Platform 51

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Categories: mental health campaign, politics and parliament, young mums and teen pregnancy
Monday, 4 April 2011
Mother's day campaign

Platform 51 delivers mother's day card to Downing Street

On Saturday 2 April two young mums from Platform 51, Kealy Hastick aged 21 and Katie Adams aged 21 delivered a large mother's day card to 10 Downing Street. The outside of the card showed pictures of Platform 51 service users with their children and the inside featured a letter to the prime minister including the results of our poll, what makes mums happy?

Over the last month we have consulted with mums through our website and centres to find out what makes them happy. The top five responses were:

• Education to make sure my children reach their potential

• Jobs with flexible working options and career opportunities

• Time to myself

• Affordable ways to spend time with my family

• Good quality, flexible childcare that I can afford

This consultation is part of our wider work on women's mental health and wellbeing. In January we launched a report, Women like me: supporting wellbeing in girls and women, which highlighted the high rate of low level mental health problems experienced by girls and women and the significant impact this has on them, their families and communities. We are calling for improved support services for girls and women to help build their resilience and for girls and women to be able to access appropriate support when they experience problems.

Helen Berresford, Platform 51's parliamentary officer, said: "we hope that the Prime Minister will consider the views of the mums that filled in our poll whilst developing the wellbeing index."

Katie Adams, a young mum from Platform 51 West Kent, said about delivering the card: "it was really good to go to Downing Street and hand the card in. I would really like to know if David Cameron got to see it. It was very strange to be on Downing Street, it was so peaceful and quiet compared to the rest of London. I just kept thinking to myself, not many people get to have this great opportunity."

You can see more pictures of Katie and Kealy handing in the card on our Facebook page.