Session List

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Confidence and assertiveness is a skill which requires patience and practice. It can result in positive communication, better decision making and allows you to stand up for yourself.

This session will give you the understanding of what confidence and assertiveness each mean (in general and to you personally) and understanding the fight between confidence and failure. We will explore self-worth and how this can boost confidence. We will explore times when assertiveness is important and how we can develop a more assertive nature. These skills will encompass many aspects of your lives and should have a positive impact on all of them.

We aim to build your confidence by empowering each other through sharing stories.

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Obtaining healthy sleep is vital for our physical and mental health. It helps to boost productivity and our overall quality of life.

This course will explore some of the reasons we may have trouble getting to sleep, staying asleep and getting enough sleep. We’ll discuss what insomnia is and develop strategies that may help alleviate individual sleep issues. You will be encouraged to look at your personal sleep hygiene to see how improving environment and lifestyle could help establish better sleep patterns.

By sharing our experiences around sleep, we can learn from each other and develop better sleep habits.

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Life can be uncertain, hard and complex at times. Practicing gratitude can help increase our resilience to life’s challenges, amplify the positive and bring hope for the future.

In this session, we will discuss what gratitude is, how to practice it and how it can benefit our lives. We will share tips and tools you can apply to your everyday life and look at the benefits on your mental and physical wellbeing.

We are working to eliminate the stigma around mental illness through sharing our experiences.

Face to face session - 2 hour sessions

By learning about ADHD, we are able to develop a more compassionate approach to those living with ADHD. This not only enhances their lives, but those of them around them.

This course is designed to give you some insight into what ADHD is, the different types and the ways that this can present. We aim to try and understand the impacts which ADHD can have on our daily life. We will then go on to discuss ideas on how to manage the challenges it can present, whilst living a happy and fulfilled life. We will explore some myths around ADHD and look at the facts, in hope to dispel some of the stigma which surrounds ADHD.

Through sharing experiences, we can learn better how to understand people who live with ADHD and help them live a happier life.

Do you have an understanding of mental health? Building mental health awareness and understanding is important and can allow you to begin to understand some of the many issues and barriers people face when living with mental health conditions.

This session will being to develop your awareness of mental health, identify some key points that can influence mental health stigma, develop understanding key symptomology and the initial health that can be given. 

Building and spreading awareness of health and wellbeing is one of our key priorities here at Community Roots LSCFT and through shared experiences we can develop knowledge further to best support our communities.

Face to face session - 5 sessions over 5 weeks - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

PERMA is an acronym which stands for Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. It’s a scientific based model which was developed to fully represent all the factors that make up an individual’s wellbeing.

By the end of this course we hope to explain the model of PERMA, how each factor relates to our wellbeing and suggest some possible activities that may assist in developing habits within our own lives that could possibly improve some of the factors to develop our own levels of well-being.

If you’re interested in PERMA, we also run a course over five days covering the five aspects of PERMA.

Face to face session - Two 1 hour and 30 minute sessions

Self-compassion involves treating yourself with kindness and understanding when we fail at something, or are hurt. It’s about learning to treat yourself like a ‘good friend’ and this can lead to an increased quality of life and happiness.

Throughout this course, we will explore self-compassion and its different components, the myths and facts and why practising self-compassion is so important to your mental health. We will discuss the tools which can help you practise self-compassion in your everyday life.

We offer a taster session on self-compassion at the LSCft community Roots and if you want to learn more, you can come our extended 2 part course.

Face to face session - 2 hour sessions

Reflecting on our life experiences helps us to stop amidst life’s chaos. Understanding them helps us grow from our experiences.

The tree of Life is a creative course that allows us to look at your life experiences, things that are important to you and how you look at yourself. We’ll discuss what a Tree of Life visual could be used for and start to create our own personal designs. You’ll be encourages to take your Tree of Life home with you and to keep adding to the design throughout your personal wellbeing journey.

By reflecting on our experiences, we might find areas which we are proud of but also want to work on. At Community Roots we can provide you with courses to support this.

Face to face session - 2 hour session

By raising awareness around EUPD helps to encourage individuals to seek help, better understand their condition and live the best life for they can. It also allows others know how best to support people living with EUPD and this can lead to more compassionate relationships.

In this session, we will discuss possible causes, symptoms and treatments of EUPD (Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder), also known as Borderline Personality Disorder. You may find the discussions beneficial if you have EUPD, thing you might have EUPD or support someone with EUPD.

Through sharing experiences, we are working to help eliminate the stigma around mental illness.

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute session

Life can be full of uncertainties and anxiety provoking situations therefore anxiety is something that a lot of people live with that can begin to impact daily life. Constant worrying, and negative anxious thought patterns take a toll on your emotional and physical health therefore, understating your anxious thoughts can start to help prevent anxiety from feeling like it is taking over. 

This session will give you an understanding of why we may experience anxiety, what causes it, and how we recognize and start to challenge the ways it affects our lives. We will explore what anxiety is and how this differs from worry and look at causes of anxiety before using the anxiety cycle. We will look at some self-management tips to take away for you to implement into your daily lives beyond the session.  

Sharing our stories can help reduce misunderstandings around anxiety and open supportive conversations. 

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Our personal values allow us to develop a greater sense of purpose and drive our personalities and how we work towards goals. Therefore, developing a better understanding of our individual values leads us to goal setting, working towards dreams rather than against them.  

In this session we will discuss what personal values are and their benefits and move on to discover your core values with top tips on how we can incorporate these into daily life.  

At Community Roots we are dedicated to improving quality of life and sharing our lived experiences to reduce stigma.  

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Self-regulation is important for well-being and relationships as you are able to better manage emotions and control behavior. Developing self-regulation is important and such skills can contribute to increased self-confidence, stress management and reduced anxiety.  

In this session we will cover what self-regulation is and make the connection between thoughts and behaviors before discussing ways to develop self-regulation using things such as mindfulness and reframing negative thought exercises.   

LSCft Community Roots aims to better wellbeing in small steps, building up confidence and learning from each other.  

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute session

Stress is a natural response that ensures we are responding to challenges and threats in our everyday lives. Small amounts of stress can be beneficial, however too much stress can begin to affect both the mind and body. Therefore, learning about stress can support our mental and physical wellbeing and prevent us from becoming overwhelmed and burnt out.  

Within this session we will cover negative stress cycles, signs of stress both mental and physical, before looking at causes of stress to notice triggers.  

By reflecting on our thoughts and behaviour's we can notice where to make small changes, sharing stories is a brilliant opportunity to do this.  

ME/CFS, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is aneurological condition which affects a patient both physically and cognitively. The main feature is persistent physical and mental fatigue, which differs from normal tiredness.

This condition is considered under the Equality Act 2010. It has also been classified as a long term neurological condition. ME/CFS affects people in different ways and no two people experience the illness in the same way. It is not adequately relieved by rest and is usually out of proportion to the activity undertaken.

• Do you or some-one you care for have a diagnosis of ME/CFS?
• Our peer support sessions aim to bring people together to share experiences, tips and to get involved in activities as a group.

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Character strengths are individual to a person and can contribute to wellbeing and confidence. Discovering our character strengths captures our uniqueness and are important to improve a sense of self, greater life satisfaction and positive emotions.  

Within this session we will take a look at what character strengths are, how these are reflected in your thoughts, feelings and actions to promote wellbeing and how we can start recognizing these. 

By reflecting on our experiences, we might find areas which we are proud of but also want to work on. At community roots, we can provide you with courses to support this.  

Hybrid delivery - Two 1 hour and 30 minute sessions

We are consuming more news, however with negative news being highly accessible it’s important to look after our individual wellbeing. Constant negative news can impact your mental and psychical wellbeing causing lack of motivation and increase personal anxieties. Therefore, it is important to try and counteract the negativity of bad news as positive stories can offer great health benefits and hopeful mood adjustments.  

This session is split into 2, and covers the impact of negative news on wellbeing, doom scrolling and social media effects before moving on to discuss happy news with examples and management tips to combat negative media.  

Wellbeing, hope and opportunities are at the heart of the sessions we deliver where sharing stories is recognized as a beneficial wellbeing opportunity. 

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour and 30 minute sessions

Mindfulness is a technique that can be developed to notice what is happening in the present moment. Being mindful is proven to positively impact wellbeing and reduce feelings of stress and anxiety, while building levels of patience, compassion and acceptance towards yourself and others. 

On this introductory mindfulness session, we will cover sitting with and working on the acceptance of negative thoughts and feelings and discuss techniques such as body scans to help adapt your relationship with ever-passing thoughts and feelings, viewing them with a different perspective.  

The main aim of this introductory session is to recognize where and when you become overwhelmed and how to better approach this to build your own version of calmness and improve your wellbeing through Community Roots

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour session

If you have ever wondered what LSCFT Community Roots is and how you can benefit from the wide variety of free wellbeing sessions delivered via community roots and our local Partners, this session will provide an overview and introduction.  

During the session we will highlight community roots is, our person-centered approach and the importance of lived experience and co-production.  

This is a great opportunity to meet the team and ask any questions before beginning your learner journey with us.  

Hybrid delivery - Two 1 hour and 30 minute sessions

A wellbeing toolbox can equip you with essential coping skills, tools and activities to help tackle stress, regulate our emotions and alleviate anxiety and depression. Having knowledge of these skills and practicing them can make us more resilient and able to tackle life’s problems.

This is a two part session, we will cover what a mental health crisis is and how we can develop skills to tackle them. Skills covered include the TIPP skill and relaxation techniques. You will develop a better understanding of emotions which arise but also physical symptoms and how they present. The final session finishes on the self-soothe box and how you can create your own. We can support you with this.

Improving your health and wellbeing is our main focus at community roots and we hope we can help to develop your skills and become more resilient.

Face to face session - 1 hour 30 minute sessions

Occupational balance is important to increase individual health and happiness, promote mental wellbeing, reduce stress and increase companionship. Therefore engaging in a good balance of occupations can provide life satisfaction.

Good occupational balance often shows as a balance of self-care, leisure, and productivity. In this session we will cover the different components to occupation, reflect on our own occupations and use the wellness wheel to work towards a healthy occupational balance.

Improving wellbeing and sharing experiences is one of our main focuses at Community Roots, we hope the skills you learn and continue to develop can promote health and wellbeing in your life.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour session

In this session we will start by discussing what journaling and defining it then learning about the range of benefits journaling may have upon your health and well-being. We will then finish the session by writing a positively focussed journal entry a try and discussing this experience with the group if you feel comfortable.

Hybrid delivery - 2 hour session

This session will focus on the different unhelpful thoughts we have and the cognitive model of how they might arise. Secondly, we will look at how to identify unhelpful thoughts and how they impact our lives. To finish the session you will work through a case study to practice identifying the types of unhelpful thoughts we’ve looked at so you can apply this to your own life. Throughout the session it is encouraged to share your own opinions and stories

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

Having heightened sensitivity can mean you’re a compassionate, thoughtful and loyal person. This session aims to cover what heightened sensitivity is and the current literature around this to understand why and how people are more sensitive than others and why it isn’t a bad thing. This session encourages you to share your story as we hear examples of others living as a heightened sensitivity person and what the professionals say about it.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

After this session you should have a better understanding of the types of depression, some of the causes and symptoms and how you can lessen the burden of depression and ending with some links to useful resources. This session is also an opportunity to share your experience of living with depression or someone you know living with depression if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

Do you ever wake up in a bad mood? Does something set you onto a course of a bad mood during your day? This session looks at how we can be triggered into a bad mood during our day to day life and ways we can ease our emotional responses to these situations. Moreover, it is highly encouraged you share your own experiences throughout the session if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

This session is all about coming together to share our experiences in a positive way. We will cover who and when is it appropriate to share our stories and the different ways we can do this. Additionally we will look at the benefits of sharing and listening to stories and some top tips for doing this.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

The aim of this session is to provide an understanding of what bipolar is and it’s categorisations and who it impacts alongside some common symptoms. We will then move onto the different mood states and scales whilst defining hypomania and mania. This is a brilliant opportunity to share your own experience of living with bipolar or someone you know with bipolar.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour 30 minute session

Addiction is often misunderstood, we will cover the myths surrounding addiction and how our physiology impacts addictions. We will also cover the effects of addiction and use this session as a judgement-free environment to share our own stories of living with or with someone with addiction. However, please come along even if you have no experience with addiction, you could learn something new.

Hybrid delivery - 1 hour session

We all have days, weeks or even months where we feel like everything is weighing us down. This session is designed to help us logically tackle concerns we have that might impact our mental wellness. This session we will go through some evidence-based techniques that may provide some breathing space and clarity away from feeling overwhelmed and help us return to these worries with a better state of mind. Throughout, attendees will be encouraged to share what works for them and their experiences of allowing yourself a calmer day.

Face to face session - 1 hour and 30 minute session

A Zentangle is an easy to learn form of meditative drawing or doodling and is all about creating patterns with simple dots, lines, curves, orbs, etc.

Throughout this session we will learn the benefits of Zentangling and then practice at least 3 designs, we will then implement these designs onto an outline of a shape or animal to create a final picture.

Do you have an understanding of mental health? Building mental health awareness and understanding is important and can allow you to begin to understand some of the many issues and barriers people face when living with mental health conditions.

This session will being to develop your awareness of mental health, identify some key points that can influence mental health stigma, develop understanding key symptomology and the initial health that can be given. 

Building and spreading awareness of health and wellbeing is one of our key priorities here at Community Roots LSCft and through shared experiences we can develop knowledge further to best support our communities.

1 hour and 30 minute session

This is a social group which allows people to come together, socialise, draw and get creative. In this session we will look at how certain artists were able to express themselves simply by making marks on paper from scribbles, to wavy lines to the use of multiple dots. Using a variety of materials you will then create your own mark making design, no previous art experience is needed to attend this course.    

2 hour session - requires two sessions

Have you ever heard of an approved mental health professional or come across this role and wonder what they do? This two part session will give you an understanding of what the role involves and how approved mental health professionals work in the mental health care sector.

In the first session we will cover who an approved mental health professional is, what they do and explore the role. We will explore some shared stories from professionals and briefly touch on the mental health act.

The second session will go on to cover team working under the role of an approved mental health professional, explore the person-centred approach with an activity and finish with how the role is made to empower individuals.

This session also covers how you can share your story through the trust, community Roots LSCft values lived experiences and understands the benefits sharing a story can have on wellbeing.

Two part session - 2 hours

The mental health act is a vital piece of law that is used in mental health care when needed. It can be hard to understand what the mental health act is or what professionals are referring to, however understanding your rights is important.

This two part session will explore the mental health act and some misunderstandings formed by the media. We will cover myths and facts around the law before going on to explore some commonly used sections under the act in mental health care. Person-centred care, advanced decision making and least restrictive care will be discussed before closing with when a section made under the act can end.

Community Roots LSCft aims to encourage wellbeing and provides a range of opportunities to support the community and develop understanding.

Do you know what an approved clinician or an approved clinical role is? If not then these sessions are for you! Approved clinical roles and approved clinicians are roles that relate to the mental health act within inpatient services (mental health hospital ward).

This session will cover what these roles are and what they do within services with content straight from the clinicians themselves whilst highlighting some questions from service users.

The session will cover what an approved clinician is, how you’d meet them within inpatient services, existing knowledge gaps and how this role fits into the service team. So if you or someone you know would benefit from knowing more about the experience of inpatient services then please book on and hopefully we’ll see you soon!

Two sessions - 2 hours each session

You’ve probably heard the term “independent mental health advocate” but do you know what it actually is?

These sessions will define what an independent mental health advocate is and in what instances would you require or request one within inpatient services (mental health hospital ward).

We will then learn what an advocate could do for you and the different people and roles that can become your mental health advocate alongside discussing the benefits of having a mental health advocate.

Lastly, the sessions will end by talking about how to access a mental health advocacy and the alternative options for one with the scenarios where you would or would not require an advocate and then what barriers you may encounter and some case studies.

1 hour and 30 minute session

Being a carer is surrounded with stigma and little understanding of the impact caring has on the carer. In this session we look to discuss various caring stories from carers and staff with lived experience. We will also discuss what support is available in the Lancaster area, from NHS services to carers organisations.

Being a carer and working can be an extremely stressful and difficult task, we will also discuss a carers rights and ways to discuss this at work so you have an understanding on what support is available to you.