2019 Winners | Coventry & Warwickshire Mind (CWM)
Coventry & Warwickshire Mind (CWM)
Winner – Embracing Opportunity and Harnessing Risk
Who they are
Coventry & Warwickshire Mind (CWM) is a local mental health charity affiliated with Mind, the leading mental health charity in England and Wales.
For more than 50 years, CWM has been developing and delivering quality services with, and for, people with mental health problems. The charity aims to ensure everyone with a mental health problem gets the support they need and the respect they deserve. The charity’s vision is of a society that promotes good mental health for all and that values, as equals, people who experience mental health problems. As an organisation and a group of people, the values that guide the charity’s work are to be passionate, honest, committed, empathic, inclusive, enabling and creative.
What they’ve achieved
CWM identified a gap in local services for those with complex mental health needs. Local people did not have access to hospital beds that would allow them to get the support they required while remaining close to home and within reach of their family or other support networks. CWM recognised that a purpose-built facility would afford it with the best opportunity to address this need and better support the community. The board comprises local people, and trustees used their local knowledge to navigate the complexities of the commercial landscape and work with community partners to achieve this end.
This project has enabled Coventry & Warwickshire Mind to demonstrate a new way of supporting people with complex needs and has raised the organisation’s profile locally. The building itself is unique, designed in partnership with people with lived experience to ensure that it is therapeutic. It was “Highly Commended” in the Best Internal Environment – New Build category at the Building Better Healthcare Awards 2018.
Why they won
Overall, judges were impressed with the CWM board’s evaluation of the risks and the implementation of a new large-scale project. The application clearly detailed the amount of thought and work that went into the project.
Trustees undertook a skills assessment to inform their strategy, and identify areas where they needed to seek external advice or guidance; they have now developed an internal review process that may help other organisations faced with similar challenges. Trustees convened a committee of those individuals whose specialist knowledge could be directed toward the project, relying on the committee’s expertise to mitigate risk and manage the project whilst communicating transparently with the rest of the board.
