Camelot Foundation Worries

The Times newspaper is reporting that the Camelot Foundation is under financial pressure from its owners, the Camelot lottery organisation, and may be forced to close it's doors.

This would be a huge blow to the UK, as the Camelot Foundation gives away huge amounts of money to charitable organisations that wouldn't normally receive grants and funding. The Camelot Foundation is intrinsically involved in Self-Injury Awareness, and their research (The National Inquiry into Young People and Self-Harm) with the Mental Health Foundation, was a real step forward.

More than that, the Camelot Foundation is helping launch a new web service for young people and people of all ages who are affected by self-injury, and if the Foundation is wound-down, their funding and their governance would be put at risk, or withdrawn completely.

Why do I know this? Because LifeSIGNS is part of this new initiative. LifeSIGNS is part of a Consortium, a partnership, aiming to launch the biggest and brightest online support resource in the UK.

Only the Camelot Foundation had the insight to recognise the national need to address self-harm / self-injury at this scale, and their funding is crucial.

Reading the news online, I'm struck by what a blow this is to the UK. The Camelot Foundation provides funding to organisations and projects that would otherwise not receive such support. Children and young people will miss-out on some amazing programmes if the Camelot Foundation is not around to guide and support smaller organisations like our own.

LifeSIGNS, along with our partner charities, is benefiting from the Camelot Foundation's strategic guidance and financial support to create the biggest and brightest support resource for young people and people affected by self-harm in the UK. While we hope we can continue to create this new resource, it is worrying indeed that funding is in doubt.

I can only implore the shareholders to support the Camelot Foundation until at least 2009 as planned, so that the Foundation can continue delivering hope to the hundreds of thousands of people their financial support touches.

Read the news report at the Times Online, and leave your comments!

Voice Recording: Research Request

Angela, a trainee counsellor at Stockport College (Greater Manchester), is hoping to speak with a person who has direct personal experience of self-injury in order to raise awareness within her class of counsellors.

This is an opportunity to help trainees who may become professional counsellors practicing in the UK understand the emotional elements behind self-injury, and why your might rely on hurting yourself to help you cope.

Angela would like to hear from you, literally! She’s hoping that you might create a 5 or 10 minute recording that explains why you hurt yourself, and how you feel before and after – and why you might feel that self-injury ‘works’ for you. There’s no need to go into method details, and there’s no need for the recording to be triggering in any manner, it’s just a chance for you to express yourself verbally and be heard by trainee professionals.

You may be able to record your feelings on a Cassette recorder, or perhaps as an MP3 on your computer – either way, you can arrange such matters with Angela over email, and so I would like to invite you to email Wedge@lifesigns.org.uk with the following details:

• First Name:
• Age:
• 100 / 150 words that describe the emotional reasons behind your self-injury, and what sort of support you currently receive for your self-injury.

Please use the subject of ‘Recording’ in your email, thank you. Please don’t write more than 150 words.

Please email Wedge@lifesigns.org.uk as soon as possible, if you are have the ability to record your voice and the willingness to talk about yourself.

Many thanks

What’s LifeSIGNS Worth to You?

Have you found our services and info useful? Inspiring? Reliable? Comforting?
You know that LifeSIGNS is a user-lead, volunteer run charity right? We’re run by people like you, people with personal experience of self-injury, people with jobs, and boyfriends, husbands, people at university, people who’ve been in hospital… In short, we recruit our management committee from our thousands of members, I’m sure you’ve seen our adverts in the past.

So you know that we’re user-lead, and you know we’re volunteers, we run LifeSIGNS because we feel, as you do, that self-injury needs to be better addressed and people need a greater awareness of the subject and the emotional turbulence behind it.

Get involved

We really appreciate how involved and engaged our members are, you give us hints and tips, life details and stories - providing in-depth insights into life with self-injury. Without you, we wouldn’t be able to be here, doing what we do. We’re always pleased to hear your ideas and concerns, LifeSIGNS is always growing and developing, and your input is vital.

So, would you like to write an article for our Newsletter? Have you got a subject in mind that other people would be interested to read? Have you got an experience to share that would inspire or educate our readers?

LifeSIGNS also appreciates your other contributions. It’s difficult to talk about money when we’re all on a budget these days, but LifeSIGNS is generally a self-funded charity, we don’t get money from the Government or anything, we are supported by our members like you, and by sales of our Wristbands, SI Awareness Book and Training. LifeSIGNS is your charity, and so can I ask you to consider what LifeSIGNS is worth to you? A subscription to Heat magazine costs £79, and the Sunday Times costs around £1.20 each week. Everything LifeSIGNS publishes is available free; even our £5 SI Awareness Book is available for free download, how many organisations offer a whole book like that?

You know what I’m getting at, we haven’t discussed money for ages, but it’s fair to say that we exist because our members want us to and one of the ways you can show support is by purchasing a wristband, a book or by making a direct donation to us.

You can donate with a PayPal account, or just directly with a credit or debt card.

89080

In the UK, you can also donate £1.50 right now by texting us. To send us a single donation of £1.50, please text Give signs now to 89080

If you’d like to send us £1.50 every month, you can just text Give signs on to 89080 – that’s it, nothing more to do! (You can cease your monthly donation my texting Give signs off to 89080)

Unfortunately the service is not available to Virgin Mobile or 3 users. Uppercase or lowercase letters don't matter, just text the bold words shown above. We’d really like to see more text donations coming in, and of course you get a ‘thank you text’ right back.

Please help the sustainability of LifeSIGNS, we need to grow to do more, your donation will directly help us do more. Remember that if you can’t afford to give money, you can still support us financially by signing up for EveryClick which costs you nothing. LifeSIGNS have made over £800 from EveryClick - click on the logo on the right to sign up!

Free Wallpaper for Sept / Oct

Have been playing about with some LifeSIGNS calendar ideas today, and while I was at it managed to create a test wallpaper file - free to you for your use, especially in October :)

Download Wallpaper Image (Sept) (JPG Photo; 120KB)






Download Wallpaper Image (Oct) (JPG Photo; 150KB)








Download Wallpaper Image (Oct) (JPG Photo; 200KB)

('Right Click' on the above link and then 'Save' the file to your computer)

World Suicide Prevention Day

Globally, every three seconds someone attempts to take his or her own life and almost one million deaths a year are by suicide. This is higher than the total number of deaths each year from homicide and road accidents combined. Since the year 2000 there have been more than five million suicide deaths worldwide. Suicide is an important public health problem and is a leading cause of death amongst teenagers and young adults.

The International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP) in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) is using Sunday 10th September to draw attention to suicide as a leading cause of premature and preventable death. The theme for this year’s World Suicide Prevention Day is ‘with understanding, new hope’ and the focus is on translating current scientific knowledge and research about suicidal behaviour into practical programmes and activities that can reduce suicidal behaviour.

"September 10 is an annual event sponsored
by the International Association for Suicide Prevention, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation. This year the theme of World Suicide Prevention Day is “Suicide Prevention across the Life Span”. This theme has been adopted to emphasise the fact that suicide occurs in all ages and suicide prevention and intervention strategies may be adapted to meet the needs of different age groups.
There is a common misperception that suicide occurs mostly amongst the young. This belief has it’s origins in research in the mid-1980s which showed that suicide had increased dramatically in young males in many countries. This trend focused attention on suicide as a major social issue for young people and led to an extensive focus on suicide research and prevention amongst young people.

"While this focus was justified and led to much useful research and the development of appropriate interventions, it has tended to obscure the fact that suicide occurs across the lifespan. In almost all countries the majority of suicides, every year, occur not in young people, but in adults and older adults. Consequently, this year’s theme for World Suicide Prevention Day is that suicide occurs across the lifespan and we must invest in suicide prevention programmes which address suicide in people of all ages." http://www.med.uio.no/iasp/english/wspd/2007/wspd_menu2007.html

Young and desperate - Times Online

The latest in a series of reports says that one British child in ten suffers depression. In fact, the real figure may be only one in 100. But constant exams, pushy parents and 24-hour communication mean many more are anxious and unhappy.

My First Blog - Thank you

I was welcomed onto the Management Committee of LifeSIGNS on 1st September 2007 and have quickly got 'stuck in' to my new role. My first task, self appointed, was to purchase a shiny new purple folder for all my LifeSIGNS paper work - and it's filling up already!

I would like to say a big thank you to the other Directors who have not only welcomed me warmly but have helped me settle in by providing help and assistance. I've lost count of the number of emails sent to Mary with an opening line of "just one more question...." so thank you for your patience!

Thank you to the LifeSIGNS message board moderators for welcoming me as a new moderator, and for all offers of assistance which have been greatly appreciated.

Last, but by no means least, thank you to all the members of the message board who have offered their congratulations, support and friendship during this transitional period.

This is beginning to sound too much like an Oscar speech, so I think that will be it for now :-)

I look forward to working with LifeSIGNS and it's wonderful people for a long time to come.

Jules xx