Valleys Steps

Organisational Overview April 2016 - March 2017

Who Are We?Valleys Steps is establishing itself as a new, exciting community based project available across Cwm Taf. The project offers practical information and learning to improve everyone’s emotional well being through the delivery of free Mindfulness and Stress Control Courses. Cwm Taf University Health Board is supporting the project and hopes this will help people to manage emotional distress by improving emotional literacy and individual resilience to the challenges we all face in everyday life.The courses being delivered are free and are provided on an open access basis from leisure centres, libraries, church halls and community centres within different areas of RCT and Merthyr.

What have we been doing this year?We have completed the development of the initial infrastructure required for the newly registered as independent charity. We have successfully recruited a team of staff and numerous volunteers to deliver the service. We are now delivering the service and offering a local alternative to prescription medication for low-to-moderate level MH issues.

Although we officially launched in April 2016; Valleys Steps has provided a seamless service from the UHB pilot project from October 2015. This event marked the start of the service expanding the service.

We now have a strong presence at key community events, promoting the service and setting up future partnership working. This is also supported by our social media presence and website.

Volunteers; As a third sector organisation, volunteers have become an integral resource in terms of providing secondary course support. We have been lucky to have evolved a competent, reliable group of volunteers without which we would not be able to run the full complement of services we currently run.

● Delivery of Mindfulness and Stress Control CoursesThere has been good attendance at the courses throughout the year. The key benefits for service users include;

o Improved understanding of stress.o Learning coping strategies, relaxation techniques and meditations.o Identifying unhelpful thoughts, learning to accept and not to dwell.o Making changes to daily life to improve emotional well-being.

● Number of Attendees all year April 2016 - March 17 : TOTAL: 1946● Mindfulness; 1034`● Stress Control; 557● Tasters; 355

● Warwick and Edinburgh Mental Well Being Scores (WEMWBS) Through the use of the validated tool WEMWBS, overall, service users have recorded a substantial decrease in their ‘feeling low’ well-being score after attending our courses. This has shifted to a significant increase in ‘medium’ rating of well-being, when measured at the end of the courses.

Mindfulness;

At the start of the Mindfulness courses 39% people experienced their well-being as being medium to high mood, at the end of the course this shifted to 81%.

Stress Control;

At the start of the Stress Control courses 26% people experienced their well-being as being medium to high mood, at the end of the course this shifted to 78%.

Next StepsValleys Steps are initiating the promotion across the whole community. This is aimed at engaging the whole population to raise awareness not only of Valleys Steps but of also the benefits of developing personal resilience against emotional distress.

Valleys Steps will also undertake focused work together with staff from the Health Board to engage local people who may already be on antidepressants via their GP practices and local pharmacists.

ConclusionValleys Steps has made good progress in its first full year of operations. The community based courses it can provide are now constantly available across all localities within Cwm Taf.

The next phase aims to increase the number of people in Cwm Taf who will be better equipped to manage their emotional distress while at the same time offering alternatives to medication to those seeking help or wishing to come offantidepressants