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beat blog #14
Well it has been some time since we let you know what has been happening her at beat.
We were extremely busy during Eating Disorders Awareness Week in Feb. The week kicked off with our annual Carers Conference. This was a massive success with over 180 delegates attending. Charlotte and a few of our young ambassadors attended a House of Commons event on the Monday and I was lucky enough to attend the launch for "Just one day" at the Met bar in London on the Thursday with two of our young ambassadors. A chance to mingle with the stars and help raise awareness at the same time! There was lots of press, TV and radio coverage and the whole of beat worked really hard. Many young people were doing there bit to raise awareness all over the country too. Well done!
Since then Charlotte and I have attended some Youth Achievement Award training which has been really interesting. Now we know what we are actually doing! if you are interested in becoming an ambassador and finding out more about these awards, please email us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk
There are a number of dates for online live chats on the website. Please make a note of these as It would be great to chat to you.
Will update you again soon.
Take care
Mel and Charlotte
beat blog #13
Hi,
We ran a media and training presentation skills day in London on Saturday for Ambassadors. It was great to have the opportunity to meet with everybody and talk through issues about talking to the media. We had a great turn out and it looks as though we have some fantastic people in place.
Eating Disorders Awareness week is fast upon us. Perhaps you are planning something? It would be great to hear from you.
Online live chat started again on Monday and a great group of young people supported each other. Why not join us for the next one on Monday 18th February from 6-7pm. It is a great opportunity to chat to others.
If you want to know more about how this works or for anything else mentioned in this blog please contact us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk
Take care
Charlotte and Mel
beat blog #12
Sorry we haven’t been in touch for a while. As usual, lots of things happening to keep us busy. We have also had another shift round within beat.
Mel Curtis has now joined the youth team and is working with Charlotte on young people projects such as Young Peoples Achievement Awards, training days and live chats.
Charlotte is now the Young Peoples Campaign Officer.
As you can imagine, the build up to Eating Disorders Awareness week is mad! We have already been contacting some of you to help with the media, conference workshops etc. The week will be an amazing opportunity to let everybody know about eating disorders.
We will be setting up the live chats again in the next few weeks, so watch this space. Remember, to take part, you must be signed up to our message board.
Our work relies on ideas, stories, tips and feedback from you guys. We would love to hear from you. Also, to take part in the Young Peoples Achievement Awards or anything mentioned in this blog please email us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk
beat blog #11
Hi there,
Unfortunately Lucy is no longer working with us although she is keeping in contact, she really loved working with you all.
It's been busy here. I have been supporting the young people involved in making video clips and Clare has been project lead. It has been hard work but really good fun and next year we will be able to make them public so all you guys can see what we have been doing!!
We also held our fashion inquiry which a few of you were involved in, it was an interesting event and we will be writing up a report of it in the near future.
Tomorrow Emma and I and 2 young ambassaors will be going to The Children and Young People's Services Awards because we have been nominated for the work we do within the young people's forum. We will let you know how we get on!
Fingers crossed that we win!!
beat blog #10
Hi everyone
Well despite the horrible weather (where did the summer go??!!) we’ve been working hard as usual and want to keep you up to date. Charlotte has almost completed a booklet on recovery, which will be available in the near future – we will keep you posted! We would really like your ideas on what you would like to see next – what do you feel that you need as a tool or resource to help you? Don’t worry if you think your ideas are wrong or silly, we want to hear all of it, there are no right or wrong ideas!!
Charlotte has also added some real life stories onto the website. Thank you to all of you who have sent contributions in – we’ve been really pleased with all the e-mails we’ve received lately. We would especially like to know of your experiences of beat and our services. Our fundraising team are currently doing a piece of work that needs input on real experiences from real sufferers and carers, so if you can help please e-mail ypf@b-eat.co.uk.
We have a webchat on Friday 7th September from 7-8pm with a representative from the Royal College of Psychiatrists in London who would like to speak to you again about your experience of treatment services, and the experience of you carers/ families. Hope you can make it!
Good luck if you’re starting a new term!
Lucy and Charlotte
beat blog # 9
Hi there,
Apologies for not blogging for a while! Charlotte and Lucy have been working really hard and have been out of the office on various days.
We had a fundraising event at Sandown Racecourse, Heather, one of our Ambassadors, spoke at the event and some members of staff including Charlotte sold raffle tickets and shooks buckets for donations. It was a great day and we raised around £60,000!
Last week we both visited an inpatient unit, we got to talk to the staff and patients about how things happened there. It was very interesting and useful for us to ask questions of the clinical staff about how they made decisions for people's treatment. It was also great to meet a few of the young people from the unit.
We also went to London along with 3 Ambassadors to meet with the Girl Guides. They are doing some research in body image and emotional resilience in young girls and wanted our input. It was a good day and the representatives from the Girl Guides and our ambassadors will be speaking about the research at the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat party conference fringe meetings in September.
Continue to send in your poems, stories, articles and art pieces for the website, we have had some great stuff sent in. It's brilliant that the site is becoming somethimg that you have contributed to also!
Take care
Charlotte and Lucy
beat blog #8
Hi everyone,
Charlotte is away for the rest of this week and next week, so Lucy has been extra busy! Keep your e-mails coming in – it’s always great to hear from you and keeps us on the ball!
This week we have been asked to help the Girl Guides with some research that they are doing into self esteem, in particular amongst young girls. They are holding four meetings across the country, and are keen for our Young Ambassadors to attend. If any of you are interested, or if you are interested in becoming a Young Ambassador, please contact us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk.
The new edition of our quarterly magazine ‘Upbeat’ came out this week. It has a great new look and loads of interesting articles! If you would like to receive a copy please follow the links on our homepage on how to become a beat supporter.
Don’t forget our live chat next Wednesday 11th July between 7pm and 8pm. If you have any queries on how to join a live chat, please e-mail us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk. Hope you can make it!
beat blog #7
Hi everyone,
Sorry for the lack of blog last week – Lucy was on holiday and Charlotte was extra busy covering Lucy’s work and keeping up with her own!
The Youth Achievement Awards conference mentioned in the previous blog was a great success. We are now ready to help you work through your awards, and will endeavour to give you all the support that you need. If you are a Young Ambassador and are interested in doing a Youth Achievement Award, please e-mail us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk – they make a great addition to your Record of Achievement or CV, and are fun and rewarding to do.
Charlotte and one of our Young Ambassadors, Heather, attended the Charity Excellence Awards last week and were proud to accept a ‘Highly Commended’ award. There were more than 800 entries, so everybody at beat is really pleased with the result.
Lucy is hoping to submit a petition to the 10 Downing Street website at some point in the near future. The petition will campaign fro better treatment services for young people with eating disorders. Watch this space!!
beat blog #6
Hi everyone,
The past couple of weeks have been busy as usual! We have lots of exciting things coming up in the near future. Lucy is hoping to conduct a fringe meeting at the UK Youth Parliament annual sitting in Glasgow in July, and both Lucy and Charlotte will be attending a Youth Achievement Award conference in London. The Youth Achievement Awards will be a chance for young people to receive recognition for any ambassadorial work they do for beat. If you’re interested please e-mail us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk.
You can also e-mail us at the same address if you have any ideas or creative pieces you would like to submit for the webzine which Charlotte is currently developing. She is also continuing her work on the recovery tool, designed to help you assess your own recovery.
Lucy has contributed a piece on the Mental Health Bill for the new edition of ‘Upbeat’ which will be published shortly.
We will be having a live web chat on Wednesday 13th June from 7pm to 8pm – please join us if you are free, it would be great to hear from you!
beat blog #5
Hi,
Last week Charlotte worked on the third draft of the health check tool with the addition of a diagram showing the stages of recovery.She has sent it out to you all today hoping from some feedback from you all.
Lucy has recieved quite a few questionnares and is working through them to get a real idea of the most important issues that the charter needs to cover. Thank you for all your replies! Lucy has also been researching for the charter.
Charlotte has added a book review to the book review page.
You might remember that we said that beat had been nominated for a couple of awards...well we won one!!! It was the Norfolk and Suffolk Marketing Excellence Award from the Chartered Institute of Marketing. We were the only charity nominated, and won the 'Brand Excellence' category. The 'Smoothies' (our staff who led our rebrand) reformed to go to a black tie dinner and awards ceremony!
We are also having a live chat on Wednesday night ( 23rd), 7-8pm.
beat blog #4
This week Charlotte has sent out her first draft of the health check, thank you to everyone who replied and made comments or suggested changes that could be made. We really value the feedback that we get from you. We understand that it can be hard for some of you to speak your minds but please try - we love to hear from you even if you are telling us things that need to be changed (we are weird that way!) The second draft will be on it's way to you soon.
Lucy has been working on a questionnare to send out to you all to help her develop the health charter, she will be sending this out soon.
In addition to this we have been nominated for some awards!! Check out this local news story here
We understand that many of you are busy revising or taking various tests and exams, we wish you luck and hope that you can take some time out to treat yourselves as well.
beat blog #3
We have been very busy this week creating a Health Charter and a Health Check for young people. Our Health Charter will show a ‘gold standard’ of care that young people would like to see in treatment services, and our Health Check is being designed to help you assess where you are in the recovery process. We’ve had some great responses so far - if anyone would like to contribute please e-mail us at ypf@b-eat.co.uk.
We have also put in a bid for funding that would allow us to produce video clips for the website and a video that can be used as a training resource. Young people have told us that they would like to see a video that shows real people with eating disorders in real life situations. This could be our chance to make that idea a reality and would be a really good way to educate people and increase awareness of eating disorders. Fingers crossed!
No doubt you will all be busy with revision and exams. Don’t forget to take some time out for yourselves and do something therapeutic to take your mind off work. If therapy for you means creativity, you could visit our creativity corner. If you have a contribution you would like to share please e-mail it to ypf@b-eat.co.uk and we will do our best to display it for you (please note material will be put up subject to team’s discretion).
Good luck with the exams!
beat blog #2
Well it’s only my third day here at beat, but I’ve already learned so much and met so many lovely people. I’m very excited to have been given the chance to work with such a dedicated and supportive team.
However, what I am particularly looking forward to is getting to know all of YOU! It will be great to hear all of your views and to get together to campaign to get YOUR voices heard.
Please if you have any topics, messages, ideas, issues etc that you would like to raise, or just something that you feel really passionate about, get in touch and I will work with you to make sure you feel that your opinions are listened to and more importantly, that action is taken based on your ideas and suggestions. As a team we can push our campaign forward and show that we really believe in our message ‘Eating Disorders will be Beaten.’
Looking forward to hearing from you all,
Lucy
beat blog #1
We have jumped on the blogging bandwagon! It's a great way to keep you up to date with what's been going on here. We are hoping to have a weekly blog…(!)
So far we have had a re-shuffle here and merged our self help network and support services together, this has created a large mutli-skilled team who can really focus on our current and future plans for supporting those affected by eating disorders.
Charlotte’s new role is Young People’s Participation Officer, this means that she will still help to run the helplines but will have more time to focus on getting young people involved and supporting the young people who work with us.
We also have a new member of staff joining on Monday 16th; Lucy has joined us to start the new role of Young People’s Campaign Officer. She will be working closely with the Ambassadors and finding new opportunities for your voices to get out there and heard.
Clare is developing training packages that can be used with young people, and may ask you from time to time for your opinions and input to help her do this.
That’s all for the moment.
P.S Remember our live chat tomorrow (Wed 11th Apr) and to e-mail in your stories, tips for recovery, creative pieces etc so that we can keep this site full of pieces from you guys. ypf@b-eat.co.uk
