Focus Social Group

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We are a mental health self help group and we meet every Monday in the back room of the Pig in Paradise Pub on the seafront at Hastings in East Sussex from 11:00 - 12:30. We are called the Focus Social Group as we are a part of the charity Focus on Mental Health and we offer social support to a group of local (mostly from the Hastings and Rother area) people in need of a little help.

The 5 main aims of our group are:

To give people the chance to socialise.

To help prevent isolation.

To give people a chance to talk to others that have "been there".

To encourage members to meet up on bank holidays.

To help build each others confidence.

1 in 4 people will suffer some kind of mental health distress each year, some are lucky and get over it quickly, but for many others the problems never go away. Our goal is too support as many of these people as possible, by being there for them when they need support, organising events and trips to give them things to look forward to, helping them feel less isolated and generally helping to encourage social inclusion.

At the moment we have around 30 members, most living in the Hastings and Rother area.

If you know of anybody that would benefit from being a member of our group, please feel free to contact us. All the facilitators of the group are unpaid volunteers who are also mental health service users themselves and have a good understanding of what social exclusion really means.

One of the things we make sure of in the group is that we have at least one trip a month for our members, so they always have something fun and interesting to look forward to. Past trips have included places such as Arundel, Hever Castle, Ten Pin Bowling, Rye and many more. We are currently beginning to plans trips including Drusillas Zoo, London Eye, and Bodium Castle.

Due to their current mental health situations most of the group are unable to work, so its important that any trips we do are affordable for all the members, no matter what their financial situation. We do our own fundraising as much as possible, doing bootsales, having raffles and selling photographs etc. I would like to say a big thank you to the Hastings Lions Club who gave a donation towards our last Christmas Dinner, it really did make a big difference to our members. If anybody reading this would like donate something towards any of our future trips, or if you can recommend a place that would give us a good discount please get in touch!

Currently the facilitators are Heather, Dean and Tony.

Please just turn up or contact us for more information.

socialgroup@aspexdesign.co.uk - Dean (Facilitator)
07732 732968 - Heather (Facilitator)
01424 442435 - Su (Focus on Mental Health)