Chapter provides opportunities and support to adults needing support to improve their mental wellbeing.
So what does that mean? Well, we provide a number of structured, but tailored, support activities to help people with severe mental illness, like schizophrenia or bipolar, and those struggling with their mental wellbeing, to manage their life. It's our hope that, with our support, we can help people:
We think our support is really important because the NHS can't do it all. They simply don't have the resources. Which means that vulnerable people, who have illnesses through no fault of their own, can be left to largely fend for themselves.
This increases their risk of needing to access NHS support all over again, or getting even more unwell. Unfortunately this can sometimes lead to someone ending their life.
In the whole of the Cheshire West county, we only know of 3 other organisations working in the field of mental health, and none of the others specialise in the field of severe mental illness like we do. We support about 300 people a year, with 11 paid staff and a team of volunteers.
We provide a pathway of support. This means a person gets referred into our support and they follow a set route which starts with being allocated a Key Worker, goes on to offering them a range of free, local activities such as art sessions, walks, bingo, gardening and so on. After this we can offer work placement opportunities - again with dedicated support, and the finally we help people move on from Chapter when they are doing really well and are independent. Some of our service users who leave then go on to become volunteers for us, providing peer support to others who are going through what they went through.