Read more about how the survey outlines the effectiveness of the Time to Change Wales campaign in empowering Champions and supporting workplaces to tackle mental health stigma in Wales.
The survey results provide promising evidence that engaging with the Time to Change Wales campaign has a lasting and positive impact on a Community Champion’s sense of self-confidence, with 74% of them saying that their overall confidence has improved since joining the campaign.
Time to Change Wales Champions are volunteers with lived or living experience of mental health problems who challenge stigma in their own communities and raise awareness through the media by sharing their experiences.
Confidence allows Community Champions to speak more openly about their mental health, and almost all (93%) feel confident speaking about their own mental health problems with 67% of them having directly challenged stigma in Wales.
The survey also found that almost two thirds of Community Champions (61%) have been involved with the anti-stigma campaign for at least three years, indicating a high level of commitment to tackling mental health stigma and discrimination in Wales.
Champions also reported that running activities such as Community Champion training, anti-stigma events and social media campaigns were also seen as particularly helpful in achieving Time to Change Wales’ aim of reducing mental health stigma and discrimination across Wales.
The most popular Community Champions’ activities were to download campaign materials from the Time to Change Wales website (39%) and meeting and working with other Champions (39%). However, the use of social media proved to be the most popular approach for TtCW to engage with Champions (39%) followed by an activity in the local area or workplace (25%) and writing a blog (24%).
Anti-stigma talks and sharing their own story were identified as activities having a significant impact on reducing stigma chosen by 22% of participants. Training and hearing other people’s experiences were identified by 20% and 16% of participants, respectively, as the activities that were most useful in reducing mental health stigma.
Laura Ann Moulding, Time to Change Wales Champion, reflects on why she joined the campaign and how it has positively impacted on her life: “I signed up to become a Time to Change Wales Champion after hearing stigmatising and discriminatory comments towards people with mental health problems. It made me want to speak up and challenge the stigma and be a voice for the voiceless.
After having my Champion training, I felt so confident, and I didn’t think that would be possible at the time as I was usually so quiet and shy, but I eventually found my voice. I just simply said to myself ‘if I can help just one person, then all of this would be worth it’.
Since that day, I still follow those words, and I am still doing what I love, challenging the mental health stigma around us as a Champion. My passion has helped others feel comfortable enough to talk to me after years of keeping silent on their mental health problems, and it has also led me to become the ‘Young Volunteer of the Year’ in 2019, and that’s all thanks to the great support from Time to Change Wales.”
Lowri Wyn Jones, Programme Manager for Time to Change Wales welcomes the positive feedback from Champions and says, “It’s encouraging to see that so many of our Champions have seen a difference in their confidence levels as a result of being engaged with the campaign. Time to Change Wales exists to provide a voice and a platform to those who may have been silenced and made to feel ashamed of their mental health issues.
We are committed to ensure that Champions’ experience with the campaign is consistently positive and that it contributes towards Champions’ wellbeing and empowerment in challenging mental health stigma. We’ll build on this work to see further improvements in the months and years to come.”
If you are interested in becoming a Champion, please click here where you will find out more information and instructions on how to apply.
You can also click here to view the full evaluation report.
Methodology
Time to Change Wales commissioned Strategic Research and Insight to conduct an evaluation survey with its Community Champions and Pledged Employers. A mixed methodology was adopted using online and telephone booster surveys. A total of 164 Community Champions and Pledged Employers were interviewed between December 2022 and February 2023.