Get Into Reading
A free activity for people with lived experience of mental illness, through the Day to Day Living Program
Community Room of Woden Library
Fridays 1:30-3pm during school term
Enquiries: Janine Robertson 62640237

Belconnen Community Service (BCS) offers a program that was developed in the UK and has become an important part of British Mental and Social Health work. Get Into Reading taps into something innate in all humans: a love of story.

Once upon a time in the English town of Hereford, near the Welsh border, there lived a man called Colin Gray. After many years of teaching high school English, it was time for him to retire. To celebrate, he and his wife spent a few nights in a posh hotel in London. One morning, reading the Guardian newspaper in the hotel’s comfortable bed, he came across a story about a program that would soon become his new calling.

Get Into Reading was pioneered by Jane Davies, a lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool University. Davies always believed that literature is good for us, just not in the way that a school curriculum often purveys it. She decided to gamble on an idea that reading short stories, novels and poems aloud to small groups of people, and involving them in discussion along the way, would make them feel well. She took two years leave without pay to prove it.

Colin also believed in, "all the wonderful things that good literature can give people without all the rubbish you get in classroom English". That morning, he decided that facilitating Get Into Readinggroups was the right retirement career for him.

At the same time, 12 thousand people, reading the same article all over England, had the same reaction as Colin Gray. The Get Into Reading program's capacity to train new facilitators was soon stretched to its furthest possible limits.

Colin was in the second group to be trained. He returned to Hereford and facilitated groups in a psychiatric hospital, a dementia ward and a community centre. Meanwhile, Get Into Reading expanded to include over 200 groups running in the city of Liverpool and many others across the UK.

The model of Get Into Reading is simple. It's free and you don't have to attend every week. Participants don't have to read aloud themselves, or even to be literate. They don't have to join in discussion but, over time, most people do. Colin says, "The words tap into people's feelings and thoughts and they want to talk; they feel safe."

Initially Get Into Reading was found to be beneficial for people living with mental illness, dementia and social isolation. But as its popularity spread, the program was found to be good for anyone. Businesses now offer Get Into Reading groups to their employees to improve social connection and general well-being.

Time passed and Colin Gray moved to Canberra. He enlisted the support of BCS's Day to Day Living Program and started Canberra's first Get Into Reading group. BCS now also offers a group for its own employees and Colin is available to facilitate groups for other programs and services. He says:

"In each session, we look at a poem and a short story. It doesn't have to be a classic. The bottom line is good writing with some depth to it. You'd think, having been a teacher for 37 years, I'd have known about the benefits of reading aloud, but I keep on being surprised."

The Original article that inspired Colin’s journey can be read here.

BCS is proud to announce its commitment to becoming a Care Aware Workplace.

The Care Aware initiative, endorsed by the Australian Government, is designed to inspire the workplace arrangements for unpaid family carers.

In the below video Naomi and John from Parks Victoria explain why it's so important for carers to be acknowledged and supported in the Workplace.

For more information on the Care Aware initiative please visit www.careaware.com.au.

The Belconnen Community Bus Service is proud to announce three excursions as part of our Bus Excursions and Tours (BET's) initiative.

The B.E.T's are coordinated by Belconnen Community Service with transport provided by the Belconnen Community Bus Service. These excursions are an opportunity to get out and about, meet new people, share a lunch and a conversation all in the surrounds of some of Canberra's places of interest. Transport commences at 11:00 and we return from the selected venue at approximately 2:30. Eligibility criteria apply and a gold coin donation is appreciated for all transport provided. Bookings can only be taken in the month that the excursion is occurring.

To check eligibility and to make a booking please contact the Community Bus Service on 6251 2100.
Please note: Bookings can only be made in the month the excursion is occurring.

As part of Volunteering Australia's National Volunteer Week (13th - 19th May) BCS will be holding a celebration Breakfast and Afternoon Tea for all our volunteers. These events will be run by employees to say "Thanks a Million" to our volunteers for the work they have done and continue to do throughout BCS.

We have volunteers through a number of our programs; Community Transport, Home and Community Care, Arts, Leisure and Skills as well as many volunteers running social groups like BEST Club, Positive Links and English Conversation. Without the ongoing support and valuable contribution our volunteers make to our organisation BCS would not be the success it is today.

Along with celebrating our volunteers we are using this opportunity to reinvent and expand our volunteer program, to do this BCS is holding Volunteer@bcs forums. This is a chance for BCS employees and volunteers to get together to discuss ideas on how BCS can use more volunteers throughout the organisation, what the process looks like and where to go from here.

So to all our volunteers "Thanks a Million" your work makes a difference in the lives of our participants and employees every day and we thank you so much for this gift!