Promoting Well Being

The Older People’s Mental Health Forum was established to address and support the mental health promotion needs of older people.  It is representative of a range of older peoples groups and organisations that work together with provider services from statutory and voluntary sectors to address mental health and wellbeing and associated issues.  Each year the Forum organizes an annual conference/workshop.  Older Peoples’ groups were asked to identify four key priority areas they would like addressed at the workshop and a programme was put together to provide information on the four most popular areas.  Participants decided on a plan of action for the next year to use available funding.  Bereavement/befriending training was a top priority and it was agreed to link this into pre-existing programmes to support reaching the more socially isolated older people especially men who were bereaved.  As a follow on from this workshop the Promoting Wellbeing team trained older people in wellbeing skills so that they could bring back their learning to their specific groups/organisations.  This has been a hugely successful.