Arts & Crafts

The arts and crafts morning welcomes everyone at the centre to participate. As well as being great fun, it offers service users the opportunity to learn new skills and can also be very therapeutic.

The arts and crafts group takes place on Thursday mornings from 10am to 12:45pm.

Group members can paint, draw and make jewellery and stained glass as well as learning more advanced crafts like fabric printing.

Anyone interested in viewing the work produced from the arts and crafts group is welcome to visit the upstairs gallery at BPMHA where most artworks are on display.

Sewing

The sewing group takes place at the BPMHA every Monday morning. It aims to provide opportunities for women:

To enhance their sewing skills
To learn new techniques
To share experiences and ideas together
To build co-operation and team work
To bond and form new friendships

Bible Study

Bible study takes place every Wednesday and is service user-led. The groups are small (about 8 to 10 people), and provides a unique opportunity for members to interact over a shared interest.

Every week a different passage is chosen from either the Old or New Testament and the group then discuss their thoughts and feelings, how it relates or affects their own lives. As there are so many different backgrounds and experiences in the BPMHA, this gives our clients some insight into other people’s lives, experiences and spirituality and can in the long run enable them to attain a higher understanding of their own worlds.

The group enables clients to voice their opinions and views on life through a spiritual medium and is an excellent means of therapy. Facilities are also provided for people of other faiths means of therapy.

A physical fitness trainer visits the centre on Monday and Thursday and users take part on an optional basis (although we do strongly encourage their participation). As well as being a great deal of fun the group aims:

To promote a better self image.
To promote a greater understanding of health issues and how they
affect our lives.
To allow the users to interact with one another
To help clients lead a better, healthier life.

Computer literacy is important for most jobs in the market place and if our clients are to have a fair chance in the job market it is clear that they will need to show an understanding of computers. It is also essential that they demonstrate a certain amount of confidence using them as so many of our new clients have never used computers.

We invite trained professionals in to the centre as often as we can so that they can give our clients a solid grounding in IT skills with a view to them gaining a greater understanding of hardware and software packages. Many of our users have gone on to more advanced courses using the training here as their platform.

To date users have been introduced to several different pathways including:

Word processing
Databases
Internet
Windows operating system

Our hope is that our users will then be able to achieve better things in their lives and careers.

English & Life Skills is a weekly drop-in group. The aims of the group are to foster effective verbal and written communication thereby enabling clients to take advantage of the many opportunities available at the centre and to develop new skills and make new friends. Together, we have worked towards service users developing confident interaction with their peers and staff: improving listening skills, the ability to engage in conversation; being able to discuss symptoms and treatment succinctly with professionals.

It is a relaxed atmosphere where successes are always acknowledged and mistakes discussed without fear of destructive criticism. The material is compiled to target the individual needs of a group mixed in gender, age and ability. Some of the topics covered:

Opposites
Homophones
Compound words
Dictionary definitions
Cryptic clues