Honiton Health Matters held an informal meeting on Friday 15th November where invited members of the community heard about the ‘Honiton Mental Health Friendly Town Project’ and set up a steering/reference group for this project.
The aim of the steering/reference group will be to help guide the work, and plan up until project launch on the 31st March 2020, which will be held at the Beehive, Honiton.
This is a collaborative project developed with Honiton Health Matters, Honiton Community College and Action East Devon’s Headlight team, (Headlight is an East Devon service supporting young people (13-24) living with mental health issues, and their parents/carers through peer support sessions), along with other community partners
Action East Devon have been awarded funding from the Devon County Council’s Doing What Matters Fund. This grant will enable the Headlight team to focus on Honiton, to engage with local services, organisations, clubs and businesses to put Honiton on the map for being a Mental Health Friendly town. This will increase understanding of mental health issues and will help improve the emotional wellbeing of young people in Honiton; a key priority identified at the Honiton Youth Mental Health Conference held in April.
Key actions for Action East Devon Headlight and Honiton Health Matters teams will be to deliver to:
- mental health awareness training across the town to both young people and the wider adult population
- engage with young people, organisations and businesses to help shape a mental health charter for the town.
Anyone interested in being involved with this project can contact Honiton Health Matters at honitonhealthmatters@gmail.com