Blog

Marsha P. Johnson #BlackHistoryMonth

Marsha P. Johnson was an African American transgender woman and revolutionary LGBTQ rights activist. She is credited for being an instigator in the Stonewall riots. Who Was Marsha P. Johnson? Marsha P. Johnson was an African American transgender women who was an LGBTQ rights activist and an outspoken advocate for trans people of colour. Johnson spearheaded the Stonewall uprising in 1969 and along with Sylvia Rivera, she later established the

2020-04-17T11:48:02+01:004th October 2019|Black History Month, Blog|

Margaret Busby publisher #BlackHistoryMonth

Born in Accra in the Gold Coast to parents with roots in Barbados, Trinidad and Dominica, she became Britain’s youngest and first Black woman book publisher, when in 1967 she co-founded Allison & Busby with Clive Allison (1944-2011). “We started off with virtually no money and thought we would go into making volumes of poetry accessible and affordable to young people like ourselves. So we printed 15,000 paperback poetry books

2020-04-17T11:50:49+01:002nd October 2019|Black History Month, Blog|

My volunteering experience at Hamari Yaadain Dementia Café

Before coming to Touchstone, I was not unfamiliar with being around individuals living with dementia; my grandfather was diagnosed 5 years ago, and I have seen first-hand how his condition has progressed, and the effects this has had on him and other family members. While my grandparents are regular attendees of the group, I had no idea what to expect! However, I was pleasantly surprised… I was impressed with the

2020-04-17T11:54:03+01:0030th September 2019|Blog, Community, Dementia, Families, Volunteering|

World Suicide Prevention day Blog September 2019

10th September is World Suicide Prevention Day. It is also the day Leeds will launch its latest Suicide Audit findings from 2014-2016, alongside information on the work the City is funding to support suicide prevention; including our own Mentally Healthy Leeds. According to the Alliance of Suicide Prevention Charities (TASC), suicide is the greatest cause of death amongst young men (15-44) in the UK as well as many young women

2019-09-10T09:00:50+01:0010th September 2019|Blog, Crisis support, Suicide|

The Well-Bean Crisis Cafe – Hope in a crisis blog: September 2019 – World Suicide Prevention Day

(Written by Matthew Hall – LSLCS Crisis Support Worker at WBC) Tuesday 10/9/19 this week represents World Suicide Prevention Day around the world.  As a worker in this service who has personally been bereaved by suicide, as well as supporting visitors to our service who have always experienced this – I feel it is incredibly important that as a service that we acknowledge and reflect on the impact suicide

2024-10-08T11:13:03+01:009th September 2019|Blog, Crisis support|

#PartnersInPride: Touchstone Taking Pride in Mental Health at Leeds Pride 2019

Another year, another fabulous show of Touchstone supporting the LGBT+ community at Leeds Pride! Partnering with Leeds Mind, Live Well Leeds, and Community Links, this year our #PartnersInPride saw a great turn out for the biggest parade ever seen at Leeds Pride, with 130 companies parading and over 60,000 spectators. P.S. Ours was the big red vintage bus, full of and surrounded by our celebratory colleagues and clients – and

2019-09-04T10:05:08+01:004th September 2019|Blog, Equality and Diversity, LGBT*|

Xine Magazine

Check out Xine, a new quarterly magazine from Non-Binary Action. https://nonbinaryaction.org/xine Non-Binary Action campaigns for the rights and respect of non-binary people and other marginalised groups. Xine is a quarterly publication from Non-Binary Action to share articles, interviews, reviews, poetry, art, stories and other work by non-binary people across the world.        

2019-08-29T15:53:27+01:0029th August 2019|Blog, LGBT History Month, LGBT*|

Sharing Good Practice Working With BAME Clients In IAPT

In June here at Touchstone we were asked to present a workshop at the PWP National Networking Forum for IAPT in Birmingham. Aniysa Azam (Senior PWP) and myself (Deputy Manager) went and shared the Touchstone PWP team's learning over the last 6 years on topics of: common challenges in delivering a good quality and equitable service to clients from Black and Minority backgrounds and what Touchstone have done to overcome these challenges. We covered how to challenge

2019-08-05T10:38:45+01:005th August 2019|Blog, CBT, Equality and Diversity|

Why Yorkshire? By Iby Knill

              For Yorkshire Day 2019, we interviewed Iby Knill on her experiences and reasons for moving to Yorkshire in the 1960's. "It was 1962. I was employed as Welfare Training Officer by Berkshire County. Then, one day, somebody at County Headquarters thought that it might be an idea to send me to a Home Office Training Course at a god-forsaken place called Easingwold in

2019-08-01T14:00:37+01:001st August 2019|Blog, Community, Yorkshire|