Chris Shaw, AiW's Chief Executive has collected a prestigious new award from Mental Health First Aid England (MHFA), the body which aims to improve mental health literacy throughout the country.

Mental Health First Aid is exactly what its name suggests – a first aid approach to mental health. Originally founded and developed by Betty Kitchener and Professor Tony Jorm in Australia, MHFA has been successfully introduced around the world in countries as diverse as Hong Kong, Singapore, Finland, Canada, USA and Scotland.  The MHFA awards are a celebration of leaders and champions. They identify examples of excellent projects, as well as acknowledging innovation and high performance.

Advocacy in Wirral’s chief executive Chris Shaw received the award  at a special event in the House of Lords on Thursday 26 January 2011.  Pictured below, from left to right, are Nigel Jones from event sponsor Linklaters LLP, Simon Weston OBE, Chris Shaw and Lord Kamlesh Patel, patron of MHFA England.

“Over the last year, the overwhelming majority of our staff and volunteers have undertaken the two-day training course in Mental Health First Aid,” said Chris. “As a charity working to help people with mental health conditions, it is vitally important that everyone has a basic knowledge and understanding of common mental health conditions and how they can help people.  Our aspiration is that every new and existing member of staff should receive this training.”

The award was for showing ‘exemplary commitment to increasing mental health literacy through working with and utilising MHFA’.

Last year, Advocacy in Wirral worked with almost 5,000 clients, helping them with benefits, housing or debt issues and providing low-intensity therapies such as computerised cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).

The award comes within weeks of Advocacy in Wirral achieving the prestigious ISO 9001 quality mark, making it one of only a handful of voluntary organisations on the Wirral to have been given the ISO stamp of approval.

If you are interested in organising MHFA training in the Wirral, please contact Tony Lawrence on 0151 650 1530 to discuss further.