CREST Team Case Study - Marrisa Carroll

Marrisa is a Complex Rehab Programme Manager at CREST

What made you apply for your job?

Having worked as a nurse, operations manager, and project manager in NHS mental health services, including rehab and community services, for many years, I’ve seen firsthand how much more effective it is when people and organisations work together. I applied for this role because, as part of the West Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism programme, it gave our region a great opportunity to collectively redesign something better than our current options of using many different hospitals, often out of the area.

Being able to work with people for a long time was always the best part of my job as a nurse, as it meant getting to know people and their families and working on things that were important to the person. This role was the opportunity to bring like-minded people together from mental health services, commissioners, local authorities and people with lived experience to build new services that could do that vital work. Recruiting coproduction roles to include people’s lived experience was important.

What do you do day-to-day?

This work has many strands, and showing you a diagram may be easier! My role is to bring people together to plan the work needed to develop new services. To get people and ideas together to create new ways of doing things, test, evaluate and share progress. I am here to ensure it keeps on track and share with our senior decision makers to ensure the work is governed.

I meet people from around our region in person or digitally, holding workshop sessions, supporting working groups, or offering weekly support to project colleagues, developing plans, updating them and meeting our deadlines. I liaise with each of our regional Place’s case managers each month so we know how many people are in complex rehab hospital placements and where, and I support Coproduction colleagues in their consultation and engagement with people.

What do you most admire about CREST?

Their work on engagement and transitions feels really important to me. In the very early stages of our work, lots of people told us that they had lost hope of leaving the hospital or were fearful of not having enough support to get home and relapsing. CREST have the time to build relationships with people, and being psychologically informed inspires hope for the future of life after the hospital. This means that the team knows the person well and has realistic approaches to how people live their lives so that if a relapse does happen, they can work through the experience rather than start the whole complex rehab admission cycle again.

What do you want to see in the future at CREST?

I’m looking forward to the team moving from development to ‘business as usual’ as that would allow us to consolidate the long road travelled and share their work and people’s life experiences beyond the hospital more widely.

How do you look after your mental health?

I have a busy work and home life with two teenagers, so it’s important for me to keep a balance. Long dog walks in the park, meeting friends regularly, and weekly Zumba (however uncoordinated I am!) really helps.