Reachout Challenge

The Reachout Challenge continues to go from strength to strength, with our growing team of passionate volunteers. In our new Steering Group, we’re having discussions about how to make our Mental Health Awareness training more impactful.

We want to use stronger messaging to break the stigma, so that more local police and other organisations can join us in our movement towards Disability Justice. It is an exciting era we approach, and we welcome you to join us in it!

While we work on bringing Reachout Create to life, we will continue to provide the Metropolitan Police specialist Crisis and Hostage Negotiators with mental health awareness training sessions. We have four sessions over the next year, supported by their kind donations which are much needed to run the sessions. We are always looking for more volunteers to help run these trainings. If you have lived experience of a police interaction in a time when you really needed mental health support (positive or negative!) then Sign Up to volunteer for Reachout and you can join us on an upcoming session at the Police Federation in Leatherhead.

We are proud to announce that we have won funding for some of the activities within the project, in a new project called Reachout Create. This is coming 10 years after our funding ceased in 2014! The funding allows us to host 30 creative workshops over the next two years, which will contribute to our Reachout Challenge training materials. The free creative workshops will also give us more opportunities for community building with mental health service users in Croydon.

We have also delivered a scaled down version of the session to uniformed officers across the Metropolitan Police of various ranks and roles, albeit we have not been gifted a donation they are trying to find ways of securing some funds so we can go back and continue to be part of the mental health training officers receive.

It is also their plan to include this in all new officers training when joining the force, and the person in charge of such a decision has come along to one of the sessions and observed first-hand and read the feedback officers give in what they gain from our attendance and appreciates it would be money worth spent. If successful, it will be a big commitment from the volunteers but one we shall embrace and deliver with pride and professionalism. We know that providing these sessions better equips front-line services when coming into contact with us when we are in crisis, and this is one of our main drivers for continuing and managing the journey over to far North London.

We recently purchased some more stress balls with Reachout money as these really go down well in the session and have our website address on them so promotes who we are and what we do within our own borough.

The steering group met to organise smaller working groups to take on specific tasks such as:

“  Revising and updating the material we use

“  Copy writing our material

“  Contacting local organisations such as the Job Centre, who in the past have asked us to run a session

“  Thinking about what agencies we can approach for future events and what this should look like
Finances

“  Promoting the Reachout Project.

Not everyone is confident about public speaking but that is okay as there are many roles you could cover that does not require you to speak openly about your lived experience of mental health… If any of this sounds interesting and you want to know more then to volunteer or give me a call to have an informal chat about how you would like to get involved my contact details are at the bottom of this page…

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the volunteers past and present for their dedication, determination and time in making this project so successful and long may it continue…

May Elroubi
Reachout Challenge Coordinator
Hear Us
Orchard House
15a Purley Road
South Croydon
Surrey
CR2 6EZ
Email: reachout.challenge@hear-us.org
Webpage: www.hear-us.org/reachout/