Welcome to another of my event reviews. Its been a while since I have last blog, but that does not mean I have not been busy. On the 10th of September 2014 I decided to check out the Mental Health and Well-being Event, which was aimed at Adults with Learning disabilities.

This event took place over at the Maudsley Learning center, which is also known as The ORTUS.

I usually visit the Maudsley Learning Center to check out mental health awareness events or conferences that can often be held there, but the ORTUS is more than just an events building, it does many other things where the community can relax and learn more about well-being.

Now I do not know if you had seen my video blog of last years well-being community event, but feel free to check out my video of last years community well-being event.  There is also a video blog of the recent 2014 video event near the end of this blog.

This year being 2014, the Well-being event was big, and I mean more stalls, more workshops, more rooms and more involvement. There was lots on offer and everyone was so friendly, engaging and cooperative.

We have three floors of activities at the event and at the ground floor there were numerous stalls, where I checked out around 13 of them.

The next floor up was some more stalls and a coffee and tea area, then 2 floors up we had to workshops, each workshop running every half an hour, but first lets check out briefly what stalls were on ground floor, before I continue I would like to apologize in advance if I missed any names out.

I cannot go through all the stalls I checked out off the written blog, but if you want something more interactive, you can view the video blog I made of the event.

You might have noticed the video blog is around 11 minutes longer than the last years video blog, but this goes to show how much was put into the event this year.

My favourite stalls that I was on the lookout for were the ones which had those who use the services actually helping out off the stalls. This showed me that the service users were inclusive in the services that were provided for them, this meant there was more control for those who may have challenging behaviour.

Other stalls of interest was the “Adults with Learning Disabilities Health Team”. The team must have had around 2 to 3 stalls where each were focusing on a specific health area. One of my favourite stall to visit was the interactive game, which helped divert your mind from how much exercise you was doing.

I always feel learning should be fun and games are one of the powerful way to challenge your mind and at times your body.

Talking about bodies, Quite a few stalls were focused on advertising the sports and health centres dotted around the Southwark area, so many people can take advantage of the sports centers, there were quite a number of discounts on membership that its such good time to get fit and active.

It was also great to see Southwark carers at the well-being event. We must not forget the families or carers who form the backbone of care for those with mental health difficulties or intellectual behaviours. So many carers out there silently cope and do their role without a moments thought for themselves. So hopefully if carers and families of those who have learning disabilities visited that stall, I would hope they get the support they need.

After visiting a few stalls, it was time to check out the workshops. There were quite a few workshops running and fortunately all the workshops were packed.

The workshops running were

What is Austism?
Mindfulness
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
The tree of life
Role of medication
What is Mental Health?

So there were six workshops in all. I could not stay for the full length of time since I was busy exploring the other parts of the event, but what I saw at the workshops made me feel that the organisers spent a large amount of time and energy to get the workshops running.

Unfortunately I could not stay the whole event, since I had a meeting to go to, but I feel so glad to be invited to help cover and promote the event.