About Vibrant Health Advocates – Copper
Who we are and why we exist
A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation rooted in Motherwell, built on the belief that good mental health belongs to everyone.
Our organisation
Vibrant Health Advocates – Copper was founded on a straightforward observation: the people of Motherwell who most needed mental health support were often the least likely to access it. Referral pathways felt clinical and slow. Private therapy was unaffordable. And for many adults shaped by a culture of getting on with things, simply walking into a counselling room felt like an admission of defeat. We set out to build something different — a low-threshold, high-quality space where anxiety and sleep problems could be addressed openly, practically, and without stigma.
We are a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation, governed by a voluntary board of trustees with deep roots in North Lanarkshire. Our facilitators hold recognised qualifications in mental health first aid, CBT-informed coaching, and sleep science, and they receive regular supervision and continuing professional development. We operate with full transparency: our accounts are filed with OSCR, our safeguarding policies are reviewed annually, and our programme outcomes are independently evaluated every two years. Good governance is not a box we tick — it is the foundation on which local people can trust us.
Everything we do is shaped by the people we serve. Before designing any new programme, we consult with local residents, GPs, pharmacists, and social prescribing link workers. After every workshop series we collect structured feedback and act on it. That iterative, community-led approach is why our programmes feel nothing like generic wellbeing content: they reflect the actual texture of life in Motherwell — the early shifts, the financial pressures, the caring responsibilities, the particular way stress accumulates in a town that has absorbed a great deal of change over the decades.
Our story
Vibrant Health Advocates – Copper grew out of conversations that began in 2018 in a church hall on Windmillhill Street. A small group of residents — some of them former steelworkers, some carers, one a recently retired community nurse — had started meeting informally to share strategies for managing the anxiety and sleeplessness they noticed all around them.
It became clear that the need was structural, not individual: Motherwell had excellent acute mental health services but almost nothing for the vast middle ground of people who were struggling without being in crisis. The group incorporated as a SCIO in 2019, secured seed funding from a North Lanarkshire community health partnership, and delivered its first formal workshop programme to thirty-two adults in the spring of that year.
In the years since, we have grown steadily and deliberately — always prioritising quality over scale, and always keeping our work free to attend. We have survived a pandemic by moving workshops online, navigated cost-of-living pressures by securing multi-year core funding, and expanded from one venue to six community locations across the town. The founding group's instinct — that people in Motherwell deserved something warm, evidence-based, and genuinely local — remains the beating heart of everything we do.
Our mission
Vibrant Health Advocates – Copper exists to reduce the burden of anxiety and poor sleep for adults living in Motherwell, delivering accessible, evidence-based workshop programmes that equip people with practical skills to improve their mental and physical wellbeing. We believe that geography, income, and cultural background should never be barriers to learning how to rest and how to cope — and we work every day to make that belief a lived reality in our community.
Our team
Vibrant Health Advocates – Copper is led by a voluntary board of trustees who between them bring experience in public health, community development, financial management, and lived experience of the challenges our programmes address. The board sets strategic direction and ensures we remain accountable to our community and to OSCR. Day-to-day delivery is carried out by our small paid staff team and a dedicated group of trained volunteer facilitators, most of whom are Motherwell residents themselves.
Chair
Treasurer
Trustee
Get involved
Whether you want to volunteer, donate, or simply find out more, we'd love to hear from you.