This World Mental Health Day we wanted to share some work that we've done with MIND LLanelli to support the mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Alone we can do so little. Together we can do so much. - Hellen Keller

Over the past few months our #Back2Basics team has been working with the MIND Llanelli Evolve project to support the mental health and wellbeing of young people.

Many of our young people have been working on an individual basis with our #Back2Basics coordinators Lucy and Kelly, who have helped them to learn basic life skills and develop their confidence. Following these sessions many of them decided to join some of our workshops with the Llanelli MIND Evolve project. The sessions helped build on the confidence and life skills they'd already started developing with us and were a great success. So much so, that many of the young people involved have decide to join the Evolve project, which is great news for everyone! 

We recently ran two joint sessions with staff from Evolve - one was an intergenerational session with Reconnecting Llanelli teaching the young people how to create notan paper craft; the second event was through our Summer of Fun project where young people were engaged in conversations around supporting and improving wellbeing through everyday tasks. 

This collaboration between our two services has significantly benefited many of the young people we work alongside, encouraging them to talk about their own mental health and wellbeing in a more open and positive manner. The support from the team at Evolve has also been fantastic and we have many plans to continue working together over the coming months. 

This is what Ryan Stephans, the EVOLVE project co-ordinator said:

Earlier this year we launched a new project called Evolve CYP Project at Llanelli Mind to support children and young people (CYP) with their Mental Health and Well-Being. We have formed a great working relationship with Kelly and the team at Foothold Cymru who we've collaborated with to support many young people. We have worked together to make the support as accessible and accommodating as possible and been able to use their fantastic facilities! The Foothold Cymru Community Garden has been a great hit with the young people and we’ve used it regularly through the summer months.

It was great to be a part of the Intergenerational sessions that Foothold Cymru facilitated, and great to see the young people flourish through their interactions with older generations!  We were also part of the "fun in the Sun" with a Well-Being Workshop which helped the young people understand their well-being and ways to improve it. 

It’s fantastic to see the growth in confidence and self-esteem in so many young people! Only with this great relationship with Foothold Cymru we are able to make this happen!