The ALLIANCE Living Well: Emotional Support Matters programme 2021 review

The ALLIANCE in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation launched their new project that aims to improve mental health and wellbeing.

To align with World Mental Health Day 2021, the ALLIANCE announced the launch of a new programme Living Well: Emotional Support Matters. This is part of a UK-wide Mental Health Foundation COVID-19 recovery programme (this link will take you away from our website) which aims to improve the mental health and emotional wellbeing of targeted populations in response to COVID-19.

Living Well: Emotional Support Matters focusses on supporting and improving the mental health and emotional wellbeing of people with long term conditions. In partnership, the ALLIANCE and Mental Health Foundation are investing £50,000 in eight different third sector organisations who work directly with people with long term conditions, over a period of 24 months to 30 months. In return we ask that these organisations commit to investing in building the capacity of their staff and volunteers, so that they can better support people with long term conditions to improve their emotional health and mental wellbeing and that there will be increased sustainability for this in the long term.

The eight partner organisations of the Living Well programme are Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, SISG Enterprises Ltd, The Braveheart Association, Scotland Versus Arthritis, Diabetes Scotland, Waverley Care, Clan Cancer Support and MS Mid Argyll.

Throughout this year, the Living Well programme established its very own Peer Learning Network which includes representatives from our eight partner organisations and creates an opportunity for Living Well partners to collaborate and share learning between organisations throughout the duration of the programme. This has also created a space for different organisations to share current strategies they have in place to promote mental health and wellbeing as well as determine areas they can improve in.

The first Peer Learning Network meeting took place in August 2021, which focussed on building relationships and defining the values and ethos of the group to refer back to as the programme progresses. Since then, we held a further two Peer Learning Network meetings which have focussed on introducing the network to different approaches and tools to use when evaluating mental health and emotional wellbeing, as well as establishing a theory of change for the programme with the network directly.

Towards the end of 2021, the Living Well programme developed and disseminated a Training Needs Assessment survey to every member of staff and volunteer from our eight partner organisations. This was designed to assess the current skills and capacity of staff and volunteers from within our partner organisations to determine current gaps in skills, training, or knowledge in supporting the mental health and emotional wellbeing of both staff members and people with long term conditions. This will inform the training plan for partners and there will be opportunity to discuss responses in 2022.

Reports of other ALLIANCE programme activities during 2021 can be found in our News section.

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