Why 'What's your Goal?'...

The simple purpose of our 2012 What’s your Goal? campaign is to reduce stigma, by getting people talking about mental health and wellbeing – something important to people who use our services and to us as providers of care. We’re doing this through a positive message about the benefits of setting goals for our wellbeing – something we hope that everyone can relate to and be happy to talk about and also very topical in the year of London 2012.

We’ve found that people are often reticent to talk about mental health. That’s why we employ different tactics to give them an excuse to come over and get chatting. During 2012 we are asking people to set a goal and then represent it on a piece of bunting. We hope the fact that they are contributing to a world record attempt (for the longest piece of bunting) will be an additional draw and we’ve already had lots of interest from all sorts of community groups who want to get involved. We’ll be providing packs to craft groups, schools, clubs and many more so they can contribute.  We’ll be giving them facts and figures about mental health for them to discuss whilst they are being creative.

Our Trust strategy has recovery principles at its core – hope and optimism for the future and enabling people to set their own goals and take control of their lives. That’s why we also want to support people who use our services to set their own goals and contribute to our world record breaking challenge. We’re recruiting volunteers to visit groups, and other spaces where people who use our services congregate, to talk about the campaign and help them set goals. If you’d like us organise a session with your service then please do get in touch.

Our campaign is a purposeful and meaningful way to recruit members and to keep them involved and interested in our work. We survey our members once a year to find out their opinions about mental health stigma and we hope to see attitudes improve over time.

We deliver our campaigns through a small in-house resource, lots of in-kind support and sponsorship. We’re delighted that Hobbycraft are supporting us with free bunting material throughout the year. Community Ventures are kindly sponsoring our launch event.

This year, in partnership with the Healthy Living Service, we’re also fundraising for equipment and resources that we can use to help people who use our services be physically active.

If you’d like to find out more about the campaign, get involved either individually or as a service, we’d love to hear from you.

Here’s a link to more campaign information and a regular blog on our website: www.whatsyourgoal.org.uk