Brent Changing Mindsets (formally known as Brent Thrive) - Our aims, our vision

Our aims

  • Challenging the stigma surrounding mental health 

  • Amplifying minority voices and providing a platform for community leaders to enact change 

  • Creating infrastructure of services and groups that are led by people with lived experience from within Brent

  • Identifying and providing support for people with a lived experience to take up political roles

  • Promote greater awareness and understanding of mental health across Brent

  • Creating a welcoming and accessible community

  • Use of practices that help diverse groups work well towards complex and challenging outcomes and understand that we all need support to grow and develop

Our Vision 

We envision Brent Changing Mindsets becoming a staple in the community as a resource for mental health support, information and provision development. We are dedicated to creating change and building on the needs of our community in order to facilitate growth from the ground up.  We believe awareness offers the opportunity to create the world we want to see. This starts with our interactions with others, the community spaces we are part of and the organisations we create. We will use this to inform our decisions so we can better collaborate with the groups most affected by injustice.

Challenging the stigma 

  • Unifying diverse Brent communities across ethnic and religious backgrounds

  • Facilitating groups and enabling an open, safe and stigma free environment so members can flourish

  • Involving young people from an early stage in order to educate and stimulate the conversation around mental health distress

  • Working as an access point for less engaged community members. 

Amplifying minority voices 

  • We want to have people with lived experience at the forefront of all change in order to address the systemic racism within mental health 

  • Addressing  the overrepresentation of BAME groups in arrest and prosecution rates, abuse of acute mental services

  • Addressing the lack of mental health services offered for BAME groups 

  • Addressing why and how mental health difficulties disproportionately affect BAME groups   

  • Providing a platform and a jumping off point for Brent Changing Mindsets BAME group

  • We want to nurture and develop collective leadership within minority voices. 

Our Services and Groups

  • BAME support groups 

  • Sport as a vehicle for conversation- collaboration with local football and rugby teams

  • Education and confidence building through sports 

  • Using the arts to encourage creativity and expression

  • Regular community meetings in order to be part of the decision making process and discuss direct action steps 

  • The importance of clean green accessible environment to mental health

  • Connecting the community to their environment through clean up actions- our partnership with Thames21; upcoming Brent Changing Mindsets allotment. 

Political Activism 

  • Aim to have community members with lived experience have a position on council or on a government led group/board#

  • Engagement with Brent Youth Parliament

Compassionate Values

  • We are dedicated to being a wholly inclusive organisation rooted in equality, respect and compassion 

  • Our aim is to foster an open and positive dialogue with you, but we have a zero tolerance policy towards offensive language and behaviour. 

  • Any constructive feedback is warmly welcomed