This is our FIRST blog post, WOW! It genuinely feels a pleasure to be able to talk about what we are, what we do and who we are here to help. The Café opened late last year (October 2016) and has slowly built up a head of steam, with the number of visitors we have received so far increasing slowly and surely, being more busy as we go. We are
Advocacy is all about helping people who use services to speak up, to be heard and to have influence – in other words to be involved in their own lives and in anything that impacts on their lives. Touchstone’s Kirklees Advocacy Service was designed from the ground up to achieve that. Here’s some of the ways that the service helped people to get more involved during 2016-2017 1. Involvement in
New Wortley Community Association (NWCA) has been successful in securing a grant to develop an exciting Community Led Housing project in West Leeds. This is a positive boost for the local community and builds upon the success of a number of other initiatives which NWCA already have up and running in the area. This local charity has major ambitions to improve the quality of life of residents of New Wortley.
Once again this year Touchstone staff celebrated all that is “Pink” about Leeds during Pride 2017. Not only did staff march tall with our Pink Pals banner in the parade, we also had a stall in partnership with Leeds Mind and Community Links to raise awareness of mental health amongst the LGBT+ and non-LGBT communities in Leeds and beyond. The day began for us at 9am but, with our mental
On 6th July 2017, Touchstone hosted Leeds’ second coproduction conference. This time to coincide with national coproduction week. The aims of the conference were 3 fold: To shine a light on the existing examples of coproduction in the region To introduce more people to the “I Statements” and their place in mental health commissioning in Leeds To start the process of developing a coproduction kitemark for Leeds (and hopefully wider) by establishing a
On 31 March 2017 there were over 1500 active service users accessing Touchstone services. This suggests that on any given day we have around 1500 live service users across Touchstone. Half of Touchstone’s live service users come from BME backgrounds. All Touchstone services have a BME service user profile above the 2011 Census baseline. The percentage of active service users defining themselves as bisexual, gay or lesbian is about 5%
The 'We' is our service users and they always know what is best. This has been reinforced by what our service users think and say about Touchstone in this years annual service user survey results. The key headlines are: Overall 95% of service user respondents indicated that Touchstone is an excellent to good organisation. Quality of support/service – 94% of respondents indicated they received an excellent to good service in
The first Saturday of July is International Free Hugs Day. Maybe you've seen someone in your town centre holding up a hand-made sign that says "Free Hugs" - and delivering on that promise by hugging anyone that approaches them. Quite possibly you've already seen themusic video below, that shows the advent of this Free Hugs movement. If not, go ahead and take a few minutes right now. The story behind
The election is finally behind us. The Labour Party had most of the eye-catching policies – and community businesses could provide the next big idea, writes our guest blogger Bill Graham from New Wortley. (This blog was originally published on the Power to Change website). One of the ideas was to turn the education system into an NES – or national education service. I suppose some of the thinking behind this
Steph Lewis from the Community Development Service explains how and why a Winter Wellbeing project has turned into a service that's offered all year round. In January 2017 ELHFA and CDS services jointly started the Winter Wellbeing Project which was based on the very successful Winter Wellbeing Café run during the winter of 2016. The Winter Wellbeing Project recognised that many people living in some of the most disadvantaged areas