A new two year project providing mental health and well-being support for women aged 18-25 has launched following funding from the North Yorkshire and York Community Mental Health Transformation programme.
ROSE Growing builds on Kyra Women’s Project previous work with the ROSE (Reaching Out, Supporting, Empowering) group of younger women looking to make positive changes in their lives. The funding from the North Yorkshire and York Community Mental Health Transformation Fund, is part of the Connecting Our City project, and is an exciting collaboration demonstrating how the voluntary sector can contribute to improving mental health.
The project
The project will bring twice weekly group sessions for the young women, as well as two additional well-being courses each year. As part of the project, members have been working on photography with local photographer Lucy Bedford to create images to represent ‘Mental Health and Me’.
At the launch attendees had the chance to see some of the photographs taken by ROSE members including the image recently ‘Highly Commended’ in the Two Ridings Community Foundation photography competition.
Supporting young women
Sherrie Wood, Project Leader for the ROSE Growing project, said: “Many of the young women who come to us are struggling with their mental health and they find the activities we do and the peer support makes a big difference to their coping.“
One of the ROSE members commented on what the group means to her, saying: “Because of my autism, I can find it hard talking to new people. Trying to navigate and balance mental health recovery with things such as education and coping with demands of life can be extremely difficult. Coming to ROSE has helped me feel more confident socially and I feel this massively helped me when I first started university… Although I have support through the community mental health team, I hugely benefit from coming to the ROSE project.”
Community Mental Health Transformation
The North Yorkshire and York Community Mental Health Transformation programme sees the NHS, public sector organisations, the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector and people with lived experience of mental health conditions working collaboratively to transform the way people are supported in their local communities.
The programme is investing in community-based schemes that can support people to live well in their local communities and address mental health problems before they escalate.
David Kerr, programme and Delivery Lead for York Community Mental Health Transformation programme, Tess, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust explains: “Community groups and schemes such as ROSE can address some of the issues that can affect people’s mental wellbeing in the first place, such as social isolation, anxiety and depression.
“Taking a different approach and investing in local community schemes not only offers people alternative support, but also provides a form of early intervention by potentially addressing people’s needs before their problems worsen and there becomes a need for a referral to secondary mental health services.”
The ROSE Growing project will run until June 2024 and evaluation will include improvements in the young women’s mental health and ability to cope with everyday tasks, as well as changes to their use of health services.
