Charity with your problem in mind

IN any group of four people, it’s likely that one of them will have had some kind of mental health issue in the past year.

Now Oldham Council has commissioned the charity Tameside and Glossop Mind to open new offices in the town centre, to help local people with their mental health worries. Janice Barker found out about the new addition to Oldham’s Adult Services.

Feeling a bit down, low, depressed due to the weather and post-Christmas blues?

That’s normal at this time of year. But add on unemployment, loneliness, and rising bills, and that’s a recipe for what could become a mental health issue.

The Mental Health Foundation charity says one in four people will experience some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year.

And mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in Britain.

As people in Oldham struggle with the recession, job losses and mortgage problems, the long-established charity Tameside and Glossop Mind has opened new offices in Hunters Lane, just off Yorkshire Street, near the Hare and Hounds pub.

The light, bright and modern two storey building opened 10 months ago, after Oldham Council and the local primary care trust NHS Oldham provided £200,000 to commission the charity to work across the borough.

It was a big step, as it meant the charity doubled in size, and also had to change its constitution and employ extra staff, becoming Tameside, Oldham and Glossop Mind.

But Paul Davies, service director for adult and social care at Oldham Council, says it was a good move because the borough was “really, seriously deficient in a good response at the human level for mental health well being services.”

He added: “We worked very hard to find an appropriate partner.

“The stigma has not entirely gone from mental health, and we wanted somewhere where people or their carers can talk to people who really understand the issues.

“People don’t spend all their lives being mentally ill, they have spells when they are not well, and then they recover.

“It is a health issue just like having a broken leg.

“We needed to put in place a framework where people can live their normal lives and get on the journey to recovery, get back to work etc, and thus far it has been fantastically successful.

“We want Mind Tameside, Oldham and Glossop to act as an advocacy service, raise awareness of mental health issues and make people feel there is no stigma to admitting to a mental health problem — we don’t want people to be ashamed to ask for help.

“And we want people to get involved.”

Tameside and Glossop Mind has been going for over 30 years, and its public face is not a stuffy office but an award winning cafe in Ashton town centre.

Topaz, in Katherine Street, has won Tameside Food and Drink Festival’s best vegetarian restaurant award, and was short listed for the curry chef title.

Richard Edwards, the charity’s director, reckons 42 per cent of people visiting the charity say the impact of the recession is what has driven them there. But he added: “Anyone can use the cafe, and we get everyone from businessmen to single mothers, but if they want to have a quiet word with our staff, we can take them upstairs.

“We want to re-create that atmosphere in Oldham.

“It was a big vote of confidence to take a leap of faith to move into another borough, doubling the scale of our project.

“We are absolutely delighted that we have a presence in the borough and very eager to expand.”

Fozia Amin, Oldham’s services manager for Mind, heads a staff of seven, and is involved with advocacy, out reach work, carer and family support, and community engagement.

She’s helped set up in a town centre roadshow which involved 1,000 local people, radio interviews, leaflets distribution in shops and service such as libraries, dealing with inquiries and building links with other services.

At the moment, people can use the Oldham Mind service after referral from a GP, health service, social worker or other contact, but the aim is to open the ground floor as a community cafe and drop in in the next two years.

The Mental Health Foundation statistics also show that depression affects one in five older people living in the community and two in five living in care homes.

Councillor Brian Lord, cabinet member for adult services and health, said: “Older people may have nobody else to turn to, yet most people who come to councillors, usually at the end of the line, have been in touch with a series of different bodies, from health visitors to social workers.

“We all have a responsibility to support these people and if we see problems we need to get the message across to get people to the right place.

“The council cannot do everything for everyone, and so we are working in partnership with services like Mind, because we want to provide as many opportunities as we can to help the people we look after.

“We need a range of options because one size doesn’t fit all. In adult services we are in the top echelon in the country, only a couple of points away from being judged excellent in every area.

“We are not being complacent but in many fields we are leading the way, and this is one illustration of this.”