The first CASS Network event – Thank you for joining us!

By Haylee Cowley | July 11, 2016

Ensuring that CASS is on track and delivering the best service possible to community groups across Bristol is an ongoing challenge. We were very pleased to welcome people to the first CASS Network event on June 28th to discuss how we’ve been doing so far and what our priorities should be going forward.

Alex Raikes, CEO of Stand Against Racism and Inequality (and CASS collaborator), MC’d the event, giving her personal take on mental health and emphasising the importance of open and honest discussion. Elaine Flint, CEO of Wellspring HLC (one of CASS’ managing charities), also talked about how far CASS has come in the year since it has been commissioned.

CASS was so pleased to work with Alex of SARI who facilitated our Network event.  [We had] a great audience of local groups and professionals working in mental health all thinking about how we can support our communities to get the right support at the right time. Really thought provoking and reminded us of the need to work together.          Elaine Flint

We had plenty of great discussions about mental health in Bristol and how CASS can make sure that groups get the right support in helping their members. Some of the discussions which took place included:

  • Targeting support at individual groups of people (eg men)
  • Working together with other services to reach more people and run more events
  • Creating easy-to-follow guides to mental health services to help people contact the right service

We followed the morning session with a workshop on challenging mental health stigma which saw plenty of great discussions from everyone involved. Stigma is an enormous challenge for the majority of individuals living with mental health issues and we really enjoy running this workshop for groups in Bristol every time we do it.

We found the afternoon session very thought provoking and felt as a society we need to talk more about mental health. We will be putting what we learned into practice soon after we have spoken to our manager. We thought of bringing a wellbeing section into our weekly staff agenda and asking staff how they are. We are also looking into doing some staff training as we feel it will benefit our team.      Workshop attendee

Would you like to come to the next CASS Network event? Or book a place on a future Challenging Mental Health Stigma workshop? Contact us on 0117 304 1400 or email info@cassbristol.org. You can also sign up for our monthly e-newsletter for all our latest news.

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