Free training: supporting volunteers with mental health needs

Better Futures is hosting a *free* day’s training exploring practical tools to support people with mental health needs.

8th October 2014 – 10-4.30pm to tie in with World Mental Health Week

On the day participants will:

Understand how mental health affects the journey of volunteering – with tips for recruitment, retaining your volunteers if they have difficulties, how to talk about mental health, manage risk and when to signpost to local specialist services.

Click here to learn more and book your place:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/supporting-volunteers-with-mental-health-needs-tickets-12794752449

Learning Outcomes – By the end of the day you will be able to:

  • Explore expectations around medical diagnoses such as Schizophrenia, and Borderline Personality Disorder and how they may be a barrier to volunteering
  • Understand ways to get people talking about mental health, how to do a disclosure policy and manage personal information in your volunteer team.
  • Gain confidence in an approach that you can apply to all mental health issues, to identify helpful ways to support someone in their role.
  • Learn from direct experience about what helps and what doesn’t, from both a volunteer perspective and a volunteer supervisor.
  • Gain strategies to deal with: Welfare Benefits, Medication and some of its side effects, Risk management, and what to do when a role doesn’t work out.
  • Learn useful language and ways to approach volunteers if they are having difficulties.
  • Clearly understand the boundaries around a supervisor role and when to signpost to specialist services.

Entry level

  • Suitable for people working with volunteers, without any experience with mental health.
  • You might already be supporting volunteers with mental health and want to gain more confidence with this.
  • You may want to make your volunteer service more inclusive.
  • You might be new to a volunteer supervisor role.

*NB-* This day is not focused on any specific diagnosis, but gives strategies that can be applied to all mental health issues, when working with volunteers. Better Futures can signpost you to courses on specific issues, if you let us know

Better Futures helps people with a variety of support needs find volunteering opportunities that teach them real skills that will help them get the work they’re looking for in the future. They also provide a wide range of support both to the people volunteering, and the organisation they are volunteering for, allowing people who’ve never volunteered before to have all the help they need to make a success of volunteering. To learn more about Better Futures, please follow this link: http://www.bh-impetus.org/get-support/#better-futures