Penny Jarrett

Killing stigmas around mental health and equipping young people with the tools needed to manage their emotions

Penny Jarrett (Pennybelle) is a Care Leaver who has fought through life's struggles and is now on a mission to help others do the same. She is a Mental Health Blogger, Wellness Coach and Youth mentor with a passion to help others understand and love their brains so they can live fulfilling lives - whatever their past pains, experiences or current challenges may be.

Penny was diagnosed with ADHD and CPTSD 2 years ago. Knowing nothing about mental health at the time, she has since done everything she can to both research and educate herself as well as raise awareness, kill the stigma and offer support to others who may be struggling for reasons that they don't quite understand.

She has been invited to share her story and experiences across many different platforms, campaigns and panels including the #GetTheInsideOut mental health campaign run by Lloyd's Bank, a positive eating panel by Wagamama, How to control social media use by Giff Gaff and radio stations like Premier Gospel, Reprezent, West Side Radio, Foundation FM and The BBC who have also made a short documentary about her as part of their Life Lessons series, called 'The Joy of having ADHD’. She was also part of Maya Jama's school tour with Childline and The NSPCC for mental health awareness month and has carried out her uplifting workshops at a number of schools, businesses and events including Fearne Cotton's Happy Place Festival where she lead an affirmations workshop with The Prince's Trust.

Penny is excited about every opportunity she gets to share her story and inspire others with the tools she has learnt to overcome the challenges of her own past and present and also equipping them to manage their emotions and be their best selves.

Penny's sessions and workshops are packed full of easy to absorb information and promote good mental and emotional well being by providing young people with positive mental wellness messages and a feel good factor that lasts. With the creative workshops, this is not only achieved by mentoring and understanding the young people, but by also creating a relaxing, colourful and creative environment where the focus is entirely on instilling confidence and self belief into their lives. This will fill them with hope and remind them that they are valuable, lovable, capable and important despite the things they may be going through or struggling with.

Every young person is so wonderfully unique but those who have experienced difficulties in life will often express the effects of these things through their behaviour in some way or another. By identifying where these young people actually feel they need support and encouraging them to believe in themselves and speak words of affirmation into these areas, they become empowered as they take back control of their emotions and begin to see themselves and their futures from a whole new, life changing perspective. This will relieve them of their daily frustrations and enable them to break down some of the barriers preventing them reaching their highest potential.