Not too long ago the Manager of my local Richmond Fellowship
got in touch with me and asked if I’d like to Chair the upcoming WorkingTogether Forum. Having co-chaired the previous one, I was confident with the
idea and agreed. They then told me that I’d again be co-chairing but when it
came to the day the co-chair got ‘stage fright’ and I was left to chair the
entire event! In addition to this, two days before the event, a group
delivering one of the four workshops dropped out and I offered to help run the
stand-in workshop which, we basically invented in 48 hours! So, I had many
roles in this event and yes, it was stressful; but it was a
nice-productive-lots-of-responsibilities-kind-of stress!
First order of the day was the boring, old housekeeping that
I had to do!
And then we had a welcome speech from Stephanie De La Haye,
Richmond Fellowship Board Member. And the speakers began with Plenary Speaker -
Karen Machin, a Mental Health Survivor Researcher. Karen discussed her
acceptance that sharing stories of recovery was very important in confronting
stigma and discrimination (she’d worked a lot with Time To Change) but
acknowledged
“I wouldn’t be here today without
peer support… I think peer support is so essential”
The Plenary Speech was followed by an Update on Working
Together Strategy with the wonderful Stephanie De La Haye, Richmond Fellowship
Board Member… again! She spoke about the Working Together Committee being
refreshing and making changes and improvements to services, real. Steph told us
how the Working Together committee embodied co-production and anyone is welcome
to attend the first workshop on May 14th (with future ones being all
over the country).
We then had four workshops running in unison, with people
having chosen a workshop to attend on signing in at the beginning of the event.
We had ‘ Creativity in Recovery’ which was ran by Beth Hopkins and Natasha
Dovey, ‘Sound Healing’ which was ran by Craig Winterburn and Natalie Hewett and
‘My Life, My Way’ with Letitia Blakemore, Lorraine Bailey and Karen Bloor. The
fourth workshop was ‘Emotional First Aid’; which I co-facilitated with Beverley
Clay, Best Practice Manager, we had around twenty participants. I was quite
overwhelmed because we were in a small-ish room and I’d been worried that no
one would turn up so the realisation that the room was full was a little
daunting! Luckily, this false confidence that I’d managed to learn for these
situations kicked in and no one would have guessed how nervous I actually was!
In our Icebreaker: ‘what made you want to join this course?’ We had a variety
of answers that ranged from ‘the name of the workshop was catchy’ to ‘it made
me realise that we have a First Aid Kit for physical injuries but not for
mental health struggles. Our next question to the group was ‘what kind of
things do you have in place to help you when things are difficult?’ We were met
with: using DBT, writing a journal, using technology, keeping a mood diary,
grounding techniques, and someone even talked about how their family have a
‘Happy Jar’ where they write down happy moments and activities and then when
they’re feeling down, they can look back and be cheered up. The final activity
was ‘what impacts emotional well-being?’ and most of the answers were around
diet, walking, music, sleep, and food
After the workshops, came lunch! Which brought with it; some
yummy food, and a hell of a lot of networking! I also had some exciting chats
with some of the Richmond Fellowship Comms Team and the Chief Executive about
future collaborations – watch this space!
After lunch, came the ‘Client Portal Workshop’ which was for
everyone to participate in and was led by Christina Hare, Nathan Clarke, and
Lizi Baker. This workshop was… interesting! Ok, so basically, Richmond
Fel
lowship are forming a new… database(?) in which service users (like me) can
have more access to their notes and the records kept about them… I hope I’ve
summed it up correctly! There was a lot of discussion during this workshop with
people (namely me and another lady!) noticing problems that this pilot may
face. There were just a few aspects of the idea that were concerning and
anxiety provoking such as ‘what if your Support Worker has written things you
aren’t happy with and it causes a confrontation?’ and ‘what about people who
have no access to technology?’ Someone also questioned the possibility of the
system being hacked and after it was met by a guffaw and ‘it’d take a really
good hacker…’ from the developers, I pointed out that government and NHS data
were constantly being hacked! The whole concept does actually sound superb!
There’s just some concerns there…
lowship are forming a new… database(?) in which service users (like me) can
have more access to their notes and the records kept about them… I hope I’ve
summed it up correctly! There was a lot of discussion during this workshop with
people (namely me and another lady!) noticing problems that this pilot may
face. There were just a few aspects of the idea that were concerning and
anxiety provoking such as ‘what if your Support Worker has written things you
aren’t happy with and it causes a confrontation?’ and ‘what about people who
have no access to technology?’ Someone also questioned the possibility of the
system being hacked and after it was met by a guffaw and ‘it’d take a really
good hacker…’ from the developers, I pointed out that government and NHS data
were constantly being hacked! The whole concept does actually sound superb!
There’s just some concerns there…
Following this was a well-deserved break where I approached
the developers after the workshop to make sure they knew that I didn’t mean to
sound like I was nit-picking or that I was being… confrontational in any way.
And that, if anything, I’d love to be a part of promoting the project once the
kinks are worked out and the pilot begins later this year! Everyone was very
understanding and explained that they needed a healthy discussion like what
there’d been so that they could create the best service possible.
After the break, came the afternoon session of the same
workshops from earlier in the day (affording people the opportunity to take
part in two different ones in the one day). In the
“On the way here, we were talking
about suicide and someone was saying that there’s an organisation that offers
suicide awareness training and I think that it’s something everyone should be
aware and educated in. Even if you’re not directly in a career relating to
mental health… because you never know what situation you’ll find yourself in.”
Our second question; ‘what do you think you have in place to
help you when things are difficult?’ was answered with things ranging from ‘the
NHS website(!)’, to ‘ensuring all of my self-care is done’, to ‘being creative’,
and to ‘getting physical space.’ Our third question: ‘what impacts emotional
wellbeing?’ was met with ‘diet, the weather, and it began a talk about the
power of music. How playing an instrument can be a welcome distraction during
difficult moments, that it allows you to find space mentally, makes you think
differently (changes your mood), causes you to reflect on your mood and allows
you to feel less alone when you hear lyrics that are talking about exactly how
you feel. Since we had more time in the afternoon session, I was able to talk
about the handout I designed that detailed how creative writing can be one of
your Emotional First Aid tools. It was great to talk about something that I’m
obviously so passionate about and to promote one of the key things that’s seen
me into recovery and kept me there. Participants talked about their own
experiences with creative writing and talked about how writing thoughts and
feelings felt like a good way to get things out of their mind and feel like
they were dealing with it. One person talked about how making lists helped him:
“And sometimes I’d look back and
think ‘why did I even write that?’ It’s not that important; I don’t need to be
stressing over that!”
Others talked about keeping mood diaries and I spoke about
my blog and how it’d been such a great release and safe space for me to rant
about things that were happening on the ward when I first started blogging.
After the afternoon workshops, we had one final speech; a
‘Personal Recovery Story’ from Angela Banks. She talked about her journey
through depression and how it had gone from self-harm to suicidal, as well as her
struggles with feelings of self-worth and her self-esteem. Angela finished by
thanking both her family, and Richmond Fellowship for all of their help and
support. Needless to say, it was all very emotional!
To continue the emotion; we finished off the day with a
certificate presentation by Richmond Fellowship Chief Executive, Derek Carren.
For such a ‘big wig’ he actually one of the most genuine, and grounded people I’ve
ever had the pleasure of meeting – and speaking to! And I’m not just saying
that because he gave me a certificate!
I left the event feeling completely and utterly drained but
was flying high on the positive feedback and compliments about my work throughout
the day! Richmond Fellowship, although they’re an organisation I see the most
obvious are one that I scarcely get to work with and the teamwork and camaraderie
that I witnessed and experienced has me eager to continue collaborating and begin
some exciting talks about future partnerships together! So stay tuned for that!
