Che’s Story: Feeling confident to grow personally and professionally

After graduating from university in July 2024, I felt that I needed some more hands-on mental health experience. I knew about Manchester Mind because it is local to where I grew up, and I could see the stature that Manchester Mind held, especially in my community.

I started volunteering in the support sessions every Monday. For many people, if it’s their first time accessing this type of support, it can be hard for them to talk about how they’re feeling. So, the main focus for the volunteers is to create a safe environment, where people feel they can open up.

“When I want to help someone, I will do everything I can to learn about it and to grow”

Having grown up has a direct carer for my cousin, who has struggled with paranoid schizophrenia, I have first-hand experience of seeing how mental health impacts people. I chose to study Psychology at university so I could learn more about the brain and his condition. Volunteering in the support sessions really helped me to learn more. I’ve grown so much in terms of developing my skills of active listening, building rapport, creating relationships and a safe environment and managing to ask the right questions.

I think that before you actually begin supporting people, you can have quite a closed off perspective of how mental health effects people. Working as a volunteer helped me to realise how broad it is in terms of its impact and the many different social factors it is linked to.

“Manchester Mind trusted me to go from a volunteer to a full-time worker because they saw the potential in me”.

With the help of Manchester Mind, I am now a fully-trained mental health link worker. The beauty of my job is that every day is different. I get to keep cases from anywhere up to one to six months which means I get the time to form long-standing relationships with people, getting to work with them on a deeper level.

The values of Manchester Mind are what make it such a beautiful role to be in. You can tell that everyone here looks forward to their work because they genuinely want to help people. In terms of growth, Manchester Mind supports you to grow as a person, as well as a professional. Being a younger person, it feels hard to come by this level of support sometimes, which is one of the reasons working here is amazing.

There is a big stigma in my Caribbean community surrounding mental health, and I want my work to continue to support that change. Seeing the positive impact that reducing the stigma around my cousin’s mental health has had on my African Caribbean family made me realise the importance of helping to reduce it in the wider community.