West Sussex Mind scoops two national awards

We were delighted to pick up two awards at the recent national Mind Excellence Awards ceremony in Birmingham. These awards recognise excellence among local Minds – defined as expertise, courage, vision, creativity and commitment – and are judged by a panel of people with lived experience of mental health. The awards reward local Minds who are going above and beyond the Mind Quality Mark (MQM) standards and recognise and celebrate excellent practice.

This year, West Sussex Mind won national awards in two important areas: equality and diversity and effective services. Our charity was overall winner in the equality and diversity category and was highly commended for its effective services.

Recognising our equality, diversity and inclusion work

The equality and diversity award recognises the transformation that has taken place at our charity over the last five years. In 2020, equality and diversity was identified as an area for improvement in our Mind Quality Mark evaluation, which prompted us to focus on this work. Since then, and with backing and investment from our board of trustees, equality, diversity, inclusion and equity (EDIE) has become embedded across our charity – in our values, service plans, decision-making, service design and HR processes. It has become part of the way we do things – from recruitment and annual reviews to community outreach for marginalised groups and inclusion across our services.

A key part of this journey involved creating an EDIE working group at West Sussex Mind, drawing employees from all areas of our charity, as well as trustees and volunteers. The group co-produces an annual action plan and challenges West Sussex Mind to change ways of working, develop service provision and continually improve in this area.

On receiving the award, Kate Scales, deputy CEO at West Sussex Mind, said: “Creating a culture of equality, diversity and inclusion takes genuine commitment from all of us, and this award is a reflection of that shared effort. This recognition belongs to our whole community – our trustees, our employees, our volunteers – and to everyone who has contributed their time, their voice and their passion to this work.

“We accept this award not as a sign that the work is finished, but as encouragement to keep pushing forward – to listen more, to learn more and to continue building a charity where everyone feels seen, valued and able to thrive.”

Effective mental health services

West Sussex Mind was also “highly commended” for its effective services. This award recognises our charity’s continuous improvement approach to mental health services, using feedback from service users and data-driven decision-making to improve people’s experience of our support.

For example, we created a Meeting of Minds forum for service users in which they can directly raise feedback with senior managers and trustees to improve our services. We also actively measure the effectiveness of our interventions and show service users how they have progressed, using data robustly across the organisation to better understand the impact of our services and continuously improve.

Leanne Challen, head of adult mental health services at West Sussex Mind, said: “We are delighted to be recognised for the excellent quality of our mental health services and our emphasis on gathering and responding to feedback. This highly commended award is testament to the close collaboration of our service managers with our performance and impact team to ensure that we are focused on people’s mental health outcomes and continuous improvement.”

Kate Scales, deputy CEO of West Sussex Mind, attended the awards ceremony with Julie Bailey, communications lead, and received the awards on behalf of our charity. It was a pleasure to hear about all the amazing work going on across the local Mind network – with award winners in categories ranging from leadership and workplace culture, to finance and fundraising and collaboration and influence.