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Menampilkan postingan dari Agustus, 2017

Mental health and children, young people & families

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By guest author Lucy Taylor Hello, my name is Lucy Taylor and I am the Children, Young People and Families Officer for Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations (PAVO).   My role is to support the organisations across Powys that work with children, young people and their families.  This involves acting as a conduit between the organisations, for example Action for Children which works with families, and the statutory partners, for example Powys County Council which, in some cases, commissions part of their work. I use a blog , Facebook and network meetings to keep the sector up to date and informed.  Another part of my work is to support the Play Networks and to raise the awareness of play. We ask: are there enough opportunities, time and space for our children to play in Powys? It was working with organisations looking at what services are available, and what support is needed for children and young people, that the gap or thinning of services that support them when ...

On the Experts by Experience panel

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Sarah Dale was recently in contact with the Participation Officers in our team. She expressed an interest in getting more involved with our engagement work, which includes working with individuals who have been in contact with mental health services and supporting them to attend partnership meetings as reps. They are encouraged to give feedback, to represent the views of others, and to help shape future mental health services. Sarah subsequently agreed to accompany Participation Officer Philip Moisson to a conference earlier this summer, and joined the Experts by Experience panel on the day. We were all really pleased that someone from Powys had been willing to speak up about their experiences, and asked Sarah to give us her take on the day. The Together for Mental Health conference on 12 July at the Marriott Hotel in Cardiff was organised by Cymorth Cymru , the umbrella body for providers of homelessness, housing-related support and social care services in Wales. The event looked at “...

Mums Matter

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Mums Matter is a new project being run at two of the Mind centres in Powys – Brecon & District, and Mid Powys Mind in Llandrindod Wells. As the name suggests, the aim is to provide emotional support for new Mums “to manage the everyday, nurture themselves and dispel the many myths of motherhood.” The project facilitators, Deborah Wilkie in Brecon (left below), and Tracy Lewis in Llandrindod (right below), told me more.                                                                                             Tell us why you think there is a need for this project in Powys Deborah:   Whilst promoting this programme mums who have had their babies have stated “they wished this sort of course was available to them after they had given birth t...

Connecting with the mental health advocates

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Powys mental health advocates Kirstie Morgan and Lynda Evans “Advocacy”, it says on a whiteboard opposite my desk, is “taking action to help people: say what they want, secure their rights, and obtain the services they need.” Many are the times I have signposted people calling our Information Service to the mental health advocates working in Powys. Last week two of them, Lynda Evans (North Powys), and Kirstie Morgan (South Powys), came along to the July team meeting of the PAVO Community Connectors to update them about the advocacy services available in the county. I was lucky enough to join them, and this is what we found out. The three different advocacy roles in Powys Independent Mental Health Advocate This role was introduced in 2007 when the Mental Health Act was revised and advocacy was put on the statute books. Advocates suddenly had rights which they had not enjoyed before, such as advocating for mental health patients in hospital, on a Community Treatment Order , or detained ...