Taking place throughout the 13 to the 19th May, we’ve been encouraging all the people we support, colleagues, and services to get involved with Mental Health Awareness Week. With this year’s theme from Mental Health England being ‘Movement: Moving more for mental health’, we’ve been embracing Empower Half Hour to develop some new healthy habits within the workplace and our services.
#EmpowerHalfHour consists of 30-minute activities to boost wellbeing at work and how taking a half hour break for a change of scenery or an activity can boost your energy levels and help focus your mind, and benefit mental health & physical wellbeing. Encouraging our colleagues and the people we support to start new, healthy habits.
Connecting, exercising, and improving our health, we’ve been embracing the 5 #EmpowerHalfHour themes…
Move – Moving is great for not just physical health but also our mental health too! And at Deansbrook, a few months ago they introduced a weekly workout activity, bringing everyone together for some dancing and laughter – a great example of making movement fun.
Discover – Trying new things can open your mind and help with your mental health. So when the PWSA kindly offered some of our services a corporate box at the Northampton Cricket Club, lots of the people we support jumped at the opportunity to watch the cricket and bond with one another.
Bond – Supporting and celebrating each other is a great way to boost moods. Highlighting everyone’s fantastic characteristics, the team at STEPS have introduced a recognition board – a chance for everyone to share supportive messages with one another.
Service Manager Lesley shared “It’s so easy to get caught up in stress at work that we forget to appreciate the good parts. Everyone here does such a good job and we want to show that by giving the compliments and recognition they deserve!”
Motivate – Setting goals and having fun can really bring people together. And for the People Team in our Central Support Office, they celebrated a day of teamwork and goal sharing – participating in an escape room together, breaking out in record time! Taking fun steps towards boosting morale.
Connect – Opening up and share more can help reduce the mental load. And at Rowan House, service manager Kasia has introduced ‘Have a Cup of PositiviTEA’ – where everyone can stop, breathe, and share positive thoughts about anything and everything; a fantastic idea.
All of the themes have an impact on our mental health so taking part in #EmpowerHalfHour is a great way to creating healthy habits in our everyday lives. There is no right or wrong way to #EmpowerHalfHour – so we can’t wait to see all the others ways people across Consensus embrace Mental Health Awareness Week.
