Sheffield Mental Health Guide is redesigned and relaunched
An invaluable resource for people in Sheffield has been redesigned following community collaboration.
Sheffield Mental Health Guide website
At a Zoom launch, Sheffield Flourish showcased the newly redesigned Sheffield Mental Health Guide. We asked them what people can expect from the site.
1. What is the Sheffield Mental Health Guide and who is it for?
It’s a directory of services and activities across Sheffield that are mental health focused and mental health friendly – it includes over 300 services and over 150 activities. Coupled with the website is a phone line, email service, live chat function and, mostly recently, a printed guide!
The Sheffield Mental Health Guide is funded by Sheffield City Council and it’s a resource for everyone in the city if they’re feeling down or distressed – you don’t need a diagnosis, you just need to be looking for a bit of support. It’s also a helpful resource for people supporting others, and for people working in mental health and related services.
2. You recently relaunched the website. What is new that people couldn't access before?
Rather than reinventing the website, we took everything that was good about the old one and just made it work better! So the search is much simpler, much more usable for people. The whole site is much more accessible, easier to navigate and use.
It’s basically just a much better website now, but with all the existing useful info that was there before. It’s also really pretty!
3. The planning of the new version of the website was a community process. How did that work?
We started by looking at the old website with users and seeing what worked and what didn’t work. So we sat down with people with lived experience of mental health issues and asked them to try and do tasks on the website, like finding specific things. Wherever they found these tasks difficult, we made a note.
Users also told us it was hard for them to tell what the original website was for – the new site is much clearer – you can tell as soon as you land on the homepage that this is a directory, as it’s all built around the search. After testing the site with users, we then ran a ‘sketching workshop’ where potential users of the site could draw out what they wanted to see on the site. This was a lot of fun and we got some really great ideas from it.
4. What is My Toolkit?
My Toolkit is a sister website to the Mental Health Guide, where you can plan how you want to manage your mental health. So, for example, it allows you to set goals to visit services or activities. You can reflect on the things you’re grateful for, and note down the things to remember when times are tough.
It’s a really lovely site so we definitely encourage people to sign up!
5. Some of us are old enough to remember the printed Smooth Guide to mental health services in Sheffield. Is there any temptation to produce a printed version again?
Yes! We just published one in lockdown. The Guide moved online because it was hard to keep paper copies up to date, but during lockdown we realised the digital gap is just too wide. So now there are paper copies, but just remember the most up to date info is always online, or give us a ring!
6. What's next for Sheffield Flourish and the Sheffield Mental Health Guide?
We’re just loving being open again, so I think the next step is to enjoy that!
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