Mental Health First Aid North East - Quiet Week

I've just come to the end of a quiet,but productive week. As I explained in my last post things become very busy from the second week in February so I have been gathering my resources in more ways than one.

I'm generally not the most organised of people and I have to admit that up till now I have been arriving at courses with all that I need to present (handouts, manuals, projector laptop and speakers etc etc) in a variety of different boxes and bags. This can make it quite a performance getting things into the room in which I am presenting, often involving multiple trips to and from the car. I remember one course, in Northumberland County Hall, where setting up felt like an assault course.

Well, last Saturday I went out to our local Staples and found exactly what I needed to solve the problem. A large partitioned plastic box that allows for suspension files.This means that I can carry handouts , projector, speakers etc all in one. The only potential problem was the  size and weight. This was solved by a trip down to York the next day (to deliver two stuffed birds of prey to a friend, but that's another story). We wandered into Lakeland Plastics and I found a sturdy little fold up trolley, complete with bungee cords, for under a tenner. The box fits nicely on the trolley and hey presto.

I've also spent some time looking at the course resources and how I can make them more user friendly, both for myself and for participants. We hand out a lot of feedback forms at the end of a course and I always take a lot of notice of the comments made on them. Last May someone commented that continuity suffered as a result of me having to jump between powerpoint and the DVD we carry. I took this on board and found some video software that allowed me to upload the video clips onto thehard drive of my laptop. This allowed me to leave the DVD in my bag as back up.

However I still wasn't completely happy with this as I still had to jump between programs. I solved this this week by finally embedding the video clips into the body of the Powerpoint presentation. I also found some video software that enabled me to edit one clip to cut a section that was completely out of context to the question that was being asked.

I'm wise enough to still have Version 1 on a memory stick that I carry with me but I'm quite eager to test this out at my next course.

So, fourteen months in I'm finally starting to feel organised. I've even spent some time in the office developing a proper filing sysyem to collate all the information I need about upcoming courses.  This means that I can lift the file for a course out of the cabinet, tell Miss Diane the postcode of the venue (Miss Diane is my trusty SatNav) put the file in the box and away we go.

The other thing that happened this week is that I finalised arrangements with a group at my local Arts Centre to present a course to their workers there. It's an interesting project that involves artists working with people with mental health problems. The organisers are keen that the artists should be properly trained to understand mental helth problems, spot the signs and symptoms of a problem developing and be able to guide a person to appropriate professional help.

We are now looking at dates in the third and forth week of April.

You can find more information on Mental Health First Aid at my website www.mentalhealthfirstaidnortheast.co.uk