Action Mental Health is calling on returning holiday makers to donate their leftover foreign currency to help take action on mental health.

Jonathan Smyth, Fundraising and Communications Manager with the charity, launched the appeal alongside Danske Bank’s Eddie Taylor and Lynsey Jamison.

Call into any Danske Bank across Northern Ireland to drop off your foreign, or out of circulation currency. All money raised will go towards Action Mental Health’s programme to promote mental and emotional well-being in children.

AMH Boost is a young people’s programme for 18-25 year olds experiencing mental health challenges.  Boost aims to help rebuild confidence and self-esteem to enable participant to re-engage with mainstream education and/or employment.

AMH Boost is delivered in AMH New Horizons Fermanagh and is part of the ESF Working It Out Project.

The Boost Team worked alongside Youth Action and Loophole Design to produce this animated film.  The sessions were delivered in the FIND centre Enniskillen our local “one stop shop” .

The young people have a very keen interest in IT, art and social media and thought that In order to raise the profile of BOOST they could create a short, sharp, impactful animation to share far and wide!

The BOOST group met over 4 sessions with the animation team creating storyboards, design ideas, scripting and then finally the really fun part of doing the voice-overs. A lot of fun and laughter was had creating the project and a lot of brilliant ideas unfortunately ended up in the cutting room floor.

This project helped the young people to reflect on their own journey with mental health services and what messages they would like to have had when they were beginning their treatment. The BOOST team know that the need for mental health support is great in society among young people and are passionate about BOOST and want more members to join the project. They hope if enough people share this short animation, that it will encourage more young people to join or at least take the first step and look for help.

We are very grateful to Cillin from Loophole Designs for this enthusiastic and compassionate approach as he worked with our young people.

It is hoped that we will be creating a new animation around the “5 ways to wellbeing”…. so watch this space.

AMH Boost – Boosting young people’s confidence & self-esteem in Fermanagh from Action Mental Health on Vimeo.

AMH, Northern Ireland’s largest mental health charity has warmly welcomed the announcement of a major cash injection for mental health services as a result of the DUP / Conservative Party deal. Speaking after it was announced that £10Million a year for 5 years will be made available specifically for mental health services, David Babington, chief executive of Action Mental Health said,

“Action Mental Health would like to warmly welcome this announcement of significant extra funding for mental health services in Northern Ireland. For some time, we have worked closely with all of the political parties in Northern Ireland to lobby for improvements in mental health service provision to recognise long term under investment, and the specific historical issues which exist here.”

He added,

“We are pleased that this work has been reflected in the new deal and we look forward to working with a reconstituted Northern Ireland Executive to see this funding rolled out. We are particularly keen to move forward quickly on the establishment of a Mental Health Advocate or champion for Northern Ireland, to ensure that we have a whole Executive response to the challenges of adequately dealing with Northern Ireland’s long term mental health underinvestment.”

You can read the details of the UK Government’s Financial Support for Northern Ireland here

Our thanks to all the brave fundraisers who turned out in force on Sunday morning to abseil down the Europa hotel in Belfast in aid of Action Mental Health.

Staff from our charity partners also participated, with 12 from Fane Valley and 21 from Danske Bank.

You can check out images from the event on our Events & Fundraising Facebook page.

Well done to everyone who took part!

If you follow us on Facebook & Twitter, you’ll know that during Volunteers’ Week we turned the spotlight on just some of our clients who volunteer as part of our ESF Working it Out Project.  Volunteers’ week is an annual celebration of the fantastic contribution millions of volunteers make across the UK. It takes place from 1st-7th June every year.

Chris McKeag is on a Work Based Training Placement at Oxfam in Newtownards.  He is doing this as part of his NVQ Retail Level 2 qualification that he is completing with AMH New Horizons North Down & Ards.  He has been supported by his Retail Skills Coach, Aisling Deery and his colleague Maureen.  He wanted to take the time to thank Oxfam for their time and commitment to him in showing him the vocational skills needed to pursue a career in retail.

“My placement is great.  My colleagues are friendly and I enjoy the variation of tasks that I am involved in.  It’s an excellent opportunity to get practical experience reinforcing what I have learned on my course.  Claire has been a tremendous support to me and I am so grateful for all of her help”.