"Pentreath is a Cornish charity providing support and guidance to people across the county experiencing and recovering from mental ill health.

We were formed by Cornwall and Isles of Scilly health authority in 1991 as part of the care in the community shake-up which saw the of deinstitutionalisation of mental health care in the UK.

The NHS’s industrial therapy provision in Cornwall was spun off into a standalone charity and Pentreath was born, initially continuing to provide training and employment through in house social enterprises including a nursery and wood working workshop for former patients suffering from severe and enduring mental ill health.

Today our main contracts involve working with people on a 1:1 basis to help them achieve employment, voluntary work, education, training or to become more inclusive within the community. Whilst we do this we support people by helping them to learn tool and techniques to manage their the mental health.

Over the years we have expanded into other areas and now have social prescribers in some GP surgeries across the county, advisors within all Jobcentres, there are Employment Specialists integrated within the Community Mental Health Team and we also have a specialist Autism project.”
 
“We also have our Recovery College which provides courses to support recovery from mental ill health through learning. It encourages people to be the agents of their own recovery, empowering them to live the lives as they choose. Each course is run and delivered by a mental health specialist with peer mentors there as support. Each peer mentor has lived experience of poor mental health and has been through the recovery college themselves”
 
More information about everything we do can be found on our website www.pentreath.co.uk
 
We do what we can to attend events in the community to raise awareness of Mental Health. Examples being, we often attend wellbeing events within the Jobcentre’s, attend school fayres/wellbeing events/assemblies, be present at Royal Cornwall Show and deliver training to employers and students about Mental Health.
 
We are also lucky enough to have local musician, Josh Curnow, as our Ambassador. He actively supports us and speaks to people at his gigs to ensure they know where they can access support.
 
Pentreath are very good at looking after their staff and this was shown last year as we won the Gold Investors in People Award for Wellbeing.