An update from our Director

I hope this e-bulletin finds you all fit and healthy, and suitably adjusting to your new lives during the Covid-19 outbreak. It is a challenging time for us all, both as individuals and as a global community. We encourage you to check out our blog area and related articles for things to consider to help you stay well ‘Covid-19: Resilience in Adversity’ and ‘No one Told the Sunshine!’ and please share our ‘Get Support Now’ page with anyone you think may need it during this time.

Like yourselves, the Mind Matters team look forward to a time when this is behind us, and where we can all take the positive learning from it. Because we are looking to the future, it is important for Mind Matters to consider both the current and future impact of C19, and I feel it useful to share our plans with you:

Digital Learning

MHFA England have last week announced that suitably qualified MHFA Instructors can deliver 3 of their training products: Adult (4 hour) Mental Health Aware; Youth (3 hour) Mental Health Aware; and the newly launched 4 hour MHFA Refresher – the latter aimed at delegates who have previously completed the 1 or 2 day courses 3 years+ ago.
We have scheduled an open MHFA Refresher course on Friday 29th May 1-5pm. If you would like to book your place you can do so via Eventbrite here.

We are also liaising with LivingWorks Canada regarding discounted places on their course LivingWorks Start and are asking our customers who are interested to send us a registration of interest with likely delegate numbers. Discounts will be based on volume so it’s important for us to establish this first.

There is also another program of Mental Health awareness courses we may be able to deliver in the coming weeks/months, but as yet we are still in talks with the provider. We will keep you posted on future developments.

Postponed Courses

For those of our customers who took the appropriate decision to postpone your training course with us, I would encourage you to start considering your preferred future training dates. I advise looking at dates from late June/July onwards and Mind Matters is offering flexible services to deliver your course on a weekend if this will minimise future impact on your business. We encourage you to forward your dates as soon as possible so you can secure your preferences. Should we need to forward-move the course again, we will do this – our Cancellation Policy WILL NOT apply to Covid-19 changes. We anticipate a high future demand for training courses, due to the backlog of organisations wanting our courses, and the unfortunate impact on mental health that C19 may also have. Focus on supporting mental health is a key feature of C19 publicity, as we would expect. This raised profile increases peoples awareness which increases demand on the services we offer at Mind Matters.

New Course Bookings

Whilst we are on a period of lock-down for everyone’s safety, we are still ‘open for business’. We are still taking new bookings both for in-house and open virtual courses (during lockdown) and for future face-to-face open and in-house course deliveries. You will find our open course dates here. We have minimal staffing levels at the moment but all emails will be responded to within 24 hours. If you would like to discuss any of our courses, make a booking, or look at potential training dates, please do get in touch. As referred to above, we anticipate an increased future demand for our services and are keen to put plans in place to prepare for this.

We thank you for the kindness and support you have shown both myself and my team during this time and we wish you good health and mental wellbeing and look forward to working with you at the earliest opportunity!

Stay home, stay safe everyone!

Jane McNeice
Founding Director
Mind Matters