Why sponsor a West Sussex Mind charity event?

Can you tell us a bit about your organisation and the work you do?

Merriman Grange is a luxury care home in Worthing for residents, offering residential, respite and dementia care. We are part of the Cinnamon Care collection, one of 23 luxury care homes around the United Kingdom.

We provide support with personal care, mobility assistance with eating, dementia care and more. However, we offer more than this. We are not just a care home, rather, we are a community.

People proactively choose to come into our care homes to be a part of this community and to make friends, combat isolation and to keep themselves mentally stimulated through the activities/entertainment we provide.

What inspired you to sponsor one of our events?

We decided to sponsor one of your events for a few different reasons.

As a care home in Worthing, we see ourselves as very much part of our local community. As such, we want to be involved with and helpful to people locally; we sponsor charity events and lend use of our facilities for activities in the local community.

By sponsoring events, and letting people use our facilities, we can show our commitment to the local community but also dispel misconceptions about care homes and how they function. Our residents like and want to feel connected with the local community, and also have a lot to offer, especially in terms of experience.

Furthermore, we understand the importance of good mental health and the connections it has with physical health. People often think of care homes as just looking after the physical needs of residents, but we also care for their mental needs as well. Older communities’ mental health is often side-lined and not talked about, but physical health and mental wellbeing go hand-in-hand, one lifts the other. Therefore, this was an opportunity for us to demonstrate our commitment for good mental health, for residents, but even our staff.

We value the important role of mental health support and feel that there is a lot of synergy between our work and the work of West Sussex Mind.

What were the benefits of sponsoring an event/our event for you?

There are a variety of benefits for us in sponsoring a West Sussex Mind event, such as was briefly touched on previously.

Our reasons included:

• Raising awareness of ourselves in the local community, helping to establish and build on our reputation

• Helps to demonstrate our commitment and care for the local community

• Shows our support for people's mental health, such as local people, but also our care for our employee's mental wellbeing

• Demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between physical and mental wellbeing, something that as a care provider we greatly value and are keen to emphasise.

Would you recommend other organisations and businesses sponsor one of our events?

We'd definitely recommend other organisations and businesses to sponsor an event as we did, for the benefits that we have mentioned, but also simply for the reason of supporting a local charity that helps local people with their mental health.

Why do you believe partnerships between charities and businesses are important?

Partnerships between charities and businesses are very important as they are a great way for businesses to go that one extra step further and show how they can have a sizeable positive impact on their wides community on multiple levels.

We'd like to say a big thank you to Merriman Grange for being an event sponsor, and to Jan and Jay for speaking to us.