Cam-mind’s befriending sets the standard

The one-to-one befriending service provided by Cambridge-based mental health charity Cam-mind has become the first project in Cambridge to achieve the Government-backed Approved Provider Standard (APS) from the national Mentoring and Befriending Foundation. It is currently the only mental health-related project in the Eastern Region to do so.

The 12 point APS standard covers everything from effective organisation, staff competence and supervision, through to monitoring the service and evaluating its effectiveness. Cam-mind is now one of more than 800 projects to have reached this standard nationwide.

Cam-mind, which is the longest established mental health service in Cambridge, provides a range of community-based services to local people with mental health problems. The befriending service, which this year got a major cash boost from Cambridge's Chariots of Fire race, supports individuals who have become particularly isolated as a result of their illness and is designed to help rebuild confidence and support recovery.

Service users are carefully matched with volunteer befrienders with similar interests. They then meet for an hour or so a week to pursue an activity within the community, which might be anything from a trip to a supermarket to going to the gym, cinema, night class or local library. It is a service that is in high demand and receives consistently positive feedback from both service users and mental health professionals.

“We are absolutely delighted to have achieved the APS Standard,” says Cam-mind's Services Co-ordinator Hannah Turner. “We have had to go through a very stringent process to get to this point, which has been a very worthwhile exercise in itself.”

“Even more importantly it has given us a very strong foundation for continued improvement and development,” she adds. “This quality mark should be invaluable in helping us to attract further funding and to recruit more volunteer befrienders — without whom this project could not operate.”

For further information about volunteer befriending, please contact Hannah Turner at Cam-mind on 01223 311320 or email: co-ordinator@cam-mind.org.uk. No previous experience is necessary.

For further information, please call Aly Anderson or Hannah Turner on 01223 311320