Health & Happiness in the Highlands 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 were 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.

We have challenged barriers that experts identified that prevented them from leading healthy and happy lives. Our aim is to continue to ensure that experts are seen as valuable resources within their communities.

Groups were set up locally so that experts could take control of what was happening within their areas.

Here are the objectives we set and the barriers

we worked to knock down

  how people treated experts

lack of friendship and support  

  experts taking control over their own lives

getting jobs so that money could be earned  

health issues and getting a better service

Work was also carried out Highland Wide. We worked with other organizations to help ensure that the voice of the expert was heard always. We also funded other organizations to help us with our vision and have delivered more than 29 initiatives, working alongside 40 different partner agencies. These ranged from gardening initiatives, supported employment, drama and theatre, cycling to citizen advocacy.

                       

Today we are an independent organization and registered charity. We continue to work on developing ideas so that we can help more experts help themselves. We will continue to make sure that all the groundwork and foundations

we have built are here to last !!!

Our Partners remain as advisers and we are now overseen by a group of Directors – both expert and non expert.

The funding given to us by the Big Lottery Fund and Highland Council this year has gone towards developing an exciting new initiative, called ‘Community Connections’. We have always worked to break down barriers in society, but community connections takes this further. They will build bridges between individuals with learning disabilities, or autistic spectrum disorder, and their local communities. We have eight community connectors across Highland. Their role is to work alongside individuals and their families. A connector can work flexibly, creatively and in a personalised way. This will enable them to facilitate lifeskills and help you to explore what you want to achieve in life. They will signpost various opportunities and services and increase awareness of the choices available to you.

Community Connections will also focus on helping individuals develop personal & social networks. This is essential to enable people to be fully included about helping to deal with the isolation and exclusion that many people experience. Adults with learning disabilities have so much to give to their communities and we hope that community connections will allow them to contribute as active citizens and recognise the skills, talent and value they bring to society too.

Kenneth Maclennan is the local man who started Health & Happiness in 1999, based on his own experiences of living with a learning disability, and is now a Director: "I am overjoyed that we can help people to be more independent and just be like anybody else. That’s all we want – to be treated like anybody else and have the same opportunities.  It’s just that some people need more help than others, and they should get it. If someone had told me twenty years ago, that I would be doing this now, I would never have believed it!"

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