As a trustee for the charity Our Time, I am delighted to announce our new fundraising campaign with Joe Wicks -  #moveforyourmood!!! This is a 30 day exercise challenge we are launching following the new BBC documentary Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood, featuring Joe’s experience and the work of Our Time. 

To mark the opportunity each of Our Time's trustees and some of our lovely friends and family are taking up the challenge! My sister Fiona and friends Ines and Georgina have generously agreed to take part in this challenge too and fundraise together - you are true LEGENDS and I love you all dearly! This means 30 days straight of exercise - wish us luck!! 

The documentary and this campaign is a wonderful opportunity for Our Time as we are a small charity, but the only one in the UK working with and for the estimated 2.9 million children and young people growing up with a parent who has mental illness. Joe has talked openly about what it meant for him to grow up with a mum and dad who struggled with their mental health and has so bravely and generously shared his journey of understanding the longer term impacts of this on him with the nation. As part of this journey, he came to talk to me about my own experiences of growing up with a parent with a mental illness. 

Our Time works with many families like mine and like Joe’s. We run the Kids Time workshops in England and Scotland for children of parents with a mental illness. Taking place once a month after school, the workshops provide a safe space for the youngsters to play and to share their stories and fears – ‘Will I get mental illness too?’, 'Why did Daddy have to go away to hospital?’,  ‘What is happening to my mummy’s mind?’ or 'What do we do if this happens again?'.

My sister and I were some of the lucky few who got to experience these workshops over many years and they helped my family immensely. I would certainly not be where I am today without the encouragement and understanding I received there. I will be forever grateful for the communication skills my sister, my dad and I learned at the workshops and the way our relationships were forever transformed as a result of us being more open with one another. 

In the workshop a drama is created with the help of a drama therapist - a brilliant means of sharing and countering worries, stigma and shame, and over time a caring and positive community is created, building the confidence both of the children and of their parents who often harbour doubts that they are ‘good enough’ as mums and dads. The session ends with everyone sharing pizza.

We need parental mental illness to be recognised by policy-makers and professionals in the fields of health, care and education so that many more children can be supported and the adverse consequences they may face in later life can be prevented (just like meeeeeeeeee!!!). 

Anything you can give to help Our Time set up more Kidstime workshops would be very deeply appreciated. 

Thank you so much, 

Kirsty, Fiona, Ines and Georgina xxx