The beginning of this month saw over 200 people from around the country come together at the National Service User Awards 2019 to celebrate the fantastic work being done nationally by service user teams in mental health services to improve mental health and recovery.
The day was a fantastic celebration of inclusion and achievement, with individuals proud to share their stories of recovery. The black tie event was held at the beautiful Colwick Hall in Nottingham, where teams of service users and support staff representing eight projects at three Cygnet Health Care services waited eagerly to hear if they had won.
Cygnet Hospital Derby won the very first award of the day! This was the Raising Mental Health Awareness Award, which recognises work that challenges the stigma towards mental health or that raises awareness and educates people on mental health.
Their award winning initiative was the ‘Community Partnership Development Manager Project’. As part of the expansion of Cygnet Hospital Derby’s Recovery and Wellbeing Academy, the team created the Community Partnership Development Manager post to help create new partnerships and opportunities for their service users.
They weren’t the only Cygnet team celebrating at the awards – Service users from Cygnet Hospital Kewstoke went on to win the Recovery and the Arts Award, which celebrates projects that promote and support recovery through arts such as painting, music or drama. The winning project ‘The Recovery College – Learn to Play the Ukulele’ was an initiative suggested and driven forward by a service user who was passionate about the ukulele as a tool for recovery.
The four week course was fully co-produced to provide service users and staff alike with the opportunity to learn to tune, care for and play the ukulele. The group chose songs to learn to play and sing, culminating in a performance at the Christmas carol concert. The feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive – as Phoebe from Cygnet Hospital Kewstoke says, “If I can do it, ‘uke’ can do it too!”
We are so proud of all our teams who were shortlisted as finalists for the National Service User Awards 2019 and we would like to say a huge congratulations to Cygnet Hospital Derby and Cygnet Hospital Kewstoke. Well done everyone.
For full details of all the winners please visit the National Service User Awards website.