Mental Health in Construction. Where Can You Find Support?
Mental Health Awareness Week is a great way to bring talking about Mental Health to the fore. But after the week has passed, do people just stop talking? It’s important to keep the conversation growing, the only way we can conquer the problem is to let more people know there is someone who will listen, where they can find support.
How Can We Help Keep The Conversation Going?
Builders’ Talk Group is proud of the way people feel they can talk about their issues within our community and in the way other trades can offer support and advice. Being self employed is not easy – often feelings of isolation can have a serious effect on a person’s mental health. While we are seeing more people opening up about their own mental health within our groups, they often don’t know where to get the practical advice and support they need.
Being in the construction industry is hard enough and many self employed people just don’t have the same protection as others – so it is important to have the right information. This is where we can help to bring the information to our members and make sure mental health awareness remains a topic for discussion. Read about the Lighthouse Construction Charity and the help they can offer. #itsoknottobeok
The Lighthouse Construction Industry Charity is the only charity that provides financial and emotional support to the construction community and their families who have suffered an injury, illness or just need some extra support.
The charity provides a 24/7 Construction Industry Helpline which is the first point of contact to access a range of completely free and confidential support services including;
- Emergency Financial aid to construction families in crisis
- Advice on welfare and mental wellbeing
- Support on legal, tax and debt management matters
Last year we received 1662 calls to the helpline and helped 629 construction families with over £1.245M of emergency financial aid. Our helpline is the access point for all of our charitable support, whether for financial support or advice and guidance on a range of wellbeing and mental health issues.
Building Mental Health within Organisations
If you are responsible for others within your organisation, then the Charity can help too. There is lots of useful information to help companies develop a positive mental health culture on our Building Mental Health Website. Resources include a free downloadable tool box talk which can be adapted according to need and where people are ‘on their journey’.
Helpline Packs
To publicise the helpline services that we offer, companies can purchase our helpline packs at a low cost. The packs contain wallet sized helpline cards that can be distributed to employees and posters can be placed in prominent places around the office or site to publicise the support available to them.
If you wish to purchase packs for your organisations, click on the link –https://www.constructionindustryhelpline.com/products.html
Lighthouse Day
Lighthouse Day is where organisations can take just one day to help us raise funds. Your Lighthouse Day can be anything you want, a dress down day, a site bbq or maybe something more energetic like a tough mudder challenge or other team event. A Lighthouse Day fundraising pack gives you advice and guidance on how best to promote your event and offers a few ideas as to what you might want to do to support us, find out more here – https://www.lighthouseclub.org/lighthouse-day/