The High Support Unit is a self-contained house attached to our hostel, where people can undergo a home detox treatment programme from alcohol or drug dependency. Treatment is supervised by a dedicated specialist nurse and substance dependency support worker, who will support individuals throughout their stay in the unit. The aim of the scheme will be:
Resilience Day at Community Roots
Can we bake some ‘depressed cakes’? We had not heard of such a thing; cakes have certainly never depressed us. The story behind the cakes is a real inspiration, to bake cakes to sell, which highlight the fact that mental health effects one in four people. The residents of the High Support Unit were asked to take part in making cakes that characterised depression and how it makes you feel.
We met on Tuesday lunchtime and started our cooking session with a coffee and a bacon roll, a necessity for a productive day. The residents were really enthusiastic; those who attended have suffered from depression for many years and know how debilitating mental illness can be.
We started off, getting ourselves in a right old mess, as you can see in the picture.
Making cakes is a far away step from where the residents have been in the past and activities such as these help to teach new skills, whilst socialising, having fun and being part of a group, which helps them to move forward in their recovery. After a lot of mixing we got all the cake mixtures made.
The residents planned what they were going to do with their cakes in a previous session and gradually it all came together for them. We laughed about how baking was similar to moving on with their recovery; without good preparation you do not get a good result.
After hours of sweat and tears metaphorically of course, we produced a fantastic variety of the most depressed cakes you have ever seen. All concerned were very proud of the results and it was a big tick on the raising self-esteem list.
The Resilience day was a community event held at Community Roots, it was a beautiful day and the sun was shining. The general public were invited along to visit the stalls of local agencies, such as Hands on Heart, the Scouts, the Environment Agency and the Police. Our depressed cake stall went down a dream and we raised £40.00 with the residents selling our wares.
A great time was had by all and the residents learnt new skills along the way. Recovery from drugs and alcohol should be about having fun – which we had!
This article was posted on 31 August 2016
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