WELLBEING
GROW A LITTLE KINDNESS
Samantha Smith shares the Roots
project’s successful campaign for
Mental Health Awareness Week
SIG Penrose Roots is a
garden-based community
recovery project that
provides a therapeutic
growing space for service
users, members, volunteers and the
wider community. Through work
in the garden, we equip people
with new skills, help reduce social
isolation, and promote positive
mental, emotional and physical
wellbeing.
After weeks working from home
in lockdown, while the Roots staff
are busy supporting the community,
my mind started to turn to what we
would have been doing if life was
still ‘normal’. For the past four years
we have put on our annual Walk and
Talk (adding cycling in 2019) to mark
Mental Health Awareness Week. We
would go for a leisurely walk around
the Luton area, with service users
and local partners, to discuss the
important topic of mental health in a
more relaxed and open way.
This year the pandemic meant
this could not happen and we had
to come up with another plan. The
2020 theme is kindness, which is
very close to the heart of all who
attend our various projects. So
I thought about how we could
make a campaign with the theme
of kindness to tie in with what we
currently do at our community
garden – and the ‘Lettuce be kind’
campaign was born.
The team of staff and volunteers
got to work planting 50 lettuce seeds
to grow and nurture into something
that we could give out to the
community. By 18 May, the team had
grown the lettuces, made care labels
and were ready to start randomly
placing the lettuces across Luton.
They went to bus stops, parks and
green spaces, doorsteps and various
residential streets. All carried the
message: #lettucebekind – perhaps
the roots to kindness can start with
yourself. Be kind to this lettuce and it
will repay your kindness.
The campaign was a huge
success and had many tweets and
messages from excited community
members who had found one of the
lettuces. The campaign also got a
mention on the BBC East Twitter live
update and the team was invited
to talk about the campaign on BBC
Three Counties Radio.
We will be following up with
other campaigns over the coming
months. It was a huge effort by the
whole team and helped to get the
message of kindness out there as a
gentle reminder that in these days
of supposed disconnection we have
never been more connected.
Samantha Smith is Roots project
co-ordinator
They said what..?
Spotlight on the national media
BEFORE COVID-19, only one in five
harmful and dependent drinkers
got the help they need; the
proportion will be even lower now.
We cannot claim to be a nation
recovering from COVID-19 if we do
not adequately support the most
vulnerable among us… Tackling
alcohol harms is an integral part
of the nation’s recovery.
BMJ editorial, 20 May
ATTEMPTS TO MODEL the
pandemic in England’s homeless
population have suggested
that, without any intervention,
up to three-quarters of them
could become infected... As in
so many other areas of life, the
pandemic is prompting action
on social problems where there
was inertia before. It would be
‘We cannot claim
to be a nation
recovering from
COVID-19 if we
do not adequately
support the
most vulnerable
among us...’
naive to assume any temporary
solutions will be extended beyond
the end of this crisis, but they
may at least stimulate debate
about what should be put in their
place. Protecting these vulnerable
populations only when doing
so protects the rest of us can’t
fit many people’s definition of a
civilised society.
Laura Spinney, Guardian, 3 May
THERE IS NO WIDER SHORTAGE
OF CASH in public health. The
amount of money spent on
tenuous, policy-driven research
alone is staggering. Public health
academics were recently given
£400,000 to study the drinking
habits of football fans. You can
buy a lot of face masks with that
kind of money.
Christopher Snowdon, Spectator,
7 May
OLDER RELATIVES AND FRIENDS
may now be spending their weeks
holding a glass of wine rather
than the hand of a loved one…
Cutting down may be a problem
if there is already evidence of
alcohol addiction, but for those
who are able to cut down or stop
drinking safely, there is a pressing
need for public health education.
Over the past two months, an
increasing number of older people
have been self-isolating. As health
professionals, we should continue
to advocate for psychosocial
prescribing to keep their spirits up.
But now, perhaps this should be
with an extra pinch of brief advice
about alcohol consumption. Their
lives may very well depend on it.
Tony Rao, BMJ, 20 May
LIKE CORONAVIRUS, the drugs
issue is a public health crisis.
Since the pandemic is making us
reconsider a lot of things, from our
lifestyles to government spending,
I’d like to propose we reconsider
our drug policy… Across the world,
times are changing: while Priti
Patel, the home secretary, keenly
reassured the public that despite
the pandemic, she’s as committed
as ever to fighting the drug war.
Niko Vorobyov, Independent, 18 May
18 • DRINK AND DRUGS NEWS • JUNE 2020
WWW.DRINKANDDRUGSNEWS.COM