The story of Tick Accreditation began prior to the pandemic in 2019. Richard Daniel Curtis with the author of multiple psychology-linked qualifications. He recognised that whilst mental health training was accrediting individuals as they successfully passed their qualifications, their organisations were not gaining the accreditation that they deserved.
Richard began researching organisational mental health accreditation and found that it was lacking. There were pledges, charters, promises to be mentally healthy, but no real independent accreditation of mental health friendly organisations.
So he started to address this…
First, he started with launching the Mental Health and Wellbeing Awards, launched in 2019. These free-to-enter awards celebrate inspirational mental health stories and organisations making the difference to people’s wellbeing.
Next step was the Mental Health Tick, an organisation-wide accreditation for mental health and wellbeing.
Then 2020 hit and the world entered a new phase…
The organisational standards that had been written for mental health friendly workplaces were no longer fit for purpose.
The awards were updated for the post-pandemic world and relaunched as the Mental Health Awards.
A second review of the organisational standards took place in 2021 to ensure that they were robust enough for eventual life after the pandemic.
These were released and multiple organisations started their applications to gain independent accreditation of their mental health and wellbeing approach.
And…
Not one organisation achieved it…
The bar was too high…
There were too many aspects that had to be at the standard to achieve the accreditation…
And this just wasn’t possible, whilst the experts agreed the expectations were pitched at the right level, there were just too many to be performing well at to gain accreditation.
So Richard’s team at the Mental Health Tick took the standards apart, splitting them into microaccreditations that meant organisations could still achieve the whole, but at their own pace.
Tick Accreditation was born and here we are in the post pandemic world with robust independent accreditation that rewards an organisation’s efforts in multiple areas.
It may have taken 5 years, but we are proud to have robust independent accessible accreditation for your organisation.
Richard Curtis