We will rent new facilities to run our activities from, based in Blackpool Town Centre. Our initial consultation with 40 people has indicated need for such a provision running at different times during the week and to include: more informal drop-in one-to-one advice and support sessions; more workshops to improve coping strategies to self-manage mental health; life skills training courses; social activities such as group meals out and walks; and a Community Cafe. We will run peer mentoring and mental health training to build up our volunteer mentoring cohort. We will undertake Business Planning to implement our developments including a sustainability strategy. Within this we will have training on fundraising and marketing for our trustee and volunteer team. Part of the project will be evaluating our one-to-one sessions and group work to build an evidence base for future development. This will make a difference in: • Reducing social isolation and loneliness that comes with mental illnes

What we'll deliver:

• Reduce lonliness
• Build a local community hub
• Reduce reliance on mental health services
• Promote well-being in service users
• Open a cafe to promote social engagement

Why it's a great idea:

We will bring people together by providing a safe and welcoming environment for people with similar mental health issues. Group support sessions, workshops and social activities will foster healthy relationship building. The Community Cafe will enable people to meet and develop friendships and our volunteer mentors will develop relationships both as a group and with service users. This new Town Centre development will improve a place that matters greatly to the local community, making it clear that we care about the most vulnerable and offering activities they can participate in. The project will enable us to help more people by expanding from two hours weekly to a diverse offer to better meet their needs. It will enable people with mental health issues to better manage depression, anxiety, stress and phobias, particularly social phobias, to reach their potential, with both one-to-one and group support as early as we can engage them.

Steps to get it done:

• Identify building
• rent building
• Reduce social isolation
• create new volunteers

Our initial consultation with 40 current group members and other local people via online survey showed 97.5% of respondents felt that adults in Blackpool did not have enough access to mental health services; 100% that Blackpool needed a service with no waiting list; 71% favoured the Town Centre as a location; and the response to timings showed a need for sessions on weekdays, evenings and weekends. We regularly ask for input from our group members but also on social media where we have over 1800 facebook followers and, in our private group, 267 local people who we have directly supported. All peer mentor volunteers are former service users and will be involved in delivery of both one-to-one support and being leaders for group sessions. If funding can be expedited, this will be used to support work we have developed in the past 2 weeks using Zoom and Google Hangouts. We will be setting up a steering group for this project bringing together volunteers and service users to direct its deve