The ILP has joined forces with counselling and mental health first aid provider Ripples Wellbeing to run a series of online mental health courses over the autumn.
Ripples Wellbeing has been set up by former lighting professional James Hall along with the former chief executive of Bristol Bears Women’s Rugby team Heidi Chapman-Mercer. The pair ran a workshop on mental health and wellbeing at June’s Centenary Lighting Summit in London.
A two-day ILP mental health first aid accredited course will be held on Thursday 12 and Friday 13 September, with a further course set to be held on Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 October.
Delivered by Zoom, the course will run from 9am to 5pm each day. Tickets are priced at £200 and registration details can be found at https://www.rippleswellbeing.co.uk/event-details/two-day-mhfa-accredited-course-1-11
Then, on Friday 27 September, the ILP and Ripples are running a half-day course on ‘How to manage mental health in the workplace’, with a further course set to run on Friday 25 October.
Again being delivered by Zoom, the course will run from 9am to 1pm and will aim to give managers and leadership teams the skills to create and manage a positive mental health environment in their teams and beyond.
Training will cover topics such as reflective practices for employees living with poor mental health through to managing workplace stress and how to support someone’s mental health.
The course costs £75 plus a £1.88 service fee, and the details for registration can be found at rippleswellbeing.co.uk/event-details/ilp-how-to-manage-mental-health-in-the-workplace
The need for lighting and engineering to do more to address mental ill health, especially male mental ill health, was highlighted by Gary Thorne in the July/August edition of Lighting Journal (‘We need to talk’, vol 89 no 7).
As James Hall writes in the upcoming September edition: ‘It very much brought home the importance – and urgency – of engaging with, and talking about, this important issue within the arena of engineering, construction, and lighting.
‘Our priority is about working with the ILP to be raising awareness, whilst encouraging people to speak up and speak out. We passionately believe there is a real need for mental health first aiders within construction, engineering and lighting, but also for people, very simply, to begin to talk about mental health in the same way they would a bad back or a heavy cold,’ James adds.
Look out for the full article in the September edition of Lighting Journal when it is published next month.
