Project aims to help mental health and well-being

SOME 1,000 people will benefit from the new community health and well-being programmes being rolled out in recent days by Strabane Health Improvement Project.

Including mental health packs, arts and crafts packs and hundreds of innovative worry doll’s for children, the programme is already underway.

“As part of our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we have continued to develop new and innovative programmes with the help and support of the local community,” Jarlath McNulty from Strabane Health Improvement Project explained.

“This month we are delighted to announce that we will be rolling out a number of new programmes to support the community at this difficult time.

“Between all of these programmes and activities we will be supporting around a 1,000 participants and their families to get more active and more creative.”

One of these programmes was a pilot children’s  mental health support project which saw over 300 packs being delivered to St Catherine’s Primary School in Strabane. Each pack contained  a number of simple activities that will help support the mental health of the children.

“Already our feedback from the community to this programme has been very positive and we are hoping to expand this programme in the coming weeks and months,” Jarlath continued. “Another programme we had saw 400 small Guatemalan ‘worry dolls’  being distributed to young children. These worry dolls originate from a Guatemalan tradition. In  this tradition worry dolls are given out to anxious children. 200 of the dolls are already assembled for giving out to children the other 200 are in packs for the child to assemble with their parent or guardian. We will be starting to give these out over the next few days.

“We also have hundreds of small, individual and family arts and craft packs which we will be disturbing to the community in the coming weeks. These are simple craft packs and are suitable for children, adults and older members of our community. They are aimed at supporting individuals  and families to stay active during lockdown.

“None of these activities or programmes would be possible without the support and help of the funding organisations. So we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank them all, the National Lottery and the many National Lottery players, Derry and Strabane District Council the Department for Communities.”

Jarlath concluded, “As a community health and well-being organisation we look forward to supporting our community health and well-being in the weeks and months ahead.”