This weekend, at a secret location in Bath, Santa’s elves are hard at work making Christmas special for around 1,500 children and young people with mental health issues. Today they were joined by six Goodgymers. At least the red and white GG T-shirt is somewhat Santa-like.

Most children wake up on Christmas morning to a wealth of presents and a wonderful time with their families. Imagine how hard it must be to be cut off from all that, having to spend the holiday on a mental health ward. Pretty bleak. But a Bath charity has made it a mission to bring those young people a little seasonal magic.

Christmas for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) was set up by Dr Ro Bevan - seen here giving the briefing - who saw the piles of presents donated to children’s wards of general hospitals while CAMHS units were largely forgotten. The charity stepped into the gap and, thanks to fundraising and impressive organisational skills, young people in mental health care across the country now receive gifts tailored to them. Even the wards get something like sports equipment or a big board game. I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the unit that got a set of boxing gloves!

And the gifts really do help. One young patient told the charity that they made them feel less alone.

That’s why, for one weekend only, a community hall in the city had been transformed into Santa’s workshop. We were part of a small army of volunteers unpacking, sorting, picking and packing mountains of presents, ranging from crafts and cuddly toys to sensory stuff and socks.

Clipboards were out in force and those familiar song lyrics, “He’s making a list and checking it twice “ came into their own.

It was a huge relief to learn that we didn’t have to wrap the presents. That’s done on the ward - paper supplied by Christmas for CAMHS of course.

A big GoodGym welcome to Pippa and Ange on their first missions - they truly have the ‘gift’. And a festive cheer for Jer who not only stayed on afterwards to help but also wore the most amazing Christmas jumper.

And that’s a wrap! (Or not…)

James, Ellie and I were in Walcot on Saturday to help the guys at Christmas for CAMHS. CAMHS is a small charity that sends hundreds of gift parcels to children throughout the UK in mental health hospitals who unfortunately cant be at home over the Christmas period.

The task was simple: fill and pack as many bags of gifts as possible in 3 hours with the aim of cheering up the Christmas for around 1500 children in hospital! Each hospital required a unique set of presents for different ages and genders of children, with Ellie and I tasked with going through each hospital's requests and filling the bags accordingly. Once these bags had been checked and supplied with wrapping paper, James was responsible for securely packaging each box ready for delivery!

We had a really enjoyable afternoon and it felt as though we were part of a really beneficial project. I look forward to returning to help next year!.

Eight of us donned our best waterproofs and (mostly) civilian outfits to brave the atrocious weather and, er, head to pub for a crafty drink.

We also came prepared with all sorts of crafting gear - cards, stamps, stencils, stickers and decorations. You name it. Our brief was to channel our artistic sides and create hand-made Christmas cards for children under the care of CAMHS who’ll be in hospital over the festive period.

We spent a lovely couple of hours doodling, drawing, cutting, embossing, colouring-in, sticking, googlie-eye-ing, outlining and lettering.

The outcome was several dozen cards with a stunning array of artistic techniques and creativity. We saw reindeer, wobbly Christmas trees, robins, Santas, scary elves, spacemen… all of the usual Christmas designs.

Josie dog oversaw the proceedings and was in charge of looking cute.

Santas little helpers arrived at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon in a secret elf packing location disclosed only hours before the task.

We were welcomed into a large room full of children's toys. Mother Christmas explained how the charity had purchased thousands of children's gift to send to over 90 wards in hospitals ready for Christmas!

Our roles varied from helping to pack the gifts, rip up cardboard, weigh parcels and sort parcels into numerical order ready for their postage labels. We also got to play jenga with cardboard and a nearby car.

We finished all our tasks in record time and wished all the charity team a very Happy Christmas.