Author Archives: Rodie Garland

Tuesday 10 October is World Mental Health Day. This matters to us at FaithAction because we’re convinced that faith communities have a real, positive role to play when it comes to supporting mental health – for several reasons.

Mental health has been in the news again, and it’s fantastic that Princes William and Harry are using their influence to help make the issue something that it’s okay to talk about. On the more negative side, Christian news website Premier recently reported on an […]

This week I was at a discussion at Public Health England focused on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and dementia. There were representatives there from across the health system, as well as large and small voluntary organisations. But as always with these things, […]

Imagine that you’re the parent of a young child who will be starting school soon. But you’re painfully aware that you don’t know much about how school works in the UK – only that it is very different from your own experience of education.

Hopefully you’ve heard of our Friendly Places initiative – but since this is Mental Health Awareness Week, and all about the theme of relationships, we wanted to make doubly sure! Friendly Places is really an awareness-raising campaign with two faces. On one hand, it encourages […]

This week I was at a very inspiring meeting, all about how faith communities can become more mental health and dementia-friendly.

If you’re interested in how different aspects of poverty have changed over the years since the Coalition Government came to power, you’ll want to have a look at Monitoring poverty and social exclusion 2015. Even if you don’t want to read the detail of this […]

This week was my first opportunity to spend an extended time at one of the major party conferences. What struck me most was how many people are passionately committed, not only to their party, but to grappling with the challenge of how to change our […]

Earlier this month, Felicity and I were at the NHS Expo in Manchester. The Expo is a conference and exhibition for anyone involved in NHS services, from health professionals, local government and industry to the patients themselves, and of course, the voluntary sector. The Department […]

We know that faith-based organisations are involved in a huge variety of social action work up and down our country. The Cinnamon Faith Action Audit report calculates that the time invested by faith groups into their communities through social action projects is worth over £3 […]