As an organisation, we’ve seen lots of exciting changes, you can see some of the highlights here:
In January, Adam Crampsie joined us as our new CEO. After consulting and collaborating with colleagues from across the organisation, we launched our new 3-year strategy to shape our future, and evolved our mission and values. We also began hosting monthly Values Awards to recognise the amazing work of our colleagues.
In line with our new goals for reaching more people and becoming as accessible and inclusive as possible, we refreshed our branding and websites!
Throughout 2021, we have grown our contracts by over £4 million. This includes our Teesside crisis service, the Newcastle community development project, Talking Together Wirral, winter pressures funding, Together in a Crisis, and the community innovation fund. By growing our contracts, we’re able to reach even more people and offer tailored, person-centred care across the country.
In fact, this year we helped over 60,000 people!
This year, we also worked in partnership with Limbic to create an AI referral tool, which helps people access our NHS talking therapies even more quickly and easily. Within the first few weeks of Limbic being live on our website, referrals into our therapies increased by 37%, meaning that we can support more people!
We also opened the Northumberland Recovery College, offering any adult living in Northumberland support with their mental health and wellbeing. We’re particularly proud that, through our recovery colleges and the Newcastle community development programme, we have created many peer support roles for people with lived experience of mental ill-health.
In total, we welcomed 267 new colleagues to the organisation and, following colleague feedback, we introduced an enhanced suite of colleague benefits, including extra annual leave, volunteering days, and a wellbeing package provided by Vitality. We were also very excited to launch colleague networks and working groups to help make our workplaces and our services even more inclusive.
We were also delighted to have one of our volunteers, Sergeant Tom Power, chosen by a panel of judges to represent the mental health category as part of the Great North Thank You. To mark the 40th staging of the Great North Run, its organisers hosted the Great North Thank you to celebrate 14 truly inspirational people who went above and beyond for their local communities during the pandemic. We were so proud that Tom was recognised for his amazing work with us throughout the pandemic!
Finally, we were officially accredited as a Great Place to Work, as surveyed by our colleagues! The survey told us that 87% of our colleagues feel that their work has a special meaning, it’s not ‘just a job’, and 82% feel like they really make a difference through their work!
We’d like to thank all our amazing people for such a great year, we’re excited to see what 2022 will bring!