On Mental Health Awareness Week hear from Thackley Juniors who take the mental health of everyone at their club exteremely seriously.

"As an FA Charter Standard Community Club, Thackley Juniors take the development and welfare of our players and volunteers really seriously. We’re approaching two years since all volunteers at the club went through the training that enabled us to become one of the first Mental Health Aware clubs in the UK. We have 3 level 2 mental health aware champions, and started our journey of getting all coaches to a level 1 standard, we used the company 'ALL SPORT PRO' to start our club on the journey.

During lockdown we issued regular newsletters to members and included within these were links to helpful resources for mental health support in the event people were struggling at such a difficult time.

If our heightened awareness of potential mental health triggers, causes or behaviours enables us to help just one person from the Thackley Juniors community or beyond, then it will be worth it.

We will be running our next in-house workshop to capture any new coaches/assistants/helpers within our club in August of this year 2021, to make sure we keep the standard of mental health awareness at a great level.

We keep mental health information in a section on our club website aswell, so if people need it but don't feel they can approach us, there's a section with loads of useful numbers & groups that could help if in crisis.

We hope our initiatives will help support those with mental help moving forward or getting the support they need in a positive way."