Speaking Up
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Health and Wellbeing Service<br />
volunteers and mental health<br />
service user and carer engagement work<br />
Once again it has been a very busy year and our volunteers have managed<br />
to contribute a massive 495 ½ hours of volunteering in the last 6 months! We<br />
are extremely fortunate to have so many dedicated volunteers who are willing<br />
to share their thoughts and experiences openly so that mental health care is<br />
continually reviewed and improved.<br />
Volunteers contribute their expertise<br />
on tasks such as external job interview<br />
and mental health strategy group<br />
panels, inpatient visits, grant panel<br />
meetings, training and conference<br />
events. As ever, a huge, huge thank<br />
you to all our volunteers.<br />
I thought this would be a good<br />
opportunity to look at what we have<br />
achieved over this year and let you<br />
know of some exciting plans for 2016!<br />
We have continued to develop our<br />
mental health awareness training and<br />
volunteers are helping to develop a<br />
training film for GPs as part of the Zero<br />
Suicide Collaborative. We are really<br />
keen to support meaningful mental<br />
health training that is delivered by<br />
service users and carers and hoping<br />
to develop this further.<br />
We are also very fortunate to have<br />
been issued a new contract by NHS<br />
Kernow for ‘Service User and Carer<br />
Involvement and Participation’ and<br />
are taking the opportunity to review<br />
the volunteer service to ensure that<br />
we are delivering the very best for<br />
our volunteers, commissioners, our<br />
partner agencies, ourselves and the<br />
mental health service user and carers<br />
within the county. (see page 6 for more<br />
info and details of how to get involved).<br />
Volunteers have taken part in<br />
training events, including one lead<br />
by Cornwall Partnership Foundation<br />
Trust (CFT). The training looked at<br />
CFT recruitment policies with the aim<br />
of upskilling our volunteers to take<br />
part in more recruitment opportunities.<br />
Ten volunteers attended the certified<br />
training and we are now hoping to take<br />
part in more areas of the recruitment<br />
process.<br />
We were also delighted to organise<br />
some Time to Change training for our<br />
volunteers back in September. It was<br />
run by an initiative between National<br />
Mind and Rethink organisations,<br />
the Time to Change campaign<br />
challenges mental health stigma<br />
and discrimination. The training was<br />
well attended and since September,<br />
eight of our volunteers have gone on<br />
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