Mental Health Awareness Week 2024: Moving more for our mental health

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and the team have been out and about sharing information about Guy’s Gift across several Warwickshire College sites.

Did you manage to catch up with one of the team and find out more about bereavement support?

The theme of the week, this year, is ‘Movement: moving more for your mental health’.   It’s shown that moving more is good for your mental health, so we have been asking the team and some of the children and young people we work with what they find helpful.

We’ve heard from some children and young people that sport helps them to manage some of their feelings and emotions, particularly being active outdoors with friends. Others have told us that looking after their horse and being active when riding helps them feel more comfortable with some of their feelings after someone important has died.

One of our counsellors, Libby Frost, shared that she sometimes provides space to walk and talk during support sessions, and being able to do this has helped some children and young people enormously.

Sophie Peel, Delivery Team Leader (groups and support to support) shared that dance is a great outlet for emotions, and remembers this helping her when she was younger.  On the theme of dancing, Rebecca Hepburn talked about learning TikTok dances which are great for being active (and my goodness are some of them active!) and also often end up being lots of fun too.

The Mental Health Foundation share their tips for moving more for your mental health: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/our-work/public-engagement/mental-health-awareness-week/boost-your-mental-health-moving-more  

Here at Guy’s Gift we’d love to hear from you too, about where you find your moments for movement, and how it works for you.

Whatever you do, we know the positive difference it can have. It sometimes feels hard to start with, but once you get going often it’s a lot of fun - and that simple act of movement is helping you too.

Did you know that volunteering with a charity can reduce your risk of developing age related diseases, keep your brain active, help to reduce blood pressure and even improve your mental health? 

If you would like to find out more about volunteering with Guy's Gift, please email volunteering@guysgift.co.uk.

Bereavement support packs for local hospital

We’re always looking at how we can reach more bereaved children and young people across Coventry and Warwickshire. We know that whilst some children and young people benefit from direct support with us, many more benefit from having access to self support/support to support initiatives. In 2019 we began a project to provide bereavement resource packs into local school, with the first packs heading out at the start of the pandemic (good timing?). We’ve been working on a project to provide similar resources into local hospitals, with the key difference being that the pack would remain with the child or young person, rather than being a shared resource.

Back in May 2023, the wonderful people at Leamington Spa Rotary did a fundraiser, which has provided the cash for our pilot project. Now, some of our fabulous volunteers at EA Games in Southam are preparing the packs, ready to deliver to Warwick Hospital later this month. We’re hopeful that we can extend this project to other local hospitals later in 2024.

We take this opportunity to do a shout out to those brilliant members of our community who put time, energy and cash into supporting this project. This really is a great demonstration of how our local community pull together to ‘do good’ for those who need it. Thank you to each and every one of you!