Health Messaging with a difference!

As stat­ed on the main RIC Health Mes­sag­ing page this health mes­sage is a total­ly dif­fer­ent ask from any­thing we have done before.

This health mes­sage is intend­ed to build capac­i­ty and resilience in our val­ued VCS deliv­ery providers staff teams and the organ­i­sa­tion as a whole by enabling them to access Men­tal Health First Aid training.

We have all had a tur­bu­lent past two years, and with the increas­ing pres­sure from cost of liv­ing ris­es that will be with us for some time. The VCS Alliance and our com­mis­sion­ing part­ner, Brad­ford and Craven CCG, want to sup­port our VCS deliv­ery part­ners by giv­ing mem­bers of their staff teams the tools to:

  • Recog­nise stress indi­ca­tors in them­selves and fel­low staff mem­bers and know how to help/ intervene.
  • Recog­nise and feel con­fi­dent in inter­ven­ing when some­one is in crisis.
  • Under­stand what to say, how to say it and when to say it.
  • Be able to under­stand and map their inter­ven­tions against pro­fes­sion­al bound­aries, that is, when does a sit­u­a­tion call for a men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al e.g., coun­selling, etc.
  • Recog­nise and under­stand the dif­fer­ence between Men­tal Health First Aid and Counselling.
  • Under­stand appro­pri­ate poten­tial refer­ral routes.
  • Feel con­fi­dent and secure in sup­port­ing some­one in need of a Men­tal Health First Aid intervention.

Over the fore­see­able future it is almost cer­tain that more and more of our com­mu­ni­ties are going to see an increase in poor men­tal health and well­be­ing due to the pres­sures that will be felt in com­mu­ni­ties and fam­i­lies strug­gling to sur­vive, poten­tial­ly fac­ing home­less­ness, unable to pay bills, choos­ing between heat­ing and eating…

The VCS Alliance and our com­mis­sion­ing part­ner the Brad­ford Dis­trict and Craven CCG see Men­tal Health First Aid as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op the nec­es­sary skills and under­stand­ings to sup­port our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers through the most des­per­ate of times.

This train­ing may enable you to inter­vene in a sit­u­a­tion before it becomes a men­tal health cri­sis and give those in need of this inter­ven­tion hope and an under­stand­ing of how they can devel­op their own tools for bet­ter men­tal health and wellbeing.

What will this look like?

We are look­ing to pro­vide Men­tal Health First Aid train­ing for 9 VCS mem­bers of staff. The nature of these poten­tial inter­ven­tions means vol­un­teers will only be con­sid­ered in excep­tion­al cir­cum­stances, this could be:

  • A retired health care pro­fes­sion­al or a work­ing health care pro­fes­sion­al that is vol­un­teer­ing in their free time.
  • A retired social care pro­fes­sion­al or a work­ing social care pro­fes­sion­al that is vol­un­teer­ing in their free time.
  • A vol­un­teer that has a proven his­to­ry of vol­un­teer­ing in a men­tal health care set­ting or with a men­tal health sup­port organ­i­sa­tion such as MIND, Shar­ing Voic­es etc. 

Train­ing 9 peo­ple will mean that each of the 3 RIC areas will have 3 trained Men­tal Health First Aiders.

We would ask that projects that engage with this offer will use this train­ing not only to under­take inter­ven­tions when nec­es­sary but also to extend this sup­port by:

  • See health mes­sag­ing as a part of their ongo­ing work that will com­pli­ment and sup­ple­ment their offer.
  • Plan in some men­tal health aware­ness work around how to recog­nise trig­gers and anx­i­ety as a part of their ongo­ing deliv­ery around phys­i­cal and men­tal health interventions.

These are just exam­ples and we do not expect any project to under­take work they are not fund­ed to do, please remem­ber this is pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed to build capac­i­ty in your organ­i­sa­tion and enable you to sup­port your ser­vice users with con­fi­dence. But any sup­port you could offer to neigh­bour­ing projects around Men­tal Health First Aid will help us to build resilience across the sector.

To apply for this train­ing all appli­cants must be based and oper­at­ing in either:

  • Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship 4
  • Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship 5
  • Com­mu­ni­ty Part­ner­ship 6

What we are asking

Those project staff select­ed will attend 1 day of face to face train­ing at a venue in Brad­ford to be announced.

  • Those that under­take the train­ing to keep a reflec­tive jour­nal for 1 month and be will­ing to share some of these reflec­tions with us for report­ing pur­pos­es. We would ask that all jour­nals are anony­mous. (this jour­nal will be pro­vid­ed by The VCS Alliance).
  • Jour­nals would be light touch and used as a tool to under­stand your own jour­ney from under­tak­ing the train­ing to mak­ing use of it with team mem­bers and/ or com­mu­ni­ty members.
  • To com­plete a men­tal health ques­tion­naire before train­ing, at the end of the obser­va­tions peri­od (4 weeks) and then a final one 1 month (approx) after the end of the deliv­ery period.
  • 1 anony­mous case study of how this has helped you in your delivery .

Additional recompense

Please keep in mind this is meant to sup­ple­ment your exist­ing deliv­ery and give your project an impor­tant tool to sup­port your ser­vice users, you will not be asked to under­take any addi­tion­al deliv­ery work.

But, we do recog­nise that keep­ing a reflec­tive jour­nal, com­plet­ing a case study and com­plet­ing the ques­tion­naires is an addi­tion­al ask. A reflec­tion could be a poem, a draw­ing… any­thing that you want that express­es that point in time for you… any of these things should only take a few min­utes at the most.

To cov­er these small asks we are offer­ing each project £300 on top of the train­ing cost to cov­er this.

The total pack­age is worth approx­i­mate­ly £700 per staff member.

Important dates

  • All train­ing will be com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber 26th 2022 at the very latest.
  • Jour­nal will be kept for 1  month from the 1st Oct 2022 — 1st Novem­ber 2022.
  • 1st ques­tion­naire will be com­plet­ed pri­or to the training
  • 2nd ques­tion­naire in the first week of Novem­ber 2022
  • 3rd ques­tion­naire by 19th Decem­ber 2022
  • Case study sub­mit­ted 1st week in Novem­ber 2022

How to apply

Please vis­it the link below if you are inter­est­ed in this train­ing opportunity:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/RICHM-MentalHealthFirstAid

Please note:

This is not a nor­mal appli­ca­tion process, we are not ask­ing you to detail a fund­ing case, the form will sim­ply ask you to con­firm you are hap­py to com­plete, the jour­nal, case study and questionnaires.

This is on a first come first serve basis and on the under­stand­ing that we will be offer­ing places to 3 deliv­ery staff mem­bers in each CP area. If we do not get 3 per area, we may offer addi­tion­al spaces to the oth­er Com­mu­ni­ty partnerships.

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