Welcome to “Mind the Gap” – a resource compiled by members of our Scouting family here in West Yorkshire to aid both the development and delivery of programme ideas to promote mental wellbeing across our county throughout 2018.
The promotion of mental wellbeing is a key theme of “A million Hands” – the Scout Association’s initiative to mobilise half a million Scouts with the aim of removing social barriers, connecting communities and improving lives.
“A Million Hands” focuses on tackling four social issues chosen by our young people. From dementia to those disabled by society, improving the mental wellbeing and resilience of our communities to ensuring everyone, everywhere has access to clean water and sanitation. These are big issues of our time, but our young people want to tackle them head on.
To complement this resource, our Scouting family is proud to have also partnered with the national charity MIND; through it’s local office, to provide valuable specialist support to our volunteers based in local groups. As a charity, MIND provides advice and support to empower those experiencing a mental health problem. MIND also campaigns to improve services, raise awareness and promote understanding of mental wellbeing within local communities.
Our hope is that this resource pack; a collection of 6-25 programme activities and opportunities, coupled with access to local support, will help groups across our county to incorporate issues relating to mental awareness into their own programmes – thus proving the opportunity for our young people to keep their promise to help others.
If you wish to know more about this and other initiatives that fall under the banner of “A Millions Hands”, please take the opportunity to visit the dedicated website. Alternatively, if you wish to know more about the work of the charity MIND or wish to seek out other resources to help with your own local initiatives, it’s also worth considering a visit to the Mind website.
We hope you find this pack a valuable resource to help you generate programme ideas to promote mental wellbeing. Hopefully, together as a Scouting family, we can make a real difference to the improvement of mental wellbeing and resilience of families, Scouts and our wider communities.