Northern Ireland Integrated Health Award winners announced

An exceptional nursery which transforms the lives and opportunities of toddlers with special needs and gives support and respite to their parents has scooped the top prize in the 2007 Northern Ireland Integrated Health Awards run by The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health.

The ‘Little Orchids’ centre based in Waterside, Co. Londonderry, received their prize of £2,500 from Health Minister Michael McGimpsey at a ceremony held at the Belfast City Hospital on 10 October. Staff from the nursery will also attend a ceremony to be held in London in March 2008, where winners from around the UK will be honoured by the Foundation, which was founded by HRH The Prince of Wales.

The Integrated Health Awards have been running since 1999, but this is the first year there has been a special Northern Ireland Award, funded by the Department for Health, Social Services and Public Safety. The awards put the spotlight on the best examples of health projects which treat people ‘holistically’, which means taking account of their emotional and psychological wellbeing as well as their physical health, and looking at how people’s environment can help and hinder health.

Two other projects were highly commended in the awards and congratulated by the Minister. The Mater Green Gym project, run by the charity Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland in partnership with Belfast’s Mater Hospital, helps people with severe, long-term mental illness who are being treated by psychiatric services in North & West Belfast. The project gets the patients involved in conservation work in their immediate locality, with the benefits of healthy physical activity, co-operation, social interaction, volunteering, teamwork and boosting self-esteem. The other runner-up, Rethink Northern Ireland, which is based in Belfast, was commended for its self-management programme which involves self-help groups for people who have experienced severe mental distress such as schizophrenia. The programme helps them to live more positively, to identify the changes they want to make in their lives and to believe in their ability to achieve their goals.

Winner - Little Orchids

The nursery helps pre-school children with a range of special needs to achieve their full potential and wherever possible to enter into mainstream education. It also provides invaluable support for the parents by ensuring that both children and parents get the range of support services that they are entitled to, training parents in how best to help their children (including techniques for communicating with their children, healthy eating and massage), bringing together parents who through their children’s disabilities feel marginalised and disadvantaged and providing pamper days for parents where they can receive relaxing treatments such as reflexology, facials and aromatherapy, and also learn stress management techniques.

Vicky, mother of Simon who had a learning impairment and attended Little Orchids, says: ‘I firmly believe that if Little Orchids hadn’t been there to give Simon the right help at the right time the long-term outcome for him would have been very different. Little Orchids provided Simon with a learning environment where his specific needs (and mine) were catered for and where he felt secure and confident. It’s thanks to this early intervention that he has made such dramatic progress.’ Simon is now a happy, well adjusted-boy flourishing in a mainstream school.

Sally, mother of three-year-old Aidan who has an autistic spectrum disorder and currently attends the nursery, says: ‘It took Aidan a while to settle in but now he loves it and can’t wait to go in. He gets excited when he is collected from home to go to the nursery. As a parent, it has done wonders for me. It gives me three mornings of respite, and with a child with special needs this is much needed. The staff and carers are wonderful – nothing seems too much trouble for them.’

Runner-up - Mater Green gym

Since it started in March 2006 the Mater Green Gym – run by Conservation Volunteers Northern Ireland along with nursing and occupational therapy staff from Belfast’s Mater Hospital - has had a hugely beneficial impact on the lives of more than 57 people with long-term mental ill health in the North and West Belfast area.

The conservation work the patients undertake develops a strong sense of team spirit and gives them pride in what they create, as well as friendship and the health benefits of physical activity and fresh air. It creates an opportunity for people at risk of social exclusion to be part of a positive and meaningful community activity.

Regular locations for the conservation work include a wildflower nursery, a tree nursery and the Mater Day Hospital gardens.

One patient – who prefers to remain anonymous – says: ‘The Green Gym gets me out into the fresh air. I particularly like going up to the tree nursery because it feels like a real working environment and I like working with the willow pegs, right through from cutting the pegs to planting them and then watching them grow. I take pride in learning about things that others aren’t aware of, like how to grow different

plants and about the conservation work that is being carried out around the different sites. I attend because I personally benefit from it but if it means that other people benefit from our work, then all the better.’

Runner-up - Rethink Northern Ireland

The UK mental health charity Rethink exists to give a voice to people affected by severe mental illness. Helping over 48,000 people each year, its aim is to provide hope and empowerment through effective services, information and support.

In 2001 Rethink created a self-management programme aimed at supporting mental health service users who wanted to set up their own self-help groups.

Rethink Northern Ireland, based in Belfast, were runners-up for their ‘Voices Self-management Programme’, a 12-week course which aims to support and facilitate people’s endeavours to take active steps towards their own recovery. The self-help groups are run by people who have themselves experienced mental illness, and people on the courses can either self-refer or be referred by a social worker or community psychiatric nurse. The programme operates out of five Rethink centres and one independent centre across South Belfast, and Rethink hope to roll the scheme out across other parts of Northern Ireland.

Ends…

Notes to editors

The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health encourages a culture of health and wellbeing with people and communities taking more responsibility for their own health. It believes that poor health does not exist in isolation, but is a direct consequence of our lifestyles, our cultures, our communities and how we interact with our environments. The Foundation is a charity founded by HRH The Prince of Wales in 1993.

Media contacts

For more information about the winner and runners-up please contact Natasha Finlayson at The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health on 020 3119 3118 or mobile 07894 540620.