Sue and Sara's keeping in touch blog - issue 9

Latest blog from our Chair Prof Sue Proctor and our Chief Exec Dr Sara Munro – keeping in touch during lockdown!

This week is national Mental Health Awareness week. Much of the activity, discussion and promotion of this message is taking place on social media or broadcast media owing to the limitations of the Covid lockdown. Even though as a specialist mental health and learning disability Trust we are very aware of mental health issues, we can and should appreciate the key theme of this year’s campaign, which is kindness.

Kindness chimes strongly with our values as a Trust, in how we care for one another, and for ourselves. Especially now as we move into week nine of lockdown, where we continue to learn, adapt, and live with a new ‘normal’.

For some, fearing for their health, their finances, their families, even being at home for this extended period it may bring added pressures and tensions, fears and anxieties. Sara talked in her weekly update of the need for both compassion and forgiveness at this time, which you can watch below.

 

Demonstrating kindness through caring and responding to others with compassion, and humanity is more important than ever. We are proud to see this behaviour across our organisation from staff, volunteers, governors and partners.

None of us have lived through such a long period of lockdown, with the very real fears about our and our loved ones’ health, about seeing those we miss, and about recession and job security. We won’t get things right first time every time as we would wish, but we are trying to respond appropriately, ensuring our services and staff are safe at work and our service users have the support they need.

Even though the lockdown rules were relaxed slightly last week, many restrictions remain in place. We are currently reviewing the most recent government guidance to make sure that our working environment is as ‘Covid safe’ as possible. This should be completed soon and further guidance will follow.

Nationally, there have been developments in widening access to testing for people with symptoms of Covid 19. Thanks to the hard work of our Infection Prevention & Control team there is now additional testing for staff with symptoms set up at our Aire Court site. Testing is also available at Temple Green as before.

As in previous weeks, we have been so impressed by the levels of creativity across the Trust. Following the suggesting from one of our doctors, appreciation letters will be sent to the children of staff, with a different version for younger and older children. We are grateful to colleagues in our Deaf CAMHS service for their input on this.

A leaflet for children and young people to advise them about covid and supporting their mental health has been developed by our CAMHS team at Mill Lodge. This is a great innovation and is available here.

Kindness from local businesses has been demonstrated once again with generous donations of sweets, clothing, chocolates etc. Our Staff Engagement lead Tracey Needham is overseeing the distribution of these and we are so grateful to her for taking this on.

Once again, thanks for all you are doing. Stay safe, stay sensible and look after yourselves.