Update 04/05/2020 

During this time care homes are no longer allowed visitors. Would you like to write a story, a letter or send a picture to a resident to cheer them up? Leo and Elsie from Lightcliffe primary school have sent these pictures in already.
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Please send any pictures or letters to  laura@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk  or what’s app to 07388990230 and we will pass it onto a care home in the area.

Update 20/04/2020 
Thank you to all who have recently shared your blogs with us, today we have a beautiful poem written straight from the heart. Click here to view.
 
Did you know poetry is a really good way of connecting with your emotions, why not have a try and share with us at timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk 

To read all of our young people’s blogs visit our new blogs page.

April 2020

Update 17/04/2020 
Woohoo we have made it to the end of another strange week. Here’s a lovely mindfulness activity for you to try. This can be done every day or whenever you feel like you may be struggling and need to recharge.

And breathe….

Find a nice quiet space inside or out and get yourself comfy – practice your breathing, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Take notice of how you are feeling. 

We hope you all have a restful weekend – see you next week! 

Update 15/04/2020
Hello, another day in this strange world - some of you might be starting to feel a little bit fed up of being stuck indoors, starting to miss your friends and maybe even starting to wish you was back at school!

Keep telling yourself 'It's just an obstacle and things will get better'  

We have a lovely uplifting activity for you to do today - Positive Affirmations 
Get really creative and decorate a glass jar, write some positive affirmations and pop them inside your jar, pull out one of your affirmations each morning and start your day off with a positive outlook. Here's a few to get you started.
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• Today is going to be a great day.
• I am a creative and unique individual. 
• I have made an impact on the lives of everyone I interact with.  
• I believe in myself and my abilities. 

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Update 14/04/2020
We hope you've all had a lovely Easter weekend!
Today's blog has some really useful tips on how to keep yourselves busy during these long days - we love how optimistic you young people are being, and the positives you are taking out of these difficult times - thanks for sharing another wonderful blog with us!
We really need your blogs - if you think you might like to have a go at writing about how you're feeling or how you are keeping yourself busy - please get in touch! Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

Update 09/04/2020
Today we have Jade's blog to share with you. We love that lots of you are coming forward and opening up about your experiences and feelings. It's OK to have good days and bad, and it really is OK to talk about them! ❤️
We would love to read more of your blogs - share how isolation is going for you. Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

Today’s Activity – Easter Chicks & Bunnies

Today and tomorrows activity are just for fun – release that inner child and take a step back to your younger years! For today’s activity all you need is paint, pens and some paper - get creative making your very own chick and bunny characters. This would be a great activity to get your younger brothers and sisters involved in.  

​Share your photo’s with us – email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk or send to our Facebook page. 

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 Update 07/04/2020
Good afternoon you lovely lot, we hope you were left feeling inspired after reading Millie’s blog yesterday? We’ve had more blogs sent in yesterday and we can’t wait to share them with you!
 
Today we have chosen to showcase Eleanor’s blog, it’s a truthful, heartfelt account of how she is feeling during these strange times. It really is OK to feel anxious and worried, and it’s really important to talk about how we are feeling – good or bad! Read Eleanor's blog here.

If Eleanor’s blog has encouraged you to write down your feelings, we would love to share them – this can be done anonymously if you’d prefer. Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

Today’s activity – Chalk

Why not brighten up your garden or outside your front door and draw something that makes you smile? Or write messages of hope while out on your daily exercise, we’re sure it would brighten up somebody's day! Maybe you are missing a loved one’s birthday - why not draw them a big birthday message and send them a picture to show you are thinking of them? 

Get outside and get creative - see you all tomorrow! 

Update 06/04/2020
Happy Monday Everybody! We hope you have all had a lovely weekend? We are super excited to have received our first blog this morning. It’s a reflective and inspiring reminder of some of the silver linings of the current situation. Click here to view Millie's blog. Thanks to Millie for giving us such a positive start to the week :) Please keep sending your blogs in - we want to hear how it is for you.

Todays Activity is to send a message of hope.

You could write a letter, make a card or draw a picture that includes a message of hope. Send your creations to family, friends or isolated people that you know. You could even email your designs to us and we will forward them to local care homes.
Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

Come back and see us tomorrow, we have another fantastic blog to share with you all! 
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Update 03/04/2020

Hello again… well the sun seems to be making an appearance this afternoon, which means it’s time to head outdoors again - but don’t worry if your still in your PJ’s, as today's activity can quite easily be done with bits from around the house! Today’s activity is great for combating stress and anxiety, so if you’re feeling a little anxious about this strange new world this activity is definitely for you!

Today’s Activity –  Create A Mandala
Create a circle using repeated patterns. Here comes the fun part, you can pretty much use anything to create a Mandala; berries, flowers, leaves, twigs, pasta, beans, lentils – let your imaginations run wild!

As always, we would love to see your designs! Email them to timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk
 
We hope you all have a lovely weekend – we will back on Monday with more fun activities! 


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Update 02/04/2020
Another day… another activity! We hope you are all feeling good and not missing the outdoors too much. If you are feeling a bit sad or overwhelmed it’s a lovely cool, fresh day, so go get out in the garden or go for a walk (local and remember social distancing) go and blow away some of the cob webs. While you’re out there see if you can find some Sticks or decent sized twigs – you will need them for today’s cool activity.
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Today’s Activity – Making Whittling sticks using a potato peeler.

What can you whittle? Maybe some tent pegs, or arrows? One of our young helpers, Donny, even managed to make some chop sticks!! He certainly has plenty of time to practice using them!
We can’t wait to see your ideas!

Anybody managed to have a try at writing a blog yet? We would love to show them off to all of our followers. Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

















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Update 01/04/2020 
So another day in this new strange world…. we hope your new ‘Good Stuff’ Jars will be useful over the coming weeks if you need a pick me up.

Time Out's Kim sent us a 'pick me up' photo this morning and says it so important at times like this to connect with humour to keep spirits up! Who agrees?  





​‘Humour can be one of our best survival tools’
(Allen Klein)

Thanks to the wonderful Donny for helping with today’s activity. Feel free to share your activities and we will do our best to get them on here and our social media pages.
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Today’s Activity – Can you make a Zentangle? (A Zentangle is an abstract drawing using repeat patterns on a square piece of paper)
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Donny has decided to do a black and white design, you can do the same or go bold and use lots of colours to suit your mood – it’s your design you decide! 

Share your designs with us - Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk or share on our Facebook page!

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Update 31st March 2020
How are you all today? Ready for another challenge? We hope you enjoyed brightening up your houses, making some wonderful rainbow’s yesterday. We had some lovely pictures sent in by lots of you – thank you! It’s not too late if you didn’t manage to get a rainbow picture done, you can still send us your pictures – we would love to add them to our website. 

Today’s Activity is to create a ‘Good Stuff’ jar. Every day take one positive thing that you have done, write it down, then pop it inside your jar. Whenever you feel down, get your jar out and choose one of your positives, and remind yourself of the ‘Good Stuff’ you have done!
Send us some pictures of your ‘Good Stuff Jars’ and we’d love to hear all the good things you have been doing too. Email timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk or share on our Facebook page!




















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See you all tomorrow!

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Update 30th March 2020

Morning all! It’s Monday, it’s the start of a new school week and… oh, no it isn’t! Hands up who still has to pinch themselves when they wake up in the morning (ouch)! We’ve done the first week of this new normal and maybe that felt OK, after all we had glorious sunshine and morning lie-ins, but it’s likely to start hitting home this week. So we’re going to put a daily post on here and also on Facebook (follow us here) to help connect people and stay in touch. We’re going to pick out one thing a day, whether that’s an activity, a challenge or a support resource.

Today’s activity
When it rains, look for the rainbow! We’re inviting you all to make your own rainbows, display them in your homes or somewhere and send us a photo. Here’s one that Kim made earlier. We’ll be featuring our favourites on here and we’d like you to send them to our Facebook page to brighten everyone’s day.








​Blog
Because the idea of Time Out has come from young people and is based around young people’s experience, we’re also going to have a regular blog from a young person. Please let us know if you’d like to write one – we want to hear as many different voices as possible. We can post it anonymously or with a name credit – it’s up to you. Just write up to 500 words about how you’re finding this funny old time. We want to hear about the highs, the lows, the things you’re finding helpful (or unhelpful) – basically just tell us how it’s going for you. We’ll be featuring our first blog later in the week.
If you’d like to write a blog, we’d love to hear from you at timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk, or contact us through this website or Facebook.
See you tomorrow!

Updated 17th March 2020 - Coronavirus
Infectious disease outbreaks, like the current Coronavirus (Covid 19), can be scary and can affect our emotional wellbeing. The scenario with coronavirus is rapidly changing so we have set up this page to keep everyone updated on Time Out's response.  Please keep an eye on this page and our Facebook page for latest developments. 
 
The main message at this stage is that we are looking at ways to continue to provide support, although we will have to do this differently in the coming weeks.


The latest government advice is for adults to avoid unnecessary crowds, and for young people with possible symptoms to stay at home. Understandably, for some young people this is a worrying time. We know that isolation is a major factor in emotional wellbeing, so we are considering alternative ways to provide support.  https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/coronavirus-and-your-wellbeing/

Schools Activity, Courses & Workshops
Project Workers who facilitate groups will be contacting schools to discuss alternative arrangements.
We will not be able to visit schools for the foreseeable future and any activity planned will be postponed until the government advice changes.
We are trying to have a range of options including sending out resources to teachers, and we are happy to talk to schools individually to come up with the best course of action.  You can have a discussion with workers about the best ways to keep in touch and support any young people who might be feeling anxious at this time.

There have also been some changes to general Healthy Minds services and more information can be found here

There is a lot of understandable anxiety about this and we encourage you to obtain information from official sources:
NHS:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

Mental Health Foundation: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/publications/looking-after-your-mental-health-during-coronavirus-outbreak
Young Minds
https://youngminds.org.uk/blog/what-to-do-if-you-re-anxious-about-coronavirus/

You can contact us on:
Phone: 01422 345154
Email: timeout@healthymindscalderdale.co.uk

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Youth Social Action #iwill

A huge congratulations to all of the students at Trinity Academy and Calderdale College for their hard work and achieving their #iwill Youth Social Action. The groups created workshops on Toxic Masculinity, ASD Awareness, LGBTQ+ Awareness, Stereotyping, Knife Crime and Child Sexual Exploitation.

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Small Steps to Tackle School Stress Article

https://youngminds.org.uk/blog/small-steps-to-tackle-school-stress/

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Faberge Eggs!

Time Out had a fantastic time down at the Creative Learning Guild for our Faberge Egg competition. The young people's creations ranged from delicate collage and feathered jewelled eggs to anime style characters and Dragon Eggs, and the auction prices ranged from 20p to £30 million! 

Congrats to Molly our winner with her Dragon Egg, presented by our guest judge Ruth Gamble.

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Children's Mental Health Week 2019

This year for Children's Mental Health week we got our Partner Provider Network to think about what they do or aim to achieve for young people's mental health.

We also put up an exhibition at Healthy Minds of some of the great work young people made with us during 2018.

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 Getting Creative

We had a great time at Fax Fest making glow jars & festival headbands!

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Young Minds Conference.

Time Out joined up with Tough Times and took a group of young people down to Young Minds Mental Health Conference in London back in May, which was a brilliant day making connections from all over the country and celebrating 25 years of Mind and 75 years of the NHS!

Volunteer Kiah said: 'We had a busy day out in London attending the Young Minds mental health conference. The highlights of the day were introductory speakers Claire Murdoch and Hussain Manawer, who were both very inspiring in different ways. Clair is head of mental health in the NHS and Hussain is a poet and mental health advocate. Our group then split off to attend different workshops including ones on self care, LGBTQ+ mental health and mental health innovation within the NHS. Our day ended by watching a few performances from Key Changes, a charity which uses music to aid recovery.'

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Article for LGBTQ+ History Month

For LGBTQ+ History Month, Time Out got together with a young volunteer to write an article about young LGBTQ+ Mental Health.

Read it here.

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A huge Thankyou to the students at Brooksbank for our mural in the Art Room!

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Volunteer Hayley wrote an article for Kooth.com:

I heard about Time Out from a group that I attended. In the group we were all given a piece of paper that asked us what we wanted to get out of Time Out. I put that I wanted to be a volunteer as it would help a lot with my future and my university degree, as I want to be a mental health nurse. 

Since I have been volunteering with Time Out, I have been given many different opportunities that allows me to help others with themselves and allow them to understand that there are activities that they can do to stop them from feeling rubbish and therefore allowing themselves to feel happy. 

Some opportunities include talking about Time Out with another volunteer to different organisations within Calderdale that are there to help young people. I have also been involved with a similar talk, but instead of there being young people there, it was all adults who work for the council. This allowed for them to be informed about what Time Out is and who can access Time Out. 

I'm honoured to be a volunteer for Time Out!

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