Hi, we are The Phoenix Foundation - a new organisation dedicated to helping those with mental health issues, neuro divergence and learning difficulties. What's different about us is the co-founders of our project, Emily, Amy and Steph, all suffer from mental health issues and all have a great deal of experience with the mental health system and with coping independently. The overall aim of The Phoenix Foundation is to improve the system and culture in general all across the UK, however even we're not superheroes! To begin with we're concentrating on the area we're from, Southampton, but hoping to steadily grow our coverage. We are very busy creating resources that are more accessible at the moment (see the black dog video our awesome Emily made) however things we're currently working on include:
1. The peer support programme, where volunteers will be supporting users in the community, both with coping with their conditions and with general practical support such as going with them to do their shopping.
2. Therapy assistance programme, where the goal is to get service users into specialist therapy as soon as possible, rather than being on long waiting lists. This will improve their chances of recovery and help them get back into work.
3. Education outreach programme - Amy is a fully qualified teacher and is currently working hard on planning lessons and assemblies for primary school children to get the dialogue about mental health and coping mechanisms started earlier.
4. Updating the system - Steph, our resident data genius, is currently collecting and collating data to take to the NHS and local government to begin making positive changes to the mental health system itself. If you have any experiences of the mental health services in the UK that you’d like to share with us then please let us know.
Phew, it is all really exciting and progressive but we do need some help please! We're raising money not only for the programmes themselves but also for those things we need to get our name out there, such as advertising. We also need to update our technology so we can make better resources - Amy's laptop, for example, is 15 years old and weighs as much as a medium sized Labrador!
Thank you so much for reading, if you can help we would really appreciate it and it is going to a great cause that will help
everyone.