The Health in Mind Team pose for a photo.

The Health in Mind team celebrating their 40th birthday.

Health in Mind is the latest organisation to be awarded the Lasting Difference Symbol, recognising its commitment to sustainability. The charity is one of Scotland’s best-known and trusted mental health organisations. Since 1982, the organisation has been promoting positive mental health and wellbeing in local communities across Scotland and has been proactive in ensuring this continues sustainably. Making the Lasting Difference toolkit central to stakeholder discussions has helped the team to embed sustainability into their latest strategy. This has included ‘curious conversations’ with the staff team, workshops with the Board, and completion of the Lasting Difference self-assessment by the Senior Management Team.

The charity has also sought to engage with other stakeholder groups including people using their services, volunteers, partners, and other external stakeholders.  By using surveys, interviews, conversations, and more general feedback, they have been able to gather evidence of the Lasting Difference indicators. This has highlighted a number of organisational strengths as well as allowing the team to focus on what might be different in the new strategy and its associated business plans.

Chief Executive, Wendy Bates told us:

“We know as an organisation that we have a lot to offer people living in Scotland to support their mental health and wellbeing. Integrating sustainability into our plans ensures that as an organisation we can be there for people where, how and when they need us. It helps us understand when to say yes and when to say no- to focus on our purpose, strengths and raise our profile whilst keeping people and communities at the heart of all we do.”

Congratulations to Health in Mind. We are delighted to welcome them into our network of Symbol Holders. Visit our Symbol page to find out more about getting involved.