Become a Member

Your Potential. Your Voice. Your Way.

Members are adults (18 upwards) and include people with mental health issues, recovering alcohol and substance users, ethnic minority, disabled, and lone parents.

WATCH offers a social base where members (adults aged 18+), can regain confidence by accessing various workshops and activities like art, reading, woodwork, drama, personal awareness and computing. Members can get actively involved in WATCH, guiding and leading activities as well as joining us on or helping to organise a variety of trips and social activities. 

Once you have joined (see below), the project is on every Thursday at Chard Rugby Club. You’re welcome to join us at any point between 11am – 4pm and stay for as little or as long as you’d like.  

Some challenges that members have faced include mental health issues, alcohol and substance dependency, being from an ethnic minority, having a physical disability, age, and homelessness.

Members pay £1.50 each time they visit. This helps to fund the running costs of WATCH.

Join us

If you would like to join WATCH, ask for a recommendation from your support worker or another organisation that you have been working with (e.g. Somerset Foundation Trust, your Mental Health team, local GP, social worker, or Housing Association)

If you do not have a support worker please contact our office on 07506 238540.

We often have projects running across other areas of Somerset. Find out more about our current projects visit our Projects page. 

Information

Member Testimonies

Val Board

“I started at the Watch Project two years ago.  Being grossly overweight and self
conscious of the fact I was not sure how I would be accepted…

I should not have worried all the members and volunteers are so kind and thoughtful, they fetch lunch for me, and if I struggle to get up from a chair there is always an arm to lean on.  I am never judged, we are all equals. I sit at the reception desk which I love.  I get members to sign birthday cards for each other and give out information on forthcoming events, keep registers of what activities members have taken part in during the day, and generally chat to other members.

I would like to join in more of the activities but my weight holds me back. More often than not I do not go outside the door from one Thursday to the next, but knowing I will be welcomed at the project keeps me going.

I do a few printing jobs on the computer at home to help out and this give me a feeling of achievement.”

Soo Ball

Soo joined the WATCH project as a member after the loss of her son Robin. She says the Project helps with her perpetual memory of him, and believes meeting with the people he knew and loved keeps his memory alive. She adds:

“Attending the Project every week gets me out and meeting people – my husband says it is so good for me. He has got involved as well by collecting any leftover wood for the woodworking shop at the project!

I love cooking cakes at home and bring them to the project to sell, I also make jams and the money we get from selling my produce goes towards the cost of running the project.

I help out in the kitchen too, making the lunch and of course doing washing and clearing up. I just keep doing more cooking at home and at the project. Having been in the country now for over 40 years I cook mainly English food, and very rarely Malaysian cuisine.”

“Peer support didn’t just change my life, it gave me back a life worth living”
Tracey Haughton
“We found WATCH shortly after moving to the area. We were welcomed with open arms. We have made so many friends.”
Chris Thomas
“I know in my heart I have made lifelong friendships, without Watch I would still be in a dark place”
Sarah Lacey
Our website has kindly been funded by Well Wessex and Somerset Community Foundation.