Health & Happiness began in 1999 when a group of people got together to talk about how to make life healthier and happier for adults with a learning disability - known as experts - living in the Highlands. These people were from different parts of the community and are now known as 'the Partners'. Their plan was to make a Healthy Living Centre for experts.  This idea became 'a bid' (a request for money) to the New Opportunities Fund. Their bid was successful and the first conference took place in October 2002.   This celebrated the start of what is now called Health & Happiness.

What We Wanted To Do

The Values & Rules of Health & Happiness

We believe in the following rules:

• WE have got to make things change

• WE have to knock down barriers for good

• WE want to include ALL people with a learning disability and all means all

• People with learning disabilities must control the project

• WE will go into partnership with anyone who can help us because we want people to work together

We work with these values:

• WE will have control of our project

• We will include all people with learning disabilities

• We will work in a friendly, happy way

• We will offer people choices

• We will work with people as individuals

• We will work with any person or organisation who can help us

• We will break down the barriers that stop us getting the help we need to make us healthy and happy

• We will keep all people who need to know about our work well informed

• We will work as a project committed to equality of opportunity

We believe in working to 'community development principles', these are:

• Empowerment – helping people to take control and speak up for what matters to them

• Full citizenship – making sure people can join in with saying how their needs can be met in their communities

• Collective action – working together to find an answer to our difficulties

• Opportunity & problem-focused learning – being part of making things better and making the most of chances that we see to do that.

The Five Barriers & Five Goals

Experts told us there were 5 main barriers to achieving health and happiness. So we decided to do something positive to make things better and fairer!  Here are the barriers as well as the solutions that we hope to make:

Barrier: The way people think about us and treat us.
Solution: Change the way people think about us and treat us.

Barrier: We don’t have many people we can turn to for friendship or support.
Solution: Get to know more people to whom we can turn to for help and friendship.

Barrier: We don’t feel important or in control of our lives.
Solution: Change the way we feel about ourselves so we feel more in control of our lives.

Barrier: Few of us have jobs so we don’t have money to do the things we’d l ike to do.
Solution: Work with others so we can get jobs so we can have more money to do what we would like.

Barrier: Our health problems are too often ignored and we don’t get the best service.
Solution: Create healthy lifestyles for ourselves.

How we want to grow in the Highlands

The job of the partners is to work to make sure that Health & Happiness will be an idea that is led and controlled by experts. We hope that the partners will eventually become advisors to the project.

To help move this work forward, Health & Happiness employed three paid staff:

- A full-time coordinator called Ellie Wolf
- A part-time administrator called Linda Henderson
- A part-time finance & fundraiser called Debbie Mackenzie

The partners manage the paid staff on behalf of Health & Happiness. They help guide their work and make sure that all of us are following the same road.

Highland is a huge area and our idea is a huge vision for our future! So how are we going to make it happen?

We will work with you locally as well as working Highland wide.

Highland Wide - there is some work that affects all of us, no matter where we live in Highland. An example of this is the way we are treated by other people. We want to do talks to schools, bus drivers, doctors and nurses, and go on the radio and write our stories in the newspapers to tell others how we feel and what would help us. This is work that we would include in the Highland Action Plan. The partners and staff of Health & Happiness will collect information on what things people want in this plan.

Locally - this is where the Local Action Groups (LAGs) are important! we will help you work together to make changes in the areas you live. For further information visit the Local Action Group page.