Posted on: 14 October 2020

The Mental Health Inreach Team at HMP Send showed they cared for their patients on World Mental Health Day with a pamper bag.

The idea originally came from a patient who identified that we don’t always care for ourselves enough. As World Mental Health Day was approaching, the team therefore came up with the idea to give a bag to everyone in the prison with items to help them pamper themselves. Ideas for what went into the bags came from our service user champions along with our own ideas.

Funds for the 210 bags came from the Send Healthcare budget

Traceyanne Hughes, Head of Healthcare at HMP Send, said: "Many of our prisoners have mental health problems so we wanted to do something for our women who don’t always get the chance to pamper themselves. We’ve received some lovely compliments from some of the women which is great.”

Each bag included one mini bottle of conditioning shampoo, one mini bottle of bath and shower gel , one pot of honey, one Matcha Green Tea Bag, one Chamomile Tea Bag, two compressed beauty face masks, one emery board, two chocolate hearts and one hot chocolate sachet. 

The honey and tea bags were ingredients to do their own beauty face masks. 

They also made a 23 page booklet with lots of useful resources about mental health, some quizzes and mindfulness exercises along with pictures and writing  that had been done by some of the patients here.