Mental Health Awareness Week: kindness matters

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week, and this year, the theme is kindness.

The recent months have seen a heartening number of support schemes popping up all over our region. It’s good to know that when times are tough, our community will step up and find ways to help each other. But did you know that being kind to others can also benefit your own mental health?

As the Mental Health Foundation’s Kindness Matters guide points out:

Here at Gateway, many of our staff have recently had to change, adapt or add new elements to their usual roles. Last month we wrote about the new normal – the many ways in which we have had to change the way we work since the crisis began.

• In Birmingham and Solihull, Social Prescribing Link Workers are also delivering prescriptions and food parcels, and making befriending calls, as well as continuing to support their own clients.
• Our Straight Talking Peer Education Co-ordinator Marc is no longer managing a team of Peer Educators in schools – he’s now leading the Edgbaston Early Help Scheme, working with schools and children’s centres to provide emergency support for families in need.
• And the Edgbaston Neighbourhood Network Scheme is now a hub for Covid-19 support in the constituency, co-ordinating help for some of the most vulnerable people in the area.

But we’re not the only ones! Many of the organisations and businesses we’re now working with were not originally set up to provide emergency support. Like youth organisation B32 Community, which now delivers food parcels; the Station Pub in Kings Heath, which has become a foodbank; and even Sunday League football club the Rubery Misfits, who have swapped kickabouts for community work – and about whom Sam, Asset Development Worker for the Edgbaston NNS, says, “Nothing is too much for them, they travel all across Birmingham, they deliver between working their full time jobs. The food parcels are very generous sized enough to feed a family for a week. The team are friendly, kind and caring family men who are putting a lot of effort into making sure nobody goes without.”

Rewarding

Perhaps surprisingly, many of our staff are finding the challenge of the new support work rewarding in itself.

prescription delivery – photo taken by a member of staff as they waited for it to be picked up by the householder

Paula is a Community Wellbeing Adviser for the Solihull Lifestyle Service. She says, “I am currently helping to collect and deliver prescriptions throughout Solihull, which has given me a much needed focus and routine during these uncertain times. I have also found the deliveries very rewarding as I engage with the public (albeit in a social distancing environment) and see people’s thanks and appreciation at having one less thing to worry about.”

And the acts of kindness that our staff are involved with are, in many cases, creating a ‘virtuous circle’.

Marc, who’s leading the Edgbaston Early Help scheme, says: “There are two food providers I’ve been working with a lot: B32 Community and the Station Foodbank. As they’ve been so good to others in the locality, dropping food parcels to vulnerable people, I wanted to show some kindness back so I made a donation to both. When I shared their donation pages on my social media my brother in law, an ex-Quinton resident, also donated because he was happy to hear that people were being supported back where he used to live.”

Becky, a Social Prescribing Link Worker, has added extra phonecalls to her rota, supporting people from some of Gateway’s other services, including the Patient Health Forum. But she has found that the support she is giving people is often just the beginning – the people she speaks to get a lot out of sharing their experiences and helping others themselves. Becky says, “One woman was fantastic about sharing her local knowledge about food and pharmacy deliveries with me and I then passed this on to others who have benefited. Another chap said, ‘I hope I can help you one day’. He may not be able to help me personally but I have a feeling he will ‘pay it forward’ and help others in the future.”

Don’t forget to be kind to yourself

Whilst it’s lovely to hear stories of kindness from others, we should add that it’s also important to be kind to yourself.

Sadaf, also a Social Prescribing Link Worker, said, “Whilst working with patients its often clear that there is a sense of low self esteem, feelings of not being good enough and often blaming themselves for certain situations. I would like to highlight that perhaps if people were kinder to themselves it would reduce anxiety and a variety of other issues.”

And the Mental Health Foundation agrees.

Read more in the Kindness Matters guide.