REDROW BREAKS DOWN MENTAL HEALTH BARRIERS
Redrow Mental health/wellbeing team members L-R: Carl Richardson, Chris Edwards, Caroline Thompson-Jones, Chris Hatton, Tracy Davies, Greg Campbell, Kirsty Newton, Steve Barnett
A TEAM of 14 employees from Redrow’s North West division have trained as mental health first aiders as part of a bid to remove the stigma of mental health and get people talking.
Wellbeing Champion Tracy Davies, has recruited 14 mental health first aiders (MHFAs) from across the Daresbury-based business including both office and site based employees.
“Everybody has either been affected personally or knows somebody who has suffered with mental health issues,” says Tracy, “it affects us all and it’s not going away. I was keen to get involved to try to make a difference and to help my Redrow colleagues know that nobody has to go through it alone.”
Each MHFA completed a two-day in-house course specifically created by Mental Health First Aid England, which covers all aspects of mental health including spotting signs that somebody may be struggling and knowing how to support and direct somebody to professional support if necessary.
Tracy, from Gwernaffield, Flintshire, has been with Redrow for 25 years and says the industry she works in see lots of men, in particular, suffer in silence: “One in four of us will experience poor mental health at some point in our lifetime and instances of suicide amongst construction workers are more than three times the national average for men; it’s a sad fact that two construction workers take their own life every single day. We need to remove the stigma of mental health, we need to talk about it and get it out in the open.”
Paul Moore, managing director of Redrow Homes (NW), adds: “It’s great that we now have 14 MHFAs on board in this division alone and they are there to help anyone at Redrow should they need it. Redrow is investing time and effort into supporting mental health in all its employees and is reinforcing the idea that it’s okay not to be okay.”
Redrow Homes (NW) directly employs circa 220 people both at its Daresbury Park offices, near Warrington, and at sites across Cheshire and parts of Merseyside, Greater Manchester and Flintshire. It also rolls out its wellbeing programmes to the very many suppliers and sub-contractors that help build its homes.
Nationally, Redrow has signed up to the construction industry’s Building Mental Health Charter and to date has trained a total of 180 MHFAs across England and Wales.
