Torus Foundation Look aHEAD programme

It has been our pleasure to work with Torus Foundation again, this time on the Look aHEAD programme. The Look aHEAD project seeks to focus on parental mental health and wellbeing and resilience of families and children in Liverpool. 

Torus worked closely with a number of local partner organisations to identify parents and carers to attend a 1 day workshop that was designed to support the wellbeing of them and their family.

 The workshops focused on:

• Importance of activities that create stronger emotional bonds within the family unit
• Prevention/alleviation of parental mental health problems to improve children’s emotional health, wellbeing and resilience
• How to maintain family wellbeing
• Increasing awareness and self-management of low-level mental health conditions in order to reduce the impact on parents, and family.
• Identify how to best support children and teenagers by developing skills and knowledge to recognise triggers and signs of mental health issues.
• The action principals of ‘look, listen, link’, how to utilise active listening skills and how to provide an empathic response.

The project also included providing staff and volunteers from the same community organisations with workshops to develop their facilitation skills. This was to ensure the project would carry on beyond the initial workshops and enable the volunteers and staff to support those who attended the wellbeing workshops over the following 12 months.

The cohorts:

2 cohorts of staff and volunteers at the facilitation workshops (1 was held in person, the other online)

19 cohorts of parents, carers, foster parents and kinship carers (all in person)

2 cohorts of professionals who work in the various community organisations in a range of roles (both in person)

Feedback from the participants

'By using the skills received from the course I feel empowered' 

‘Try different strategies to try to get him to engage better and on his own wellbeing’.

‘Take time to reflect and evaluate before reacting’.

‘Loved the movement and play’.

‘More connection, more time, more patience’

‘This will help my family ‘

‘5 minutes to myself and thinking about one thing I am grateful for’

‘Feel more confident in my parenting’.

‘I have learned about dysregulation and the ways to reduce its impact on children’s mind’.