We are delighted to announce that The Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity will be our chosen Event Charity Partner for The SHE Show North East!
The Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity is the only charity that provides emotional, physical and financial wellbeing support to the construction community and their families.
A crucial element of the charity’s strategy is to provide a wide range of free and widely available pro-active resources to support the industry.
The charity provides a 24/7 Construction Industry Helpline which provides a range of free and confidential wellbeing support services and this is complemented by their free Construction Industry Helpline App which offers expert guidance on a huge variety of wellbeing issues.
They also offer a variety of free construction focused training programmes ranging from hour long interactive wellbeing masterclasses through to the MHFA England approved Mental Health First Aider course.
Their latest hard hitting campaign; Help Inside the Hard Hat aims to raise awareness of mental health issues in our industry and signposts our construction community to the wide variety of support available.
Bill Hill, CEO of the charity shares the charity’s mission for 2022
Awareness: Help Inside the Hard Hat
Our ‘Help Inside the Hard Hat’ campaign aims to raise awareness of mental health issues in the industry. We’re urging everyone to take time to look inside the hard hat and make sure that you are looking out for your friend or colleague. We want to see our campaign posters and helpline numbers on every site in the UK and Ireland to let people know that there is support available for them. We are making all of the resources completely free to download and share, so whether it’s an A4 poster or artwork for site hoardings, we want to urge everyone to get involved and share the message. This campaign complements our existing distribution of Helpline posters and cards.
Local Support: Lighthouse Beacons
We are developing a nationwide network of ‘safe places’ for our construction community to talk independently from employers in a confidential environment about their issues. This is not a new concept and organisations like Alcoholics Anonymous have been running these for years. Several have now been created independently within construction i.e., ‘Man Gang’ in the Southampton area and ‘Speakers Collective.’ Our initiative is not to rename these terrific resources but to qualify them as ‘Lighthouse Beacons’ ensuring that they have good facilitation and support with signposting for those with difficult issues.
Changing Future Culture: Supporting Apprentices
We are piloting a mental wellbeing support programme with London Colleges to instil a positive appreciation of mental wellbeing at the start of a construction career. We are currently providing mental health awareness training to 1000 apprentices and Mental Health First Aid training to 100 tutors. We’re also collaborating with the Rainy Day Trust to offer free tool kits and laptops to apprentices that are failing their apprenticeship due to affordability of tools or IT equipment.
Education: Mind Builder
This is a new project with Building Mental Health and Samaritans, funded by the CITB. It will deliver a central hub of high-quality wellbeing assets and learning suitable for all occupational groups. This project will also link up with the Supply Chain School for enhanced learning.
Accessibility: Free support and resources for everyone
We want to make sure that there are no barriers to accessing our charitable services by making them all free, including all of our MHFA England training and Wellbeing Masterclasses. To achieve this objective we need to establish a greater degree of predictable and sustainable income. We realised at the beginning of the pandemic how event focussed we were as a charity and this leaves us and our workforce exposed. So we are concentrating on growing our Company Supporters programme whereby companies commit to an annual donation. As one of our company supporters said to me recently, “Our support is not just a donation, it’s an investment in the wellbeing of our workforce and their families.”
How you can help
Hold a Lighthouse Day – Dedicate a day of fundraising for the Lighthouse Club
Become a Company Supporter – Pledge an annual donation to help provide a predictable and sustainable income for the charity
Order a Helpline Pack – Let your employees know where to turn to for support. Packs contain helpline posters and wallet size cards .
Help Inside the Hard Hat – Join the campaign for better mental health by downloading your free posters and hoardings, Add your logo, take a photo and share on social media to help spread the word. #HITHH
Find out more at www.lighthouseclub.org
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