Creating our new team

Aim

Please fund a companion or a personal assistant to enable us to support people at home in Hampshire at critical times in their life

I'm Sarah Mancini, on the left, one of the founders of The Happy Healing Hut CIC. Our Community Interest Company started in February 2020, soon after I re- evaluated my professional position, as a Registered Nurse, Therapist and trainer- following the death of my Mum (pictured centre and right). Quite a normal thing after a major life event.

One of the many discussions we had in her last days, was about how caring for mental wellbeing was as important in our ability to heal as caring for our physical well-being. We talked about loving professional relationships, and her experiences with the community end- of -life team and in ITU a couple of years before. Nurses and doctors gave meaning to their professional relationships, and even sent messages of condolence to my father, when they heard the news of my Mums death.

"What you should be doing..."

Mum had said to me, "This is what you should be doing," when she talked about the community nurse who had sat with her and discussed what to expect in her final days. The kindness and compassion was palpable and the nurse was happy that Mum was where she wanted to be, having made all of her own decisions about the course of events to follow. Mum was with her family- and if she hadn't of been the nurse would have  stayed by her side instead.

My Mum engaged in complementary therapies throughout her life, alongside and in partnership with conventional medicine. She ignited my interest and subsequent training in aromatherapy, hypnotherapy and healing. I have always believed that our health service should include complementary therapy as a more significant part of care. I find that using therapies to support people enables them to ignite their own individual healing mechanisms. 

Origins

The Happy Healing Hut was born out of this vision and from the little hut in my front garden where I offer complementary therapies and healing to friends and family. It is comes from a commitment to combine physical care, emotional support and spiritual support through complementary therapies, kindness, a strong relationship with health and social care multidisciplinary teams and wider community networks.

The organisation is made up of a voluntary team of  non- executive directors, professional advisors and professional associates who hold the same values as the founders and who want to enable our mission to be realised. We have a team of amazing, inspiring people who really care, who really want to make a difference, who have integrity and are committed to building happiness in individuals' every-day lives, maintaining happiness at the end- of-life and returning to happiness after crisis or bereavement. We have a small Executive Team and are now ready to recruit an experienced operational team.

Alongside our home care operational services- BeHappy@Home- our mission is to 'pay it forward'. As a community interest company we aim to raise awareness of mental well-being as being as important as physical and spiritual well-being. We aim to inspire and train voluntary resilience action groups across Hampshire, to provide free meditation events and education relating to self-care and understanding personal happiness. 

Little did we know when we foundered The Happy Healing Hut CIC that the need for supporting communities with mental wellbeing would be so significant. We are about to file dormant accounts for our first year because we have been working in the `NHS supporting their fight against cover-19. 

How can you help?

Having given our first year to the NHS, we are now about to begin our second year. We invite your help to enable us to now support communities in Hampshire and hopefully support communities across the UK.

Some facts:

It costs approximately £24,800 to employ one Personal Assistant and approximately £20,500 to employ one Companion. There are approx. 1.8 million people living in Hampshire. There are 13 parishes.

If we consider one group of people who we aim to help, people who are living in isolation, as an example; research suggests in excess of 30% of males describe themselves as "always lonely" in age groups < 25 years and > 75 years in Hampshire

Females fair far better, but it is still a significant problem. The data trends suggests loneliness is on the rise.

Hampshires population is older than that of Englands population as a whole. 20.3% of people in Hampshire are 65years and over, compared to 17.6% in England.

Figures suggest that 55,355 people in Hampshire have the potential to be suffering from loneliness. 

It is estimated that for older people 17% are in contact with their family, friends and neighbours less than once a week. 11% less than once a month, 6% of older adults leave their house once a week or less.

These figures were taken from a Hampshire County Council Report before the effects of the pandemic.

( Ref: Social isolation and loneliness in Hampshire Jan 2016- Dec 2019

Loneliness is just one of the areas of support we aim to improve with our BeHappy@Home service.

We invite you to take action and support us as we start our operations, aiming to make a big difference in Hampshire and, hopefully, across the UK.

Donations

Please register your details if you want to donate or help in anyway.

Sarah Mancini

Charwell House

16, Wilson Road

Alton

GU34 2PP

[email protected]

Tel 01420 540242

Thank you

Sarah Mancini, founder

This project successfully funded on 28th July 2021