but very worthwhile. I know I can do more now.”

Inspired?

Our fundraising portal, managed by Enthuse, makes fundraising and donating to Richmond Fellowship and our services easy, meaning you can enjoy your fundraising without having to worry.

To find out more information about fundraising for our services click here or to visit our portal to get fundraising, click here.

Thank you for your support.

Fundraising and donating to Richmond Fellowship is easy!

This World Mental Health Day we’ve been sharing stories from around our services where grassroots fundraising and donations support our mission of Making Mental Health Recovery a Reality and priority.

As one of the leading mental health charities in England, we are grateful to everyone who fundraises for us, both past and present, and your donations really help our work with people we support both locally and regionally.

For example:

A £30 donation can help towards buying art materials for a wellbeing activity

A £200 donation can support a service to buy flowers, bulbs, or other gardening materials to help people we support update a communal garden area

A £1,000 donation can help towards paying for a holiday or adventure activity for the people we support

How can you fundraise for us?

We’ve made fundraising and donating to Richmond Fellowship as easy as possible, so you can fully enjoy the experience of raising money for us.

Our online fundraising and donations portal, managed by Enthuse, is our dedicated site for setting up your own fundraising page for raising money, or giving a simple donation to support our work.

You can share your fundraising page on social media, allowing people to donate to your activity or challenge – ensuring it reaches as bigger audience as possible.

Our Communications and Marketing Team would love to hear about your fundraising experiences so do opt into our email request to contact you when you sign up, if you wish.

Our portal also allows you to make a one off donation, or you can set up a direct debit to allow you to give monthly, with the ability for you can cancel the direct debit at any time. There’s also an option to state which service you’d like your donation to go to.

Gift Aid

Gift Aid can increase the value of your donation at no extra cost to you. Tick the Gift Aid declaration box when making your donation online.

The Government will then contribute an extra 25% on top of your donation. This means for every £1 you donate, we receive £1.25.

What can I do to fundraise?

Our Communications and Marketing Team have compiled some ideas of how you can fundraise for us and what’s worked well for previous fundraisers!

> Signing up for a local charity run, such as a Marathon or 5K
> Organising a sponsored walk with friends and family
> Hosting a bake sale at a community event
> Organising afternoon tea with a competition
> A charity quiz night
> Sponsored to give up a habit for a month – Sober October and No Shave November
> Sweepstake – guess the number in the sweet jar. Everyone that comes along gets to have a go and pay to enter
> Sponsored step count – as a team be sponsored to reach a certain number of steps in a month
> A Halloween themed event – pay £2 to enter. You might already be hosting a Halloween event this year, why not try to raise some money too? You could host a quiz? Everyone can come along dressed in their best Halloween costume!

Fundraising success stories!

Here are some examples of how your fundraising has helped our services:

> Tameside Lakes Challenge – supported by the National Lottery
> Sudbury Supported Housing service in Suffolk – fundraising at the Sudbury Fun Run
> Castle Young People Supported Housing service in Cambridge – fundraising at the Northstowe Running Festival

To fundraise or donate to Richmond Fellowship, click here.

World Mental Health Day 2022: Sudbury Supported Housing service – fundraising at the Sudbury Fun Run

To mark World Mental Health Day 2022, we’re joining in the conversation around making mental health a global priority.

Richmond Fellowship’s local services are vital in reaching that aim. For over 60 years our services have embedded themselves in communities across England, ensuring mental health support is available to everyone. From Tameside to Bristol, Chichester to Cumbria, our services aren’t just here today – they’re here for you across the year.

Fundraising and donations helps us to Work Together to raise awareness of mental health, and also to help raise funds for our services to provide even more support.

For example, Richmond Fellowship’s Sudbury Supported Housing service has been actively involved in fundraising within the Suffolk town for many years, this includes at the annual Sudbury Fun Run and Sponsored Walk.

Over the years, staff, people we support and volunteers have come together and taken part in the annual event.

In 2016, the service was selected as one of the beneficiaries on the Fun Run and sponsored walk, which meant a cut of all entry fees went to the service as well as people fundraising individually.

In total, £2,000 was raised and was used to provide art activities, film nights, an outing to the coast and workshops for people using the service.

Staff, along with people we support also used some of the money to transform the communal garden at the rear of the Queens Road building. The garden was entered into Sudbury Town Council’s annual Pride of Sudbury awards and won 2 awards in consecutive years.

Those accessing support were also involved in deciding how the money was spent.

Inspired?

If you organise a wellbeing activity in your local area, and you’d like to support Richmond Fellowship by selecting it as a charity beneficiary please contact us today for more information.

If you’re taking part in a local fun and would like to support your local Richmond Fellowship service by fundraising for us, find out more information here.

To make a donation to Richmond Fellowship, you can do so using our online donations portal, managed by Enthuse, here.

Thank you for your support.

World Mental Health Day 2022: Castle Young People’s service – fundraising at the Northstowe Running Festival

As one of the leading mental health charities in England, Richmond Fellowship is joining in with this year’s theme for World Mental Health Day 2022 and opening up the conversation about “making mental health a global priority”.

Our local services are at the heart of everything we do in Making Recovery Reality. We want to look at this theme from the ground up, and demonstrate how their amazing work at a local and regional level contributes to making mental health a national and indeed global priority.

The support you give when fundraising and donating helps services to organise activities for the people using our services. The activities our services run contribute to recovery and enable individuals to have hope and motivation.

Our services are often charity beneficiaries of fun runs, marathons, and physical activities – not least because of  the connections between exercise and looking after our wellbeing.

For example, in September this year, Richmond Fellowship’s Castle Young People Supported Housing service was selected as one of three charity beneficiaries of the Northstowe Running Festival in Cambridgeshire.

Castle Service provides housing related support for 16 to 25 years olds who are living with mental ill health. The service  has been supporting young people on their recovery journeys in Cambridge since the 1980s.

Runners had the opportunity to sign up and choose Richmond Fellowship as their charity to fundraise for.

Staff from the service were also on hand across the weekend of the event to talk about the work of Castle and to signpost to other services also run by Richmond Fellowship in the area.

The money raised from those who ran on behalf of Richmond Fellowship, will be used to provide a range of recovery activities for the people we support.

The Castle Service is very much rooted in the local community and has been grassroots fundraising for many years to provide even more support and activities for the young people tey work with. This includes at Cambridge’s annual Mill Road Winter Fair, where previously the money raised has been used to provide materials for art projects as well as taking people we support to a football match.

Inspired?

If you organise a wellbeing activity in your local area, and you’d like to support Richmond Fellowship by selecting it as a charity beneficiary please contact us today for more information.

If you’re taking part in a local fun and would like to support your local Richmond Fellowship service by fundraising for us, find out more information here.

To make a donation to Richmond Fellowship, you can do so using our online donations portal, managed by Enthuse, here.

Thank you for your support.

Young People’s Week: Castle service’s Community Mural

Richmond Fellowship’s Castle service is based in the University City of Cambridge. The service provides Supported Housing for young people between the ages of 16 and 25. It regularly gets involved in community activities including the Mill Road Winter Fair and is very active in fundraising and organising activities for people we support.

But did you know a mural, situated in one of the most cosmopolitan areas of Cambridge was created in partnership with the service?

It’s located on the city’s Mill Road bridge, the same road as the service’s office and has been a positive talking point of the area since its creation in 2006.

The artwork was designed by Sharon, a person staying at the neighbouring Youth Foyer as part of a competition. She spoke to the Cambridge News/Cambridgeshire Live website about it in 2019:

“Castle service were wanting to find a design that would adorn the Mill Road bridge and were encouraging people staying at the Youth Foyer to submit ideas.

The winning concept would be decided by a vote after all the designs were publicly exhibited, she was told.

So, inspired by the multicultural vibrancy of Mill Road, Sharon set to work with a huge, two-metre-long piece of paper and began to create her vision.

The idea, which was intended to represent both “the community of Mill Road and the wider world,” was comprised of a series of adjoining and overlapping flags, all overlaid with a line of irises.

Sharon said: “It took about three or four months for me to actually finish it.

“I was doing it every day, even on the weekends. It was my way of trying to stay afloat and not sink into depression.

“I didn’t know where I was going to go after.”

The designs were voted on, both by members of the public and residents of the Youth Foyer and the Castle Project, and Sharon’s proposal was chosen as one of the winning designs.

So, along with volunteers and residents from the Castle service and the Cambridge Youth Foyer, she set about painting the mural in the summer of 2006.

Sharon said: “We all got together and painted it. It really brought us together.

“After that, it really helped us to remain bonded. For many of us who didn’t have anywhere to go at Christmas, it was nice to have that little feeling of community and camaraderie.”

She added: “I’m extremely proud of the effort and support put in by the volunteers who helped me to create a moment so bright in my life when there was only darkness.

“This project spring-boarded me forward into where I am now.”

Follow our social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with #YoungPeoplesWeek.

Radio Sparky – Working Together Week transcript

Radio Sparky is the podcast shining a spotlight on the work happening on the ground in Richmond Fellowship and the wider Recovery Focus Group of charities  – talking direct to staff and people we support.  To mark Working Together Week our Communications and Marketing Officer Matt Webb spoke to Matt and Jordan who use our Supported Housing Service in Stowmarket, Suffolk and the service manager James.Working Together Week

We wanted to find out from them what co-production and Working Together really means in practice, and how they’ve made it part of the service.  You can listen to the episode in full here – but if you want to have a read instead or even as well, we’ve got a transcript for you below!

Matt W: As a member of staff, it is of course working together week, what does co-production mean to you?

James: it means that we are all equal, and we are responsible for running and developing the service.

Matt: How have you managed to instill a co-production model in your service? It must have been quite a tricky thing to do, because you have to get everyone together and plan. How have you been able to make that happen?

James: Back when working together came to fruition in around 2014-15 – we are really fortunate that we have a really good community link worker, Janet, who is able to really push getting people involved in the service. Also, I think leadership is really important, so I really wanted to be quite a role model for that for staff in our services, developing a plan for example about how we are going to implement working together on a practical level.

“For example, changes as a result of that I have seen is that we always include people in the recruitment/interview process, we have people who last year helped to set the annual budget, and we also involved people in the local ways of running the service.”

They have helped formulate our approach to recovery, they have also helped out in the running of groups, and also when we are doing promotional work for mental health day, they will help to do that and run it for the day. But it is really about ensuring that it is embedded in the service and that there is a culture of working together. But also that they have got the skills and feel confident and able to dip in and dip out as they see fit as well, because it is something that you are volunteering to do, so a lot of it really is about gathering that information on RF Connect but also making people aware of what opportunities are out there.

Matt W: Matt you have been heavily involved in the working together at Cricket Meadow, tell us about the things you have been doing when you were a service user to bolster support and get fellow people we support to get involved?

Matt: I was involved in the interview processes for staff, I have been to various meetings and discussions about co-production, which can be anything from advising on policy, correcting paperwork, maybe some grammar, and having an input on the whole idea of co-production and being around that.

Matt W: Jordan, what activities do you get up to at Cricket meadow? Obviously Covid-19 has probably resulted in some of them changing in how they are delivered but what sort of things do you get up to, and how many people are usually involved?

Jordan: it is mainly 1 to 1s, opportunities for support from the staff and having a chat. But most of the activities have actually stopped at the minute because of Covid. It has changed everything really.

Matt W: How has the working together approach impacted on your recovery journey?

Matt: It has been an absolutely vital in here, and there is quite a lot of reasons for that and I haven’t got time for all of them. But, for example, I am able to use my skills where I was previously, outside of mental health, outside of the involvement that I have had with Richmond Fellowship to do with my mental health. I had skills, I was working, I could bring a lot of things.

“So rather than it be led by, rather than having a dynamic of service user and staff, I found myself embracing the idea and feeling really empowered by the working together.”

My mental health issues, previously driving it all seemed to dissipate, and I was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the staff as human beings and working together. So it is incredibly empowering, travelling around the country, attending meetings, making connections which is often quite an unspoken aspect of co-production. But for me it is making connections with different organisations and people, whether that be at Richmond Fellowship or other organisations that attach to them, has made a massive difference and a lot of these connections have led to further opportunities, and further opportunities for co-production. So working together has had a quite, albeit a lifelong impact, a very very positive impact and certainly on my recovery going forward and I am very proud to be part of it.

Matt W: that’s really good to hear, Jordan I will put that same question to you?

Jordan: It gives you an insight of who is caring for me, and how much effort they actually put into what they do for us. Like Matt said, it gives you a chance to travel around the country a bit, and meet new people. It is really good.

Matt W: Jordan how are you finding your support through Richmond Fellowship at the moment?

Jordan: Really good to be honest. I have come a long way since I have been here, and I have changed so much since I have been here. I really want to thank them for what they have done for me.

Matt W: And Matt?

Matt: I have been involved with Richmond Fellowship since 2013, and my support has always been outstanding. I have been discharged from their service for over a year now, and yet I am still supported and to a great level.

“Particularly during Covid we had some zoom meetings, phone calls, and the level of support that was still offered even though I was discharged has been amazing even though these times plays a significant role in keeping me positive.”

Matt W: That is a really inspiring story Matt and yours as well Jordan. James thank you very much for joining us on Radio sparky to talk about working together and what it means to you across Richmond Fellowship. Gentleman thank you.

 

Radio Sparky – Working Together Week Podcast

Welcome to the latest edition of Radio Sparky, the podcast which shines the spotlight on the excellent work happening at Richmond Fellowship.

To mark Working Together Week across the Recovery Focus group of charities, Communications and Marketing Officer Matt Webb speaks to James Dominiak, Service Manager at Richmond Fellowship’s 24 hour Supported Housing Service in Stowmarket, Suffolk and Matt and Jordan who use the service about how they’ve embedded co-production in their service at local level.

“I’ve been involved with interview processes for staff, discussions around co-production and policy making. I was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with staff”. – Matt, person we support.

Mental health services doing an important job in Cambridge

SUN_logo_Final_low-res

Mental health services in Cambridgeshire are ‘doing a very important job in a very effective way’
according to a leading service user network.

Services from national mental health charity Richmond Fellowship, part of Recovery Focus, in Wisbeth, March and Godmanchester were visited and independently appraised by the SUN Network. Read more

Richmond Fellowship awarded Employer of the Year

Progress to excellence logoRichmond Fellowship was named Employer of the Year at Progress to Excellence’s Training and Education Awards, held this month in Liverpool.

The national mental health charity, part of Recovery Focus, won in the category for more than 250 employees for their contribution to the communities they support through a commitment to training. Progress to Excellence is a specialist training provider in the health and social care sector. Read more

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