01256 476981 contact@raise.org.uk
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Frequently Asked Questions
Below is a selection of our most frequently asked questions with our responses. If you have a question, please feel free to use our contact page to send it to us and we may publish it below.
Q: What differences do Raise! want to make and how will our organisation achieve this?
A: Our company prides itself on providing social inclusion and employment opportunities, but primarily hope and recovery orientated practise for all mental health service users and reinvestment for our wider communities. We are a small but professional and unique company, as everyone who works at Raise! are extremely passionate and has experienced mental illness and at times the prejudice and discrimination that can come with it. Our work is about breaking down the barriers and misunderstanding surrounding mental illness in line with the Department of Health's social inclusion policy and the recovery approach. We are very aware of current statistics that show mental ill health is becoming increasingly common. This is why an important part of our work is about promoting positive mental well being, and getting our audiences to understand why it is just as important to maintain good mental health alongside physical well being.
Because of the staff teams exceptional enthusiasm and commitment about the work we conduct, we aim to educate a wide target audience about mental illness through use of personal insights and experiences, training courses, literature and visual resources. We want to get out and talk to people and continue to dispel the myths that surround mental distress and the labels that are attached alongside showing service users and statutory/voluntary sector workers that there is hope for anyone with an enduring mental health problem.
Q: Why are Raise! the right people to do this work?
A: We at Raise! have first hand knowledge of how experiencing mental distress can lead to deep rooted problems including isolation & feelings of loneliness, poor self esteem & confidence, and at times despair. To continually fear rejection and prejudice from at times our families and friends as well as the wider communities can only hinder ones ability to look to the future and reclaim back our lives. This is where Raise! wants to make a difference. Our unique selling point is that we know exactly what it feels like to have lived with a psychiatric diagnosis. Our ethos is to educate from experience as opposed to teaching from books. Through interactive groups and workshops, training sessions and using trainers that have a mental health diagnosis and true empathy, we believe, and completed evaluations show that we are making progress and providing attendees with an honest, informative and unique element of factual training which is making a difference for everybody concerned.
Q: Who are the people Raise! work with, and why there is a need for our work?
A: Times are changing and the Governments emphasis on mental health service user involvement amongst service providers and the planning, implementation & delivery of services is becoming ever more apparent. Within our immediate locality day services are being closed with local trusts trying to move away from institutionalised practice and focusing on reintegration in to the community. All the Raise! voluntary team are under the care of the local Community mental health teams and were low in confidence, and visions of hope had dissolved before the opportunity of working at Raise! arised. Our office provides an opportunity for people to 'feel part of something worthwhile'. They do not need to explain why they are 'having a bad day' or the need to explain why they have 'a 5 year work gap' in their work history, because everyone already understands.
We work closely with Hampshire primary care trust, Hampshire partnership trust and Hampshire County council, all of whom are exceptionally supportive of our work and the goals we want to achieve. Evaluations from course attendees and service users/carers continuously confirm the effectiveness of our work. To receive compliments and thank you's from course attendees, makes us all very proud of what Raise! is achieving, continues to achieve and further reinforces why what we are doing is so important. We work closely with similar organisations within Hampshire and neighbouring counties and one area that we would particularly like to expand on is working in partnership with other groups providing a resource/consultancy service for other service user groups that wish to start or develop the similar services.
Q: What do Raise! plan to do in the future?
A: At Raise! we continuously aim to expand our services to incorporate the needs of our clientele, wider communities, current legislations and adaptations of mental health services and care providers. Several future project ideas include running holistic health well being clinics for service users, downloadable information & advisory sheets, and inpatient training. We also are looking to expand our services, targeting in particular ethnic minority & Eastern Europe immigrants, women & mental health, and mentally disordered patients, currently receiving custodial sentences, in conjunction with local probation services. We are currently liasing with local implementation teams and statutory bodies to develop therapeutic self-help groups, particularly targeting those who experience eating disorders and for young people who have relatives with a mental health diagnosis. The primary emphasis is to provide all our clients with further opportunities and the confidence to access other mainstream services.