October 3, 2024

Project Manager for Step Forward into Volunteering and Employment, Shelley Studholme, gives us an update on the programme’s activities during another busy month:

We’ve been busy as Summer entered the beautiful Season of Autumn. We left the end of Summer high on the happiness of attending the wonderful Social Prescribing Wellbeing Festival at Whitehaven Rugby Club, which was a wonderful mix of wellbeing, joy and positive mental and physical health messages raising the profile of services available to support the community.

We had a busy month of referrals in August and matched our busiest number of referrals in February 2023 and June 2024 this year and hit 12 referrals in one month…whooopee! We have thus far had 155 referrals and 59 placement outcomes, with many wonderful stories and feedback of positive, impactful, value added and transformative movement forward for the clients we have supported.

As we entered September we hosted the second Holistic Employment Meeting at Cumbria CVS Shaddongate. This saw 30 organisations sign up to attend, stating that there was a real need for this meeting to network, share resources, learning, collaborate and build strong relationships that facilitated warm handovers/hugs between services and organisations; something the 3rd sector does really well. The next meeting will be chaired by Dylan Wilby from The Well and will see Dylan share the Hub and Spoke model of Recovery and Shane Brynne share the value of Access to Work to enabling and creating greater accessibility to opportunities within the workplace.

Maria joined the team as a Volunteering and Employment Officer, maintaining her dual role as our Admin and Referral Coordinator and we are delighted to have her on board. Hopefully Maria will manage to balance the many hats she now wears. Lee Rose, who led the Glenmore Trust from Disability Confident Employer to Disability Lead status – congratulations – earlier this year submitted a proposal to Cumbria CVS to enable us to follow the same path. Thank you for your hard work and dedication reference this, Lee.

Later on in September I was privileged to attend the Whitehaven DWP, invited by Helen Herbert, to deliver a Mid Life MOT session and the value of volunteering, whilst raising the profile of the Step Forward Service to a cohort of age 50+ individuals. I had a marvellous time listening to members of the community, with lived and real experiences. The profile of Step Forward, volunteering, mental health, reasonable adjustments and the pro-employee government reforms were subjects that we covered, amongst other wonderful stories of positive volunteering experiences.

In the same week I attended the Association of Project Managers network meeting at Solway Hall, Whitehaven to listen to the exceptional Jo Waddington, Managing Director of ThinkOTB – a Creative Marketing and Advertising Professional, whose words of wisdom and insight into innovative communication was valuable and impactful. The delivery was “Effective Communication is not just an asset-it’s a necessity.”

The same week saw myself and Sam Peters attend the NADT (North Allerdale Development Trust) Awards night at The M-Sport Dovenby Headquarters. We were acknowledged as a collaborative partner to the wonderful, inspirational and impactful NADT…thank you. The NADT empowers young people aged 8 to 25 and supports community projects throughout North Cumbria, prioritising the emotional and social well-being of young people, music to my ears! On the awards night exceptional, gifted, talented and inspirational young people were acknowledged for the work they have done and continue to do under the support, guidance of NADT and their incredible ability to nourish the potential of those who enter their service…BIG SHOUT OUT to NADT and their extraordinary team.

Autumn already plans to be busy, the diary is full, and I look forward to sharing what we the Step Forward team have been busy with next time, until then keep normalising the conversations around mental health and remember it’s nice to be nice!