We’re so pleased to announce a new peer support group for students at the University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University who hear voices. The group runs on the 1st & 3rd Wednesday of each month. Get in touch at vlab2@kent.ac.uk to find out more. 
New Group for students at University of Kent
Voice Collective Launches ‘Thinking Space’
Voice Collective is launching ‘Thinking Space’, a peer support & reflective practice space for those working with children & young people, up to the age of 25 who hear, see or sense things that other people don’t, or experience paranoia, unusual beliefs or multiplicity.
It will be a space to connect with others, share what’s going well and what’s challenging, and think collectively about how to support children & young people in distress. For more info and to book, go to the Thinking Space Eventbrite page.
It would be brilliant if you could share the link with any colleagues who might be interested in joining us. Hope to see you there :).
Voice Collective’s Film-Making Workshops
Voice Collective has teamed up with the filmmakers at Fitzrovia Youth in Action (FYA) to offer you the opportunity to write, produce and direct your own short film about what it’s like to live with voices, visions or other sensory experiences. These films will be hosted on the Voice Collective and FYA websites and Youtube channels. They’ll also be shown in schools and youth organisations to raise awareness of hearing voices, helping other young people in distress.
You’ll have the freedom and control to tell your personal story in your own way, whether that’s through documentary filming, drawing/painting, computer animation or otherwise – the possibilities are endless! We know it’s a really big thing to share your story with the world, so we can explore lots of creative ways to protect your identify if you’d prefer to make your film anonymously.
The workshops will be held over 6 evening sessions in September and October at our office at Mind in Camden, but we can be flexible with the programme and you needn’t have to attend every session to be able to make your film. There will be an optional film screening celebration at the end, where you can choose to share your film with anyone you wish to see it.
The Voice Collective team (Eve and Lucy) will be on hand at every session, to chat through any worries or to give support if things are feeling difficult. If you’ve got any questions about the programme you can get in touch with us on info@voicecollective.co.uk or 020 7911 0822, or visit the Eventbrite page to book.
BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme does a feature on young people who hear voices
BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme showed a 15-minute piece today about young people who hear voices. You can watch it here – the piece begins at minute 14:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/…/b0b5hh…/victoria-derbyshire-08062018
In it, two young people, Tia and Laura, talk about their experiences of hearing voices. There are also interviews with three adults, too, who talk about ways of understanding and supporting a young person who is hearing voices.
Are you trans? Do you hear voices or see or experience things others don’t?
If so you’re not alone. Being trans and having unusual sensory experiences can be really overwhelming, so we’ve published a new leaflet called ‘Voices, Visions & Gender’, written for young trans people who hear voices, see visions or have other sensory experiences.
The leaflet was written in collaboration with Action for Trans Health, with input from young trans people with lived experience of hearing voices.
The developers behind a new website about voice-hearing, Integrated Voices, need your help!
INTEGRATED VOICES – ONLINE CONSULTATION
Have you ever searched online to try to find good quality information about voice-hearing & different support options?
Would you like to have a say in how a new website about voice-hearing will be built?
Hearing the Voice at Durham University is working with people who hear voices to develop a new website called Integrated Voices. The site will help people of all ages find clear and balanced information about voice hearing, and the things that can help.
They hope that Integrated Voices will make it easier for people to find information about different approaches to voice-hearing and ways of supporting those who are struggling with the voices they hear. But, to make this work they need your help 🙂
You can help to shape the project by filling out an online survey telling the team what you’d like to see on the website. The survey is available at: https://tinyurl.com/integrated-voices-YP
About Hearing the Voice:
Hearing the Voice is a large interdisciplinary study about voice-hearing, based at Durham University and funded by the Wellcome Trust. Their international research team includes academics specialising in Philosophy, Psychology, Psychiatry, Cultural Studies and more. They also work closely with clinicians, voice-hearers and other experts by experience.
In addition to exploring the personal and biological experience of hearing voices, they are investigating the links between voice-hearing and creativity, and exploring the ways in which voice-hearing has been understood and represented in different cultures, religions and historical periods. Many of their researchers are developing new and exciting ways of improving clinical practice, helping people who find their voices distressing.
Our new online forum is now LIVE!
We’re incredibly excited to announce that our new online forum for young people, their parents, carers and supporters is now LIVE! The forum can be found at http://forum.voicecollective.co.uk 🙂
Our online forum is a safe, confidential space for young people aged 25 and under who hear voices, see visions or have other unusual sensory experiences or beliefs, as well as their supporters. We have separate spaces for youth members and supporter members (so young people can only see what other young people share, and supporters can only see what other supporters share). To help this forum stay safe for our users, only registered forum members can see what’s posted.
If you’d like to join the forum, please register at forum.voicecollective.co.uk. When registering, please let us know whether you’re joining as a youth member, or as a supporter, so that we can make sure you have access to the right part of the forum. If you’re a young person, please let us know your age and where you live (e.g. which country and which county (UK) or state (US). Knowing where abouts you are in the world helps us to direct you to the nearest support available 🙂
We’re hugely grateful to Hearing the Voice at Durham University for all of their support. Without them we wouldn’t have been able to build this space for young voice hearers and their families. We’d also like to thank Hearing Voices Network England for creating the site and offering co-facilitation support.
If you’d like to find out more about Hearing the Voice, please visit: www.hearingthevoice.org. Please visit www.hearing-voices.org to find out more about the work of the Hearing Voices Network England.
We’re recruiting!
We’re currently recruiting for a new part-time Voice Collective Development Worker to replace Shanika, who is leaving Voice Collective to resume her university studies.
We are seeking a motivated, creative and confident individual for the post of Development Worker in our innovative project to establish a specialist service and network of peer support groups for young people who hear voices, see visions or have other extra sensory experiences. The services also supports their families, carers and support workers.
Funded until March 2020 (with possible extension), this post will give the right person an opportunity to make an important contribution to an established and renowned project.
We are looking for someone with excellent interpersonal skills, flexibility and the awareness to work well with different children and adolescent services. In addition, the successful candidate will have excellent awareness of mental health issues in relation to young people and their families; a minimum of one year’s experience of working with vulnerable young people in a paid capacity; experience of facilitating Hearing Voices or a similar peer support group; an in-depth understanding of the principles and practice of HVN Hearing Voices Groups and a strong commitment to user-led initiatives.
Applications are particularly welcome from those with personal experience of hearing voices, seeing visions or having other extra sensory experiences.
Key information
Starting salary: £14,891, plus a pension contribution
No. of hours per week: 21
Closing date for applications: 9am on Thursday 21st December 2017.
1st round interviews: Thursday 4th January 2018
2nd round interviews: Thursday 11th January 2018
Please see the Mind in Camden website for more information and to download application material: http://www.mindincamden.org.uk/support-us/jobs and do share amongst friends and colleagues.
Recent and upcoming trainings with Voice Collective
We’ve had a busy autumn, delivering lots of training. The past few months, we’ve had some great trainees attend our half-day, one-day and three-day Voice Collective courses. A huge thanks to all those who attended ‘Supporting Children & Young People Who Hear Voices’ on 11th September; ‘Supporting Young Refugees and Asylum Seekers Who Hear Voices’ on 25th September; ‘A Fresh Approach to Understanding Young People Who Hear Voices’ on 23rd October, and our group facilitation training on 6th, 13th and 14th November 2017.
We’ve got two upcoming trainings at Voice Collective, with only a few places left. On Monday 11th December 2017, we have our level 3 training, called ‘Advanced Working With Voices’, from 10am-4pm at Amnesty International UK (Shoreditch, London). This training builds upon our level 2 (‘Supporting Children & Young People Who Hear Voices’) and group facilitation training and looks in depth at things such as developing therapeutic relationships with those who do not trust easily, as well as looking at ‘taboo’ (e.g. violent or sexual) voices. (Please note: this course is deliberately kept at a small number. In order to attend ‘Advanced Working With Voices’, you must have attended either level 2 or group facilitation training with us, prior to 11th December 2017.) For more information and to register for this course, please see our Eventbrite link. There is currently one space left on the course.
On Monday 22nd January 2018, we are running ‘A Fresh Approach to Understanding Young People Who Hear Voices’ training again, from 1.30pm-4.30pm at Amnesty International UK (Shoreditch, London). This half-day course is an introduction to the Hearing Voices Network approach to voice hearing. It looks at what it feels like to hear voices, for a young person, as well as the impact hearing voices can have on their home, school, and social life. Attending this course is a pre-requisite to attending other Voice Collective training. For more information and to register for this training, please see our Eventbrite link.
Not able to attend our training at the moment? Why not email us at info@voicecollective.co.uk and ask to be put on our mailing list? This will keep you up-to-date with new trainings as they are advertised.
Voice Collective travels to Boston for the 9th World Hearing Voices Congress
Latest News from our manager Eve…
It’s been an exciting and inspiring couple of weeks here at Voice Collective. HVN USA, the USA’s national hearing voices network, invited me to deliver two workshops at the 9th World Hearing Voices Congress, which they hosted in Boston, MA, across the 16th – 18th August.
The theme for this year’s Congress was A Revolution of Unseen Voices, creating a platform for the voices, stories and communities that have seldom been heard within traditional psychiatry and psychology. Keynote speakers included Sangoma Traditional Healer Gogo Ekhaya Esima, who spoke passionately about trauma and spiritual growth, ‘Liberation Psychologist’ David Walker, who charted the history of the oppression of the Yakama Nation in Washington, and Mind in Camden’s Akiko Hart, who spoke of our work together supporting voice hearers in prisons, forensic secure units and Immigration Removal Centres.
We were delighted to win an Innovation award from Intervoice, the International Hearing Voices Network, for our work supporting people in detention (including young offenders), and one of the young people who we’ve worked closely with over the years at Voice Collective, the brilliant Nikki Mattocks, received a Special Mention in the Inspiring Person category. An enormous well done to Nikki for all her stellar campaigning and peer support work!
More than 70 people attended the two Voice Collective workshops – “Somewhere Where I Can Be Me”: Creating & sustaining safe spaces for children & young people who hear distressing voices, and Death By A Thousand Cuts? Rethinking self-harming by children & young people who hear voices. There was some fantastic discussion about the need for peer support initiatives in other parts of the world, and what these might look like, as well as ways of reframing and responding differently to children and young people who hear voices and self-harm.
Over the next few months I’ll be following up with colleagues and friends across the States, Canada and Denmark, supporting them to develop their services for children and young people, within community and in-patient settings. We’ll also be using our learning from the Congress to develop extra resources for the website, so watch this space!
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