The Weyburn Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association will be unrolling some new programs this year as well as continuing with some already-established successful ones.

Program Director Tasha Collins said they are excited about some new partnerships they've made with both Legacy Park Elementary School and St. Michael School, where they are offering their leadership program at the schools over the lunch hours.

“It's really just about building some confidence and the self esteem and those types of things in order to become leaders within their schools and within their homes, maybe within their communities,” she noted.

Collins said they have been enjoying having increased community involvement and engagement, such as being involved with River Park Sparkles, the parades.

“We look forward to being a part of those again this year,” she shared.

“We are looking to and working on implementing an evening kind of peer support program for parents, so we are in the development stages of that, and we will be continuing to offer our evening art program. So if anybody's interested, I would encourage them to contact the centre.”

She said they'll be basing that on programs that have been successful at other CMHA branches in other communities.

“We certainly appreciate the partnerships that we've made with the Weyburn Red Wings as well as the Estevan Bruins with the Talk Today program, and that will continue on again,” she shared. “We just finished up the training with both teams just here, November, December of 2023. So certainly looking forward to continued relationships with both of those teams.”

“The Talk Today program is a partnership between the SJHL and the CJHL, actually, on a national level, and the Canadian Mental Health Associations across Canada, so we are partnering with the hockey leagues in our areas in order to provide the hockey players with training on suicide awareness and mental health,” explained Collins. “So the training is actually called Team Up and it's about a 3 1/2 hour training that we do with both teams and then we are also connected to those teams as a resource for mental health services if they're needed.”

“We certainly appreciate the relationships that we are building with the teams and look forward to working with them moving forward.”

Collins added they are looking at increasing the quality of programs within the service within the branch and and what they offer there.