Nexus – Older person’s mental health

Who is Nexus for?

Nexus is a project that has been set up in Cardiff and the Vale to provide support and resources to older people and armed forces veterans who access mental health services including those living with dementia and their carers.

About Nexus

Nexus gives the opportunity for older people to:

• gain an understanding of services available to you as a service user or carer;
• make new friends with other service users and carers;
• build confidence in speaking out;
• use your experiences to positively influence mental health services in Cardiff and the Vale.

Your views are important and we are in a position to help make sure that they are heard. Sharing insights and experiences and feeding them back to service providers, means that future services can be changed to suit the needs of those who use them. This in turn makes the services better for everyone.

Get involved

• Share your views this could be writing an article for the Nexus Newsletter or writing in with an issue about services. This can be done by hand, email, or through another means such as Digital Story Telling or our Facebook site.
• Become a recruitment panel member an opportunity to be trained and participate in selecting mental health staff of all levels.
• Learn new skills or refresh old ones. Our training sessions aim to give you the tools, techniques and confidence to influence the development and delivery of services with sessions to suit everyone – whether you’re interested in attending a meeting for the first time or you’re already a seasoned service user representative.
• Join our community share news, resources and info with others on our online social community The Exchange (comming soon).

Attend groups

• Onwards and upwards group an informal group for service users and carers to share their experiences using mental health services, not just with each other but with the service providers themselves.
• Armed Forces Veterans Mental Health Support Group looks after all aspects of armed forces veterans mental health welfare. [email protected]
• Specific Mental Health Topic Groups new services are always being planned and we are always being invited to look at new and existing services, please get in touch if you would like to know more.

Access resources

• Receive our mental health newsletter – Involvement News Pop your name on our Nexus mailing list and receive monthly mail outs about events, news and opportunities. We’re also always looking for budding journalists to help write, edit and design our newsletter.
• Check out our directories and handbooks you’ll find a wealth of mental health related information and organisations in Directions – our handbook and guide to mental health services for older people in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan.
• Browse our booklist or if you’ve read a mental health related book that you found helpful, email us with your review of the book and we’ll add it to our virtual book shelf.
• View our gallery some people find drawing and painting helpful in maintaining good mental health, browse some of the work produced in our online gallery.
• Watch videos and listen to podcasts you’ll find a range of topics covered in our videos and podcasts or if you have a burning issue or topic, perhaps have a go at making one yourself and sending it in.
• Follow us on social media find the latest up to date information on groups, meets and other useful info on our @nexus-involvement Facebook and Twitter @Cavamh feeds.
•  Read related news through reading current or past issues of Nexus Involvement News.

Links

www.counselling-directory.org.uk – UK Directory of counsellors
www.dementiafriendlyvale.co.uk/dementia-vale-activities-support – Dementia Friendly Vale

Testimonials

“Nexus provides us with opportunities to engage with/speak to/confront statutory organisations – their management, their planners, their operational team leaders, and their front line workers – and offer support, criticism, ideas without fear of the consequences.”

“They have convinced carers that they have a voice and encourage them to use it and provide the support carers need to enable them to do this”.

“Nexus’ independence allows freedom of thought and speech – it empowers individuals to verbalise their thoughts. It allows things to be said that might otherwise not be. It enables carers to speak out on behalf of the ones they care for – the ones that they love.”