Perennial’s Mental Health First Aider Pilot Project

Perennial’s purpose is to help build better futures for people working in horticulture. In the results of our Health and Wellbeing Survey 34% of people said mental health issues such as stress, isolation, anxiety and depression were a critical issue within the sector.

In light of this research, we are running a pilot project to help introduce Mental Health First Aiders into workplaces across a variety of horticultural organisations throughout 2022 and 2023.

The employees will be trained to recognise when people are struggling and support them to access the help they might need, they are a listening ear and support for their colleagues. All parties involved in the pilot will then become ambassadors for promoting the benefits in the hope of influencing others to roll out Mental Health First Aiders within their workplace.

Good mental health is good for business. Healthy people are happier, more engaged and more productive. Poor mental health cost UK companies £45 billion a year (Deloitte 2020), this is across all industries not just horticulture.

As part of our pilot project we will pay for 1 or 2 of your employees to attend an online training course ran by Mental Health First Aid England that lasts 2 full days. In return we need 2 things from you and your employees. One is your commitment as the employer to provide the employee time and support to roll out the programme within your organisation.

And two, the employee will then join our Mental Health First Aider Ambassador Network to provide Perennial with invaluable feedback about how the programme is working on the ground. This insight will help us to develop and shape our services and resources moving forward.

2022 course dates:

• 1^st – 2^nd November 2022
• 30^th November – 1^st December 2022

2023 course dates:

• 28^th February – 1^st March
• 10^th – 11^th May
• 25^th – 26^th July
• 17^th – 18^th October
• 22^nd – 23^rd November

We cannot do it alone we need people like yourselves to join us in creating a culture of wellbeing throughout the horticultural community.

Would you be interested in finding out more information? Please let us know and Helen Waddington from their Services team will get in touch to provide further details.