Creating a safe space to foster inclusion
Welling Salvation Army Team go above and beyond to welcome every single person into their community, fostering an environment of inclusion, acceptance and love.
They offer vital support to those who suffer from loneliness or are struggling to make ends meet, providing safe spaces for social events like coffee mornings and running a foodbank. For this incredibly important work, the team at Welling Salvation Army have been nominated for a Kent Mental Wellbeing Award.
The team run a weekly coffee morning and lunch club, where volunteers go the extra distance to make attendees feel welcome and comfortable in their surroundings. They listen to people and take care to remember individual stories, likes/dislikes, and personal events like birthdays and anniversaries, always making time to check up on you.
They have three different ‘tables’ which attendees can sit at, each of which offer different activities: 1) the quiet table, for reading newspapers 2) the creative table, which offers different creative activities such as card making, bag making and canvas decorating 3) the games table, offering attendees a variety of games to play. The team also provides space for a support corner which gives attendees a space to talk privately and seek further support about a particular issue.
They are also responsible for the running of a foodbank, which helps those on low incomes to make ends meet by providing them with discounted and/or free items of food and toiletries.
The team at Welling Salvation Army are heavily reliant on donations and fundraising activities such as afternoon teas, abseils, sponsored walks and sponsored concertina-thons to fund their events, and many members of the team have suffered from ill health, family bereavements and family breakdowns in the past.
Despite this, they always come together to support those in need by fostering a sense of inclusion, acceptance and love in all that they do.
The Welling Salvation Army team are always looking for ways to educate themselves so that they can better support the community. Recently, the team arranged training with individuals from Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust who helped to raise awareness about the different kinds of support available in the community, how to support people and how to look after themselves when supporting others.
The Kent Mental Wellbeing awards is an annual event designed to showcase the people, organisations and initiatives that help us cope with life. The event’s three themes are: kindness and compassion; wellbeing; mental health.
Whether it is in school, business, community or family, so many of us have been lucky to have people and organisations with ideas, tips and tactics to help us cope. It is time to celebrate those mental health and well-being champions in our community and share this best practice.
The awards will be staged in October by the mental health charity Mind in Bexley and East Kent in collaboration with a range of wellbeing and mental health organisations.
Nominations can be linked to a simple act of kindness that lifted the spirits, a business that has improved staff wellbeing, through to a targeted initiative delivered by a charity or statutory organisation to support a mental health issue.
The event is sponsored by Kent County Council, Kent Community Foundation, ADM Computing, GrainLNG – National Grid, Medway Council, Optyma Security, Ble Global, Wave Community Bank, Cactus Graphics and CommunityAid.
Submit nominations at www.kentmentalwellbeingawards.org.uk For awards news follow @KentMWAwards on Facebook and X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
