Last Updated on April 21, 2017
Together for Mental Wellbeing were the 2015 winners of the Community Engagement Award. Here, James Gillespie, Operations and Development Manager explores the impact winning a 3rd Sector Care Award has had on the organisation.
It is clear that taking the time to value, reward and appreciate the hard work that our staff put into our services creates an atmosphere where innovation and enthusiasm thrives. Ultimately, it leads to a more motivated team and improved support for the people who access it.
In a time of financial uncertainty where the term ‘cuts’ has been a verbal catalyst for increased anxiety, impacting both staff and the people we support, winning the Community Engagement Award at the 3rd Sector Care Awards has given us reason to celebrate and reflect upon the real, positive impact our services have on people’s lives.
We at Together for Mental Wellbeing were awarded the Community Engagement Award for our four East Sussex community support services, called Your Way. These services provide flexible mental health support with a key focus on ensuring that people who use the service are in control of their support. One of the core elements of the services is promoting healthy living in the community.
These services offer support to improve physical and mental wellbeing, access work, leisure, education and training opportunities. They encourage people to play an active role in their community. For example, Rob Birch, who has used Together’s Lewes Your Way service and is now a Recovery Worker there, was supported to set up the Recovery Kitchen. The Kitchen offers cooking sessions that focus on making food that is good for both physical and mental wellbeing.
Working in partnership with East Sussex County Council, we’re proud to have developed services that provide truly personalised support and enable people to get involved in their own communities.
One of our staff team commented, ’I felt extremely proud of the Award and everyone who has inputted and worked hard over this last year; the motivation and commitment of the team has been extraordinary. Our services are meeting the holistic needs of local people and we are always looking to improve, innovate and develop them.’
We held a party in January where we presented the Award to everyone who had been unable to attend the Award Ceremony in person. Our commissioner attended and his feedback added to the comments of the 3rd Sector Care Awards’ judges as he recognised how our approach was different and highlighted the good work we do throughout the area.
Together also runs a number of Your Way services up and down England. We believe that the community relationships we build within these often offer the best opportunities for people to overcome stigma and significantly reduce social exclusion.
Overall, this Award has had an extremely positive impact across our services. They say that, ‘In the Olympic high-jump of life you need to reward yourself every time you achieve success...whether that be bronze, silver, gold or simply a personal best – but it’s crucial to set the bar even higher next time.’
Having won this Award, we will strive to further demonstrate our innovation and that our services are really making a difference to people’s lives.
On behalf of our East Sussex Your Way services and our organisation as a whole I would like to say thank you to the 3rd Sector Care Awards for giving us this honour.
With thanks to Aidcall for kindly sponsoring this award. Find out more about their services at www.aidcall.co.uk