See Me

See Me LogoProject: Community Champions

Client: See Me

Country: Scotland

Goal: To develop and deliver a training programme to support the See Me Community Champions.

Approach: The See Me campaign focuses upon attitudes towards mental health. It was relaunched in 2015, with a focus on behaviour change, and designed to empower those who had experience of mental health problems to make changes and challenge stereotypes as Community Champions.

Northern Star worked with the See Me team to develop a flexible participatory training programme for the Community Champions, ensuring that it was more leadership development based so the Community Champions were directly responsible for designing the projects they would be involved in. The focus was on using a range of different methods and practices to encourage the Community Champions to use their own ideas, and give them the skills and frameworks to tackle key issues in their area. The pilot of the project was rolled out in Glasgow and South West Scotland, supported by Northern Star

Result: A number of projects are now active in their local area across different settings, with more planned for rollout. Examples include Community Champions working with young people at a local youth group drop-in centre to engage visitors, working with artists to think about mental health and behaviour change, and working with HR teams and unions within the work place to deliver training for managers, and the impacts of staff within the workplace when they have mental health issues. One project is a taking a more research based approach, seeking to identify why low numbers of students with mental health issues are accessing disability services, in comparison to those with physical disabilities.