North Staffs
40th Anniversary
Welcome to our booklet commemorating 40 years of North Staffs Mind. North Staffs Mind is an independent charity which is affiliated to national Mind and is able to use the Mind brand because we have demonstrated that we meet the wide-ranging standards that make up the Mind Quality Mark. As a charity we are required to have trustees who form the Council of Management. We are fortunate and grateful that our staff and volunteers are motivated, skilled and creative and the people who lead our organisation are effective and knowledgeable. I would like to think that North Staffs Mind will have a long term future. We know that in order to achieve this we have to continue to be relevant in terms of local need and Government policy – but we also want to continue to value and support ideas and innovation from staff, service users and volunteers. I have been a trustee since 2012. I had earlier involvement with North Staffs Mind in the 1990s as a local authority link with the Management Committee and as a social worker supporting people using the (then newly created) housing project. Mental health is a status we all have and many factors contribute to mental distress and ill health. Some factors are understood and some are not. It is important to me to be involved with North Staffs Mind because I recognise the value of the types of services we offer. Along with the other trustees, I hope that my knowledge and enthusiasm can support North Staffs Mind to remain a well-managed organisation able to help people. A few months ago all trustees were asked to provide a ‘pen portrait’ listing the five things most important to them. My list included the fact that it is important for me to try to live and work in ways which promote fairness and social justice for people, particularly people who have experienced stigma and discrimination. In compiling the list I realised that the area of Stoke and North Staffs is very important to me. I want it to be a great place for people to live. We have a great deal to celebrate in North Staffs Mind. In reading this booklet, you are taking part in our celebrations. I think you will find the booklet to be interesting and inspiring whether you have little or a great deal of knowledge and awareness about North Staffs Mind. In the following pages you will read what North Staffs Mind has meant to people who have been involved with the organisation. A potted history has been compiled and will provide you with some insight into our life as an organisation. You will also see details of forthcoming events which will continue our celebrations throughout 2016. If you have a question, a comment or an idea to share then please get in touch. Proud and happy to be Chair of trustees,
Linda Holt
Chief Executive’s report According to a New Economics Foundation (NEF) report of ten years ago 1976 was the year when we were happiest - the best year on record apparently for quality of life based on indicators such as crime rates, pollution levels and public sector investment. 1976 was the year of the endless summer and the ‘Ladybird Invasion’, when we boogied to Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’ in our hot pants, walked the streets in safety and, those who were a few years older than me, could enjoy a good night out for a fiver and still come home with change. Not much call for the setting up of a new local mental health charity you’d have thought. However, perching our rose tinted sunglasses atop our heads you wouldn’t have needed to have looked very far to realise that it was also the year of drought, strikes and raging inflation (an astronomical 17%), industrial unrest and a precursor to an economic crisis and the winter of our discontent. (Topical Shakespeare reference as it is his anniversary too after all). The 1970s saw an important shift in terms of mental health practice with the dramatic change in location of psychiatric service provision. The mental hospital/asylum system was replaced by inpatient and outpatient facilities sited within the community and a general movement towards the provision of other community based support services for people with mental illness such as supported housing and day services. This created an environment whereby other agencies, such as those in the voluntary sector, had something tangible and creative to offer to the overall mix. Local organisations, such as North Staffs Mind, sprung up in response to the new focus on a social rather than purely medical model of mental health and to address some of the gaps in community focused activity. The involvement of service users became of paramount importance in shaping the new operating environment for mental health and service users contributed to the seismic shift with respect to people’s rights enshrined in the Mental Health Act of 1983 which was still a number of years away. We’ve experienced a significant amount of change and improvements in the forty year period, some to the good and some to the bad. Clearly the 2016 version of North Staffs Mind looks very different. We have moved from being a social group run on a shoestring with the input of a small number of committed volunteers to the heady heights of running an organisation with almost 90 staff, 100+ volunteers and a turnover just short of £1.8million in the last financial year. Growth can often be portrayed as a negative and much that is important and vital can be lost. Whilst, out of necessity, we have adapted and moved with the times, becoming more professional in our approach, our work with clients/service users remains at the heart of what we do and we continue to do it extremely well. We undoubtedly live in challenging times, yet there is much to look forward to and be excited about in the future. In my (almost) 30 years working in the voluntary sector I think mental health and wellbeing now has a profile that we haven’t seen before. There is a level of debate and depth of conversation which is unprecedented and national Mind (celebrating its 70th anniversary this year) and its network of community partners have played a significant role in securing this level of profile. It feels as though this is our collective moment but we shouldn’t rest on our laurels just yet. Back to the summer of 1976 and Bryan Ferry: ‘Lets Stick Together’ and ensure the next 40 years change the mental health landscape forever.
40
Karen Wilson - Chief Executive
40
Experiences of North Staffs Mind I joined NS Mind c.1980/81 when Bob I went to North Staffs Mind for Johnson became chair of the Exec Committee. Its counselling in 1983, having experienced several base was above the shop in Church St, Stoke, staffed by North Staffs Mind holds a years of severe depression. The counselling was an volunteers - my role was to deal with anyone and anything. I was special place in my heart for giving important turning point in my life. It gave me a completely new eased into this thanks to Bill - a longstanding Tuesday Club member, me the opportunity to set up the Young way of understanding depression and invaluable skills for coping with who knew everyone and everything and came in most days. Working there Person's Counselling Service. I was privileged it. I will forever be grateful to North Staffs Mind for enabling me to live a quickly taught me not to make any assumptions about people, but to listen and to support so many wonderful young people to much happier life than I would have done otherwise. wait. work through their issues and hopefully This experience led to me training as a counsellor myself and in 1987 I was We all helped out on flag days and when Eric ‘Busker’ Newton offered to run the lead more fulfilling lives. Thank you. lucky enough to be employed by NSM in that capacity. I continued to work marathon for NS Mind (several times) we were all out along the route with our Carole Law there until 2009. I considered myself very fortunate to practice in an buckets! Gradually we became more and more useful and stable - thanks to agency with such a compassionate and caring attitude to those with all the volunteers and supporters. When, thanks again to Bob Johnson, the mental health problems. It was a great privilege to be able to offer NS Mind Housing scheme was built we became very firmly legitimate! some of them the same gift I had been given: that of being ‘Mindzone is a place where I The experience I gained at NS Mind led to me taking on training at listened to, understood and enabled to discover new can be myself, learn new things and be happy. At Manchester University, which then enabled me to become a ways of living. Mindzone, the Ambassadors are great and the workshops are self-employed counsellor and supervisor/trainer. Janet Christian fun and educational. I really enjoy coming to Mindzone and it’s Thanks NS Mind. Mary Horrocks something I look forward to every Monday (most Mondays)’ Larni
North Staffs Mind is full of good people doing good work Billy Greenish, Senior Counsellor
My involvement with North Staffs Mind started in the early 1990s when I was a volunteer befriender, which helped to strengthen my interest in working in the mental health field. Since then, I’ve supported people to self-refer for what has become a unique and highly beneficial source of practical support. Having become a trustee in 2007 and served as its chair, I have watched North Staffs Mind go from strength to strength, its counselling therapy and services for children and young people in particular. I have also been privileged to see developments in the housing project and much greater recognition of the quality of the specialist housing support.
North Staffs Mind helped me through a tough time and everyone who was there was really friendly and helpful.
While the organisation has changed over the years in terms of the diverse services that it provides and the number of people that it reaches out to, the soul of North Staffs Mind’s work - its integrity - has remained steadfastly unchanged. I can imagine how this integrity could easily become compromised as the organisation becomes, for want of a better word, one of the ‘bigger players’ in mental health in the local area. However, speaking as someone who knows many of the staff and their ambition for clients and service users - as well as a trustee - I can see that little has changed in relation to North Staffs Mind’s value-base. Knowing the reputation of North Staffs Mind as a placement provider for counsellors and other volunteers, and the investment it makes in personal and professional development makes my continued commitment to the organisation an easy decision. I am proud to be associated with North Staffs Mind and to be a part of its fortieth year celebrations. All praise to its considerable, extended workforce. Jeremy Boughey Trustee / Vice-Chair I joined NS Mind in 1986 as the Liaison Worker for six North Staffs Mind has been a huge part of my months to help people who had spent a lifetime in St life for the last 25 years. I first attended the group on a Tuesday Edward’s Hospital move into the community. How wrong everyone was night back in 1991. to think that a scheme of this magnitude only needed six months funding and I have been volunteering either as a befriender or at the groups for 15 years. I then everyone could pretty much cope unsupported. Thankfully further funding have met so many people and made so many friends over the years. I also would was found and I stayed with NS Mind, progressing to Housing Manager after the like to thank North Staffs Mind housing for giving me a home for 10 years. They wonderful Barbara Jenkins, my mentor, retired. I will never forget my chance have always been there when I needed them. to work at NS Mind because it set me on a career path that I didn’t know Congratulations North Staffs Mind on your 40th Birthday ....I look existed, but will always remember gratefully and with a little of supporting people forward to the next 10 years. hope that I might have made a difference. Garry Dutton though difficult Florence Cotton Fantastic times! members of staff, always happy, Made new friends, more positive. smiling, and there in moments of need.
40 years
Continuity and Change: A Brief History of North Staffs Mind From its founding in 1976, North Staffs Mind has grown steadily over the course of four decades to become a major third sector organisation in Staffordshire with a reputation for providing mental health care through a range of high quality services. From the start, ensuring clients are at the centre of its work has informed and underpinned its core values. Its first meetings took place at Baddeley Street Day Centre in Burslem, a popular venue where young people as well as adults could go to a number of different clubs run on a voluntary basis. The North Staffs Mind ‘Tuesday Club’ in particular made good use of the snooker table there; there was also a ‘quiet room’ available where people could talk about whatever was on their mind: something of an embryonic counselling space that forecast much greater things to come. A few years later, after moving into shop premises in Church Street, Stoke, North Staffs Mind converted five rooms upstairs into its headquarters. It would remain there until 1997, when it moved to its current location in Marsh Street, Hanley. Although still a very small organisation, the 1980s would see North Staffs Mind become both an independent charity affiliated to national Mind, responsible for its own funding, and a limited company. Its counselling service for adults began at the start of the decade, with housing provision following in 1986. As the years progressed the organisation would develop its own unique make-up and character: its primary focus was, and indeed remains, offering counselling to both adults and children and young people. As well as supported housing, North Staffs Mind would go on to expand its community support services and add a befriending scheme to its portfolio. A major milestone in our growth was securing our first funding to provide services for children and young people in 2000. Younger Mind, as it became known, has grown to encompass counselling services in Stoke-on-Trent, Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stafford as well as in a range of schools both across the city and North Staffordshire. These went on to be complemented by a weekly therapeutic support group for young people, Mindzone, and in 2013, by the Maccas Project which The Future! aims to raises awareness of suicide risk among young men. Expansion and development over the decades have been accompanied by external recognition of our achievements: in 2011, North Staffs Mind’s counselling services were awarded accreditation from the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy. We are also proud to hold the Mind Quality Mark, having met all indicators of Mind’s quality assurance standards in 2015. In looking to the future, we continue to be responsive to the impact of social change and the increasing complexities of the issues facing our clients and service users. At the same time, our commitment to the communities across Staffordshire we serve remains undiminished.
2010s 2000s 1990s 1980s 1976
40th Year Celebrations
On September 8th we are hosting another Lecture Afternoon at The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery. This year we are focusing on experiences of the mental health system and have speakers who have been on the receiving end of services and those who have worked within the system. These include Byron Vincent who writes and performs about mental health, Nathan Filer, winner of the Costa First Novel award in 2013 for "The Shock of the Fall" which also made the Sunday Times Bestseller List, and Garry Sidley, retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist, author of "Tales from the Madhouse". They will be joined by a local Service User, who will speak of her experience of suffering Post Natal Psychosis. Our opening speaker will be the Shadow Minister for Mental Health, Luciana Berger. It should be a provocative and thought-provoking afternoon. Tickets will be available from late May. In the evening of 8th September, following the Lecture Afternoon, on a lighter, more celebratory note we are holding an evening of performance and music at The Piano Bar of the Regent Theatre in Hanley which should round off the day. We hope both Byron Vincent and Nathan Filer will be taking part in their capacity as writers/performers. Please join us for one or both of these events. For details for either event please visit
http://fortyyears.nsmind.org.uk
Thank you to those who have made a real difference!
North Staffs Mind would simply not exist without the support of its staff, volunteers, fundraisers, and commissioners over the years. North Staffs Mind would like to thank all those past and present, for all their hard work and dedication that has seen the organisation flourish to become what it is today. We would particularly like to acknowledge.... John Sherry worked with North Staffs Mind for over 30 years, taking retirement in 2011. His work in developing the counselling and the counsellors in North Staffs Mind is incalculable. Without him the Placement Scheme for trainee counsellors would not have happened, and so many people who now work within and outside of North Staffs Mind would not have received such good training and supervision. Sadly John is ill and cannot take part in the 40th year celebrations, but we want to acknowledge that so many of us owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
Garry Dutton Garry Dutton has been involved with NSM for 25 years, as service user, housing
resident, and for 15 of those years as a volunteer with Community Support Services. Our thanks go to Garry for such dedication to NSM, his commitment has been outstanding; long may it continue.
Harry Malpass
Since 2011, hundreds of fundraisers and donators have raised over £19,000 for North Staffs Mind.
Left North Staffs Mind a bequest of over £19,000 which has funded a social support group for two years and supported the MACCAS project.
Doris Mabel Williams
Her bequest of over £45,000 is supporting our young people’s drop-in service, Mindzone for two years.
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YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE LAUNCH OF THE
THURSDAY 5TH DECEMBER 2013
The MACCAS project was created in 2013 in memory of Tom McCauley by his family. The project supports the mental health of young men and has raised over £84,000 as a self-sustaining project.
North Staffs Mind 83 Marsh Street Hanley Stoke-on-Trent ST1 5HN
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