This event focused on getting people to connect locally – hosted by Moray Drug and Alcohol Partnership (MADP) along with partners tsiMORAY, Health and Social Care Moray, and Moray Wellbeing Hub. As hosts we were there to present but also to try to record the day for those unable to come and those wanting to reflect on the event for the future. Also check out twitter for photos and tweets from the day.
Paul Johnson, MADP opened the day with some thoughts about why connecting up is so important, “learning from each other and sharing experiences, giving and taking notice”. He used the example of birdwatching as a great example of the kind of activity that truly can encourage wellbeing for people.
Then Holly Hendry from Scottish Recovery Network and Elidh Brown from tsiMORAY shared their love of recovery focused participatory budgeting as a great connecting tool for recovery and wellbeing for people of all ages. “A way for people affected by decisions to make decisions.” They shared a local timeline of all the activity in participatory budgeting in Moray so far, including the recent round of #YouChoose3 from Autumn 2018. Core to making the approach work has been using recovery principles of CHIME (Connectedness Hope Identity Meaning and Empowerment) in ensuring that folk felt ownership of the process. This journey was not straightforward and had many bumps in the road, learning that went on to hone and simplify the process to ensure that stakeholders (the community members who wanted to benefit and run activity funded by this process). Being more explicit about recovery principles and having support to do this with peer facilitators from Moray Wellbeing Hub were two important keys to improving inclusion of different views and diversity. “PB is a real opportunity to support recovery” remarks Holly and Elidh added, “Stigma remains a persistent barrier, we need to ensure we resource groups to challenge this in their communities.”
Next Laura Sutherland from the Public Health team in Health and Social Care Moray shared their journey with participatory budgeting in regard to their #YouChoose3 ‘Be Healthy’ which piggy-backed on to other #YouChoose 3 activity last year. With a very short timeframe their aim was to use participatory budgeting process with tsiMORAY as a vehicle to support communities to achieve aims linked to ‘A Healthier Future’ – Scotland’s diet and healthy weight delivery plan which focuses on inequalities.
A shared vision was vital to this, learning went both ways
Successful projects are going forward include Grow Smart with (REAP), Food for Mood (Arts for Wellbeing), Healthier Hopeman Cooking School (Hopeman Primary School) and many more.
“It really is a whole community approach, giving power back to communities letting them decide how finding should be spent… the process has also raised our profile in the community.”
Siobhan Lee from Public Health then shared their new project ‘Ready Steady Soup!’ a competition to create a community soup that is open now. Practical food skills using local food and all ages involved. Using soup to share, “…a sense of community, a sense of belonging, for mental health and wellbeing.”
Next a game of social bingo started some excellent connecting up in the room. New connections and loads of reconnections as well.
The first workshops of the day split the group. In the main space we heard from fantastic organisation CREW. This impressive charity, based in Edinburgh, was started by young people as a result of them feeling poorly informed about drugs. Their approach is that they don’t condemn or condone drug use but support people to have better information and understanding to make choices. Their workshop on working with young people around drugs and alcohol helped participants to think about levels of harm individually and wider, highlighting that drugs include legalised things such as alcohol and how often harm is linked with inequalities and criminality. “It’s much easier to get hold of cannabis and LSD than tobacco and alcohol” shares Kari from CREW. The content of their work, and the organisation themselves, is the kind of example that could be inspirational to our young champions in leading their own change. As well as info on raising awareness of harm with young people they encouraged us to use Menti as an online tool for working interactively with young people at events.
Lunch was another excellent opportunity to get to know each other and share group information. In the afternoon we were busy with our presentation on Pathways to Mental Health and then our workshop on Peer Approaches.
Reflecting on the day as a partner the event achieved what we had hoped; connections were grown and relationships built. Champions at the event gave their thoughts:
“There was a lot of energy in the room, I was pleased to talk to people I wouldn’t normally have access to such as the police trainer”.
“I was pleasantly surprised in a workshop when someone started talking about spirituality in relation to recovery, and felt that they had never need to be on a recovery journey as a result of their faith. It helped me remember its importance to people.”
“I saw lightbulbs going off in people today, they really got it.”
“ I reconnected with people I had worked with over the years, really great to see the same people but in different roles.”
Elidh Brown tsiMORAY also shared, “It was lovely that everybody came together today to connect. Especially to see so many community groups and people that really care about each other. That everyone can have a really good life where they live in Moray. It’s a really great sign for the future.”
