Throughout July and August FD Consultants want to highlight the diverse expertise and professionalism amongst its associates. Lisa Hunter has been working with FD Consultants for the past two years, supporting us with our marketing including managing updates to our website and all our social media profiles, so we thought it was about time you all met her! With over 15 years’ experience working in the IT and marketing industry, Lisa has delivered strategic marketing support and managed creative projects for a wide range of clients. Sector experience includes recruitment into civil engineering sector, education, health, media, events, hospitality, voluntary and security. Lisa’s background in IT and data analysis means not only does she understand the marketing process; she is also able to offer analytical support for any type of marketing campaign. Lisa applies a targeted and very well organised approach to all her work, ensuring a full understanding of client needs and forming long-standing working relationships. What I’ve been doing during the pandemic Outside of work and family life I’m a member of Maidenhead Bridge Rotary Club. Rotary is a worldwide organisation of men and women who volunteer their time and talents to serve their communities at home and overseas. Each Rotary club operates independently, but under the common banner of helping those in need and working towards world understanding and peace. We use our professional skills to serve our local communities with a range of projects. With each member contributing their time and expertise, it is truly amazing what can be achieved to make a difference to someone, somewhere, somehow. In this time of uncertainty and many members of our community having to self-isolate it was the perfect opportunity for Rotary to do what it does best, help the most vulnerable people of our community. With this in mind, my Rotary Club formulated a community response team, in conjunction with the other two Rotary clubs in the town. Many elderly or people with underlying health conditions were advised to self-isolate and therefore needed help with their shopping, collecting medications, posting letters and even walking their dogs. Lisa developed an online portal where people can request support and we match them up with a volunteer to run this errand for them. Since we launched the project, we have supported more than 145 households with errands and managed 129 volunteers , many of them non-Rotarians. Many children receive free school meals such as breakfast and lunch and with schools closing, they did not receive this vital care. Therefore, Rotary are providing “baskets” for families to provide them with enough produce to be able to provide these meals to their children. We are working with the RBWM Education Officer and the Social Services Team to push this message to schools so they can inform the families affected within Maidenhead and ask that they get in touch with us directly. This is to ensure we are reaching the right people and not just anyone. We are also working with FoodShare to ensure we are complementing each other’s services rather than duplicating. To date we are supporting 23 families with weekly food parcels, we’ve been doing this for the past 13 weeks and will continue to provide this support over the summer holidays also. The Rotary project was actually featured on BBC One as part of Ross Kemp’s Volunteer Army documentary – if you’re interested you can view it here on the BBC iPlayer. This volunteer response project was my idea and as such I took on the set-up and management of it all including creating the registration portal, writing documents on volunteer management processes and qualifying all request for help. In additional I also do the weekly shop for the 23 families and create all the food parcels ready for delivery, with the help of my 9-year-old! Having worked with FD Consultants for the last two years it has helped immensely with this project, not only being able to provide advice to volunteers to look after their own mental health during this time, as their safety is our number one priority, but also to be mindful of my own mental health. Making sure I take time out each day to breathe, think deeply and make time for myself has been invaluable. Using the Mindfulness Exercise videos has helped to focus my mind and ensure I stay strong and healthy. If the pandemic has taught me anything it’s the kindness of humanity, the amount of people that came forwards to volunteer who have never done anything like this before was truly overwhelming and so heart-warming. I hope that this real sense of community spirit will continue in the future. About LjH Consulting LjH Consulting is a marketing consultancy whose purpose is to help business owners and managers to achieve their marketing objectives. We believe that to deliver successful and affordable marketing campaigns we must:
LjH Consulting offer a range of marketing solutions to suit the individual needs of our clients including marketing strategy, online marketing support, event management, website design and build and creative design services. If you’re looking for marketing support then do get in touch with Lisa today: www.ljhconsulting.co.uk For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly.
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Encouraging the growing momentum around staff wellbeing in the humanitarian and human rights sectors19/7/2020 Throughout July FD Consultants want to highlight the diverse expertise and professionalism amongst its associates. Arianna Rondos is a UKCP accredited psychotherapist. She specialises in refugees, trauma and psychological wellbeing of humanitarian and human rights workers. In addition to her psychological training she has an MA in Human Rights Law and has worked and lived internationally. Arianna offers psychological and research services for FD Consultants. “I found our session incredibly helpful! I had a post deployment assessment with another service provider back in 2015, and the person I spoke to then had almost no understanding of the type of work I did, and the unique stresses of the humanitarian environment. Your experience and deep engagement with the humanitarian sector is evident and really made the session meaningful to me.” (Humanitarian staff feedback) I joined FD Consultants at the start of 2019 with an academic and professional background in the fields of human rights, international development and gender-based violence (GBV) and with a clinical focus on refugees and trauma. Having lived internationally, in the Middle East, Balkans and in Europe during these years, I also had some knowledge of the aid sector field context. It was this experience which motivated me to broaden my clinical focus to include those who provide support to vulnerable communities and which led me to join FD Consultants as an Associate. I wanted to be involved in and to encourage the growing momentum around staff wellbeing in the humanitarian and human rights sectors. And, to acknowledge the value of my own struggle in appreciating how a desire to address the needs of the most vulnerable can lead one to neglect their own self-care. While my particular experience is not a prerequisite for this work, when significant in some way to the experience of the individual being supported, it can elicit what I have understood as a kind of ‘relief’. A relief, as some have described, in not ‘feeling like I have to spend most of the time explaining the way I live and work rather than what is actually going on for me’. At FD Consultants we attend to each of our clients in this way, with trauma specialist expertise and an understanding of the unique contexts in which humanitarian, human rights staff and first responders work. When meeting a person for the first time I will introduce myself with a little information about my background, which I provide as a way of letting them know that I can, in a way, speak the language of their work/life context. With each consultation I draw upon this experience and understanding of the sector to recognise and highlight the unique and meaningful ways a person is supporting their own resilience as well as where they might benefit from attending to themselves with more care. When working with trauma, I seek to convey that, while trained and experienced in this field, I am equally respectful of the uniqueness of their experience. Most recently, as part of the COVID-19 humanitarian response, FD Consultants’ Associates have been carrying out consultations with humanitarian aid staff preparing to deploy, the majority of whom are well seasoned in epidemic emergency settings. Much of their preparation and expectation, which I hear reflected in their calm yet adrenaline infused tone, is relevant to the COVID context. Some have already been on the frontlines at home, ‘facing shortages, infected colleagues, family members and an array of unknowns’, as one staff described. Others are prepared for these realities once on the ground. In support of this, our consultations focus on strengthening innate resilience. And, as I listen and inquire, I encourage the importance of self-care and boundaries by reinforcing responsibility for oneself, including taking breaks, not pushing beyond breaking point, as well as openly voicing concerns with the team leader. Given the global nature of the humanitarian and human rights sectors, our work often involves crossing cultures, ethnicities, religious affiliation, gender, sexuality and, when supporting young volunteers, generations. It also often involves crossing boarders, at the least, and, more often, continents, through video link or audio, and not always with an ideal internet connection. Yet, whether I am asking someone who has never undergone a psychological evaluated to share their experience or I am assessing someone following a traumatic incident, I am regularly struck by the openness with which I am met. And, how, whether speaking to national staff or deployed internationals, they will often describe a sense of personal responsibility, not only towards their work, but towards the wellbeing of their team’s, colleagues, organisations and, most of all, the communities they work in. With each of these interactions, I find myself both exponentially impressed by the work of humanitarian and human rights organisations as well as conscious of the work that still remains in destigmatising and normalising the inherent psychological stresses that accompany their efforts. FD Consultants appreciates the multifaceted nature of this responsibility and understands how organisations, which are increasingly committed to the wellbeing of their staff, can foster healthy working environments, which in turn support the communities they work with. By building relationships with these organisations, providing individual services to their staff and, by providing vital monitoring and evaluation, FD Consultants directly contributes to achieving the goals and objectives of the humanitarian sector through enhancing its duty of care policies. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Throughout July FD Consultants want to highlight the diverse expertise and professionalism amongst its associates. Maddie Nixon is a BACP accredited psychotherapist and supervisor, trainer and an accredited Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR) practitioner. She has expertise in trauma care and critical incident response and has a particular interest in pre-trial therapy. Maddie has recently completed her MSc in Therapeutic Practice for Psychological Trauma. Her dissertation was ‘A qualitative exploration of therapists’ experience of working therapeutically pre-trial within the Crown Prosecution Guidelines with adult clients who have reported sexual violence’. Following this Maddie and Peter Jenkins have published an article ‘Examining the Evidence of Pre-Trial Therapy’ in the Healthcare Counselling and Psychotherapy Journal, January 2020 https://tinyurl.com/r9gt66h. Below Maddie writes about her recent work, and her experience as an associate for FD Consultants. Very early in my career as a therapist, when I was studying for my Diploma in Humanistic Integrative Counselling I took a placement in an agency that worked with adults who had been abused as children. I developed an interest in helping people who had suffered traumatic experiences and it was here that I became aware of pre-trial therapy (PTT). PTT is the term that applies to working therapeutically with a client before they appear as a witness/defendant in a criminal trial. PTT is different to generic counselling as it requires specialist training and a knowledge of the criminal justice system. In 2001 the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) joined together to produce a practical guide https://tinyurl.com/y782c4dl, primarily aimed to assist therapists when providing therapeutic interventions to vulnerable or intimidated witnesses in England and Wales (victims of sexual violence are defined as vulnerable by the courts) as they recognised the need for these witnesses to receive PTT. Having an awareness of the CPS guidelines is important for therapists whether they are in private practice or work within an organisation. It would also be of benefit to other professionals that work within organisations that may have to investigate allegations of sexual violence. FD Consultants specialise in trauma care and critical incident response. Fiona Dunkley, the founder of FD Consultants conducted research on critical incidents within the humanitarian sector. She reviewed 188 critical incidents concerning 89 organisations between 2014 and 2017 (Dunkley, 2018). The research concluded that sexual violent crime towards aid workers had increased by 25% over a period of two years. Research has indicated that 60% of survivors of rape and sexual assault develop PTSD and as a therapist working with a client presenting with the symptoms of PTSD the main aim would be to alleviate their symptoms. FD Consultants are trained in the recommended (WHO, APA and NICE) treatments of trauma and PTSD which are Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (TF-CBT). However, if you were to use EMDR or TF-CBT, according to the CPS guidelines, these forms of therapy may be seen as ‘recounting or re-enacting’ memories and the criminal case could fail as a result. Therefore, at FD Consultants we are aware of these sensitive dilemmas, and depending on what the client requests, may focus on normalisation, stabilisation and psycho-education during pre-trial therapy. Herman (2003) explained how criminal proceedings could distress the most robust person, and for those who may be experiencing symptoms of PTSD, the justice system could be described as a ‘re-victimisation’. As happened in the case of Frances Andrade, a witness in the criminal trial over indecent assault against her former music teacher, Frances was wrongly informed that she could not receive therapy prior to the court proceedings. Frances described the cross-examination process as feeling like she was being ‘raped all over again’ and took a fatal overdose a few days after giving evidence (Barrett, 2013). All the therapists interviewed in my research believed that pre-trial therapy was beneficial in some way. Janet stated “the important thing with counselling is talking about feelings and building up confidence”. James had actually used EMDR with his client before the client reported the incident, however this was not challenged in court (as has been the case in other court hearings) “I was asked about EMDR in court and interestingly I had been expecting them to try and undermine EMDR as a technique but they didn’t”. The debilitating symptoms associated with PTSD bring up the dilemma as to whether it is morally acceptable to withhold treatment that may alleviate these extremely distressing symptoms. In fact the revised NICE (2018) guidelines state “do not delay or withhold treatment for PTSD solely because of court proceedings”. It can also be argued as to how reliable a witness would be when suffering from the very debilitating psychological impact of PTSD. Neuroscience has shown that in brain scans of people experiencing flashbacks, the Broca area of the brain, responsible for speech, goes offline leaving the person unable to put their thoughts and feelings into words (van der Kolk, 2014). Therefore, it could be argued, that encouraging the witness to have treatment prior to the trial would be beneficial to the criminal proceedings. Given the recent research and developments in therapy, it may be an opportune time for a review and update of the current CPS guidelines into the provision of therapy for vulnerable or intimidated adults prior to a criminal trial. There has been concern of a potential rise in domestic abuse during the COVID-19 crises with agencies such as Refuge reporting a 25% increase in calls since lockdown began. These risks are reported to be affecting society worldwide. For professionals and organisations supporting adults who have experienced abuse, it is important to be mindful of PTT in case the victim decides to pursue a criminal case either now or in the future. At FD Consultants we support staff impacted by sexual violence. Over the last year (2019) 25% of the incidents FD Consultants managed were sexual violence cases. If you want to find out more about our services please email [email protected] or visit our website at www.FDconsultants.net If you want to find out more about Maddie’s work on PTT please email [email protected] or visit her website at www.maddienixon.co.uk. She is planning to facilitate further training on PTT in the near future, which can now be offered online. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Throughout July FD Consultants want to highlight the diverse expertise and professionalism amongst its associates. Felicity Runchman is a BACP accredited psychotherapist with over 10 years’ experience. As well as having expertise in the humanitarian aid sector, she also specialises in working online, offering remote counselling via text, email and video. Additionally, Felicity has an interest working with young people and bereavement services. Below Felicity writes about her recent work, and her experience as an associate for FD Consultants. "I've been involved with FD Consultants from the outset and it has brought a really interesting variety of work my way. This has ranged from psychological 'health-checks' with young people setting off to volunteer overseas, to initial trauma assessments with organisational staff who have been involved in traumatic incidents, to psychological reviews with individuals returning from particularly challenging international assignments. I've also done several very fulfilling pieces of short-term counselling with staff members whose organisations have referred them for support through FD Consultants. Over recent months, working with individuals who have been relocated, or whose roles have changed significantly due to the coronavirus pandemic has been especially interesting. I’ve found myself helping many staff members find ways of dealing with stress linked to increased workloads. However, I’ve also assisted staff in dealing with the challenge of having to do less in the wake of this crisis – for example, managing difficult feelings such as guilt and anxiety as they have had to move away from the projects they’ve been working on overseas. As many of the organisations who refer to FD Consultants are international aid agencies and charities employing staff from diverse backgrounds, this work has brought me insight into specific organisational cultures. It has also sharpened my practice when it comes to working cross-culturally with clients from different backgrounds to my own - something that has been both educational and deeply rewarding. Another dominant theme in the work FD Consultants has been carrying out recently has involved responding to the difficulties restructuring and redundancy can create for so many people within organisations - regardless of their positions. This inspired Fiona and I to co-author an article on the therapeutic issues restructuring and redundancy can raise, and to share our thoughts on how best these can be met by those providing psychosocial support to staff within organisations that are affected. The article 'All Change' was initially published in the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy [BACP] Workplace journal (BACP, Oct 2019), and an amended version was then published in the BACP Coaching journal (BACP, Jan 2020) http://ow.ly/6rcK50xh6ZP. It was also published in Contemporary Psychotherapy https://lnkd.in/dtew_-J. As a therapist keen to develop my writing, and to bring some of the nuances, challenges and lessons learned from my work to light through the written word, getting these articles published felt like a great personal achievement in 2019! My connection to FD Consultants and my experience of previously writing for their blog definitely paved the way to this opportunity and Fiona and I will shortly be publishing another article in the BACP Workplace journal about the nature of our work during the coronavirus pandemic. I went on to write more towards the end of last year and solely authored another article on text-based online counselling with young people ('Text, Transition & Transference'). This featured in the December edition of the BACP Children, Young People & Families journal, and was subsequently republished in Contemporary Psychotherapy https://tinyurl.com/wpvlg3e. I trained in online counselling back in 2012, and now work part-time as Deputy Co-ordinator of the online counselling service within the young people's counselling service, Off The Record. I therefore have a lot of faith in the efficacy, practicality and reach of text-based online support, and wanted to 'spread the word' about this within my article. Whilst most people think of online counselling as involving audio-video (webcam) sessions, text-based sessions (conducted either through exchange of weekly messages/e-mails, or live instant messaging) can provide a beneficial alternative - particularly for clients whose social anxiety, shyness or shame may pose a barrier to them speaking with a therapist through more conventional means. Text-based online counselling can also be a far more practical option in terms of support for people with busy schedules, or those in remote locations where the bandwidth and guaranteed internet connectivity required for audio-video sessions might be tricky. I'd love to see more users of FD Consultants services opening up to the potential that these kinds of sessions could offer their staff, and would be happy to answer any questions people may have about text-based online counselling, although further information can be found on my website :- https://tinyurl.com/sbefle7 As 2020 continues and some aspects of lockdown ease, I hope to remain involved with FD Consultants and have scope to take on more short-term counselling (online or face-to-face) as well as individual psychological health-related appointments with or without reports. I am open to working with clients experiencing a range of personal issues. However, bereavement and loss are areas of particular professional interest and expertise for me, as I also currently work part-time as an assessment worker for Wandsworth Bereavement Service. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Throughout July FD Consultants want to highlight the diverse expertise and professionalism amongst its associates. Claire Pooley is a senior BACP accredited psychotherapist with 30 years’ experience. She is a trained Traumatologist, Accredited EMDR practitioner, Supervisor and Trainer. Below Claire writes about her recent work, and her experience as an associate for FD Consultants. My training in the 80’s as a Mental Health Nurse lacked any consideration for a Psychologically Informed Environment. The structure of the day was centred on the needs of the multi-disciplinary team – ‘we know best’. We were the ‘well’ and the patients were the ‘unwell’. The separateness was enshrouded in keeping our professional boundaries. Our own personal welfare was also a non-concern of the hospital and I didn’t meet an Occupational Health team even at the beginning of my nursing, at the early and naïve age of just 17. We gave little attention to the patient’s possible experiences of trauma and yet, on reflection, I have little doubt that most of the patients I cared for would have experienced, or were experiencing, some form of trauma. We also didn’t spend any time on how the impact of the patient’s lives would have on our own. We used a “sic” sense of humour to laugh off any difficulties and would not dare to share any personal vulnerabilities. I currently facilitate workshops within a large Homeless/Housing project who have not only embraced the Psychologically Informed Environment (PIE) approach but they have rolled out compulsory courses to ensure Trauma Informed Care (TIC), Reflective Practise and staff welfare are a high priority in the workplace. I find this organisation a breath of fresh air. At the beginning of each training day, I ask the attendees about their understanding of PIE and TIC and sit back and watch the energy and enthusiasm emanate in the room. It is not just a whim or a paper exercise, they believe in it and, at its best, it truly works for them. At worst, particularly for some of the lone workers, it would appear that more needs to be done to provide appropriate staff support. This is a work in progress. So what do we understand by these two concepts? Psychologically Informed Environment (PIE) recognises the gaps in services, particularly for those with complex and interrelated issues and provide the non-clinically trained staff responses for an appropriate and improved support provision. The approach ensures a service develops:
Trauma Informed Care (TIC) is an approach which can be adopted by organisations to improve awareness of trauma and its impact and ensure their service provision offers effective support and prevents the possibility of re-traumatisation of those using or providing the services. Those using the approach:
Researchers have found that those using the TIC approach within organisations have better informed staff on Trauma awareness, they provide more of an emphasis on emotional and physical safety, they promote opportunities to rebuild control and provide a ‘strengths-based approach – helping to support and identify strengths and coping mechanisms. A superb example was shared by a trainee recently on one of the courses where she was struggling to remain client-centred whilst working with someone who “poisoned every act of kindness”. She was left feeling angry and was struggling to cut off at the end of her working day and felt a strong resistance to returning to work the following day. She was able to approach her team manager who called a ‘Reflections Meeting’, where staff were encouraged to talk about the feelings of “when things get tough at work”. She was able to share her experience and realise she was not alone and between them, found each other’s strengths and abilities to address the situation. She spoke of moving from “anger to compassion to healing” through the process and describes a collective sense of supportiveness and holding. During my work with FD Consultants, I have witnessed these approaches within some of the Humanitarian teams whilst providing preventative and trauma-focussed therapies to their staff. I have heard individuals who have felt held and supported through some very isolating and stressful traumas and have witnessed a non-judgemental and holding within their team, HR and management. Thus strengthening the resourcefulness of the individual and the team. They know they can speak out and raise difficult issues and believe they can be supported to carry out their goals. A safer place to work. Recognising the Covid-19 Crisis as another traumatic event in so many ways, I have been working with Fiona to roll-out a programme of trainings to help staff and managers work through their issues, from stress management through to a Crisis Management approach. I have also returned to the NHS to provide my local hospital staff with a programme of group therapies (GTEP RISC), which helps the staff to process some of their experiences and the effects that Covid-19 has had on them. Both are forms of Trauma Informed Care. For those who have not adopted this approach, I highly recommend it. Fiona Dunkley’s book, recently re-launched in a paperback form, “Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Aid Workers: A Roadmap of Trauma and Critical Incident Care” (Dunkley, 2018) highlights the TIC approach and the need for proactive prevention and staff resilience. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly References:
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