CREST Team Case Study - Tristan Batten

Tristan is a Peer Recovery Support Lead at CREST

What made you apply for your job?

Taking someone out to buy knives, forks, and plates when they have just moved from a hospital setting into their home doesn’t sound like a big deal. But for the person being helped, that one act can make them feel much happier and secure in their new home in the community.

I work for CREST via Touchstone, the health and wellbeing charity, which provides CREST with a team of peer recovery workers and recovery workers – the only difference between the two is the latter do not have lived experience.

A peer recovery worker will have been through the same experience of moving from a mental health hospital where more or less everything is done for them to returning to the big, wide, scary world and a home where they still have to choose all the furniture, let alone crockery and cutlery. And it is small things like that which make my job so worthwhile.

What do you do day-to-day?

We work closely with CREST’s service users while in the hospital, helping them prepare to move on to a new home and spending up to five years with them when they move out into the community. Applying for benefits and helping use smartphones and new technology are just some areas where people need help in the outside world. In the hospital, the tasks my team and I undertake may be as varied as making it possible for service users to attend an art group, catch a bus, or learn to cook and shop.

“The great thing is that our team get why it’s difficult for a service user. I’m a former service user, so I know how valuable that experience is.”

What do you most admire about CREST?

The way we come together as a team and support each other and give each other moral support.

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

The peer support team is completely embedded, not an add-on, and has its own specific intervention.

How do you look after your mental health?

Of course, looking after mental health at work and home is essential. At work, I reach out to my support systems and follow detailed plans to help me. At home, I relax with a menagerie of animals; I also play the saxophone in a band, and I’m the fourth generation of my family to be a Scout leader.