The first of a series of events planned to help the local community in Caithness understand what community led support is available to them takes place at the end of this month.

‘Here for Caithness’ is a series of community pop-up hubs which will highlight all the ways in which your community can help you. The first of these will take place in the Wick Assembly Rooms, on 26 April from 10:00 – 14:00.

Lesley Martin, Community Service Improvement Practitioner with NHS Highland, said: “Caithness has a number of groups which are here to support the local community and we want to ensure that people are aware of what support is out there and how they can access it.

“This is a drop-in event which will allow people to come along at a time that suits them and chat to those in attendance. It will highlight all the different ranges of support availability not only from organisations such as the NHS or Council but also voluntary groups who can also provide support and advice to their local community.

“Going forward the plan is to hold these events in other towns and villages in the Caithness area.”

Confirmed to attend at the event on the 26 April are –

Caithness Voluntary Group (CVG)

HERE for Caithness (Digital one-stop-shop for wellbeing and host for Caithness Cares and CPAG)

Listening Ear

Caithness CAB

Pulteneytown People’s Project

Caithness Mental Health Group

Highland Council Employability

High Life Highland

NHS Highland

FUNDING INFORMATION EVENT

Tuesday 26th April, there are two sessions, 10am-noon and 1.30pm-3.30pm

Pulteney Centre, Wick

There will be presentations from:

Tesco Community Grants

Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm Community Fund

Foundation Scotland talking about local wind farm funds, Camster, Stroupster and other small funds

Update on soon-to-be-launched Caithness Community Fund (funded by ScottishPower Renewables Halsary Windfarm)

Your Police, You Decide Fund

North Highlands and Islands Climate hub development funding

There will be time to ask the funder’s questions.

THIS EVENT IS SUITABLE FOR GROUPS IN THE VOLUNTARY SECTOR. TO BOOK A PLACE CONTACT YVONNE HENDRY, Yvonne@cvg.org.uk,

An infographic with some of our tips for dealing with stress at work.

Wednesdays 27th April to 15th June 2022 (7pm – 9pm)

The Mindfulness Based Living Course (MBLC) is a weekly mindfulness course, with kindness and compassion at the centre. It is an 8-week course, each session is two hours long, with a specific area of focus. A manual in PDF format is provided. Recordings of the meditations will be available.

Course dates

The next course will run on Zoom on Wednesday evenings (7pm – 9pm) from 27th April to 15th June 2022. It will be facilitated by Diana Preston and Elke Ambrose.

We are also hoping to run this course again from the end of October.

COST

The cost of the 8-week course is £100. Please do not let affordability be a barrier as concessions are available for those on low/no income or we can offer a flexible payment plan.

HOW TO BOOK

Please contact us on highlandmindfulness@gmail.com and we can send you the registration form and payment details.

PROGRAMME

Session 1 – Starting where we are – allowing us to recognise the unsettled mind and practice how we might settle the mind.

Session 2 – The body as a place to stay present – looks at Mindfulness in every day life, exploring kindness and awareness of how the body can anchor us to the present moment.

Session 3 – Introducing Mindful support – during this session we will practice the 3 minute breathing space, we explore using sound as a support to our practice, topics for this session also include what we mean by non striving and responding to pleasant and unpleasant events.

Session 4 – Working with Distraction – we explore using the support of the breath and mindful walking.

Session 5 – Exploring the undercurrent – looking at the undercurrent as a constant steam of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations, topics for this session will also cover loving kindness in our lives.

Session 6 – Attitude – we continue to look at kindness for ourself and others, learning more about the attitude we bring to the undercurrent as we observe the flow of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations

Session 7 – Self Acceptance – the main theme of this session is looking at self acceptance and drawing on the work of Professon Paul Gilbert, we explore practices in self compassion and practice self acceptance with the RAIN practice (Recognising, Allowing, Intimate attention and Non identification).

Session 8 – A mindful based Life – during this session mindfulness support will be revisited – review of the journey so far and where do we go from here.

COURSE FACILITATORS

Diana Preston has been practising Mindfulness since 2015 and began facilitating mindfulness groups after retiring from teaching. She combines her meditation practice with a love of the outdoors and is an enthusiastic

mountaineer and lover of poetry. She trained through the Mindfulness Association.

We WANT Guests

These are just some of the wonderful people coming along to speak to us during the ‘We WANT Festival’, and we cannot wait to welcome them along! They’ll be giving talks throughout the 30th on the day of the festival, so we hope you can come along to some.

Some of our speakers include

Emma Roddick – SNP Highlands and Islands MSP

DR Aik Goh – Consultant gynaecologist NHS Highland

Carolyn Pierpoint – Breast cancer survivor (sharing her story)

Job Vacancy – Alzheimer Scotland

Location Thurso

Salary £27,055 – £29,951 per year pro rata

Package 25 days annual leave plus 11 public holidays pro-rata, NEST Pension Scheme, Extensive Training Plan

Contractual hours 28

This is a very flexible role aimed at meeting the needs of people with dementia and their carers in a given geographical area. The focus and location of the Dementia Advisors activity will vary from time to time depending on the needs of the people we support, although they will have a fixed office base.

Successful applicants will have a positive approach to dementia.

They will also have good communication skills and a caring attitude. A willingness to learn and participate in training is essential. Relevant qualifications and/or experience of working with people with dementia would be an advantage.

For a full job description and person specification please see the attachments section of this advert.

The successful candidate for this post will be subject to a criminal check through Disclosure Scotland.

Interview date – tbc

Closing date – 08 April 2022

Recruiting Manager: Sarah Fraser

Location: Dementia Resource Centre, Athole Court, Dingwall, IV15 9SH

Tele: 01349 808650

Email: sfraser@alzscot.org

Youth Scotland Spring Fund
Grants of up to £1,000 are available for community-based youth groups and organisations in Scotland to support families
who are experiencing poverty.
Deadline Ongoing https://www.youthscotland.org.uk/programmes/youth-scotland-springfund/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=YSSpring_Fund

NHS Highland’s Adult Mental Health and Learning Disability Services are
working together with a wide range of people to create a strategy that
will shape the future of the services and supports that are provided in
the next few years.

  We would like to invite you to join a workshop on 19th April 10am
-12noon for Third and Independent Sectors, Community Organisations and
Groups to help us shape our engagement process for the strategy.  We are
keen to work together and learn from you how we can best design our
engagement process to ensure it is meaningful for the people who take
part.

  Please see the poster for further information and registration for the
workshop.

  We hope you can join us!