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Staff trained in MHFA:
178
Four years ago the Trust asked Clinical Educator Maria Ditch to undertake MHFA England Instructor Training. She’d never heard of the training and having practiced at the Trust for over 30 years as a mental health nurse, wasn’t convinced it would add value to her day job.
However, right from the start she found the training to be life changing. Having spent years supporting colleagues, friends and patients, she found the framework to be of immense personal benefit, not least because it supported her own wellbeing. Maria’s sick record changed beyond recognition and the training taught her how to support friends and family in a healthier way.
On a professional level, Maria got to work fast, travelling around the Trust to train staff in Mental Health First Aid. The training was open to everyone and proved popular, from drivers, porters, administrators and personal assistants, to senior management,
mental health and physical healthcare nurses and everyone in between.
The training rollout was to prove essential in the face of the pandemic, and the Mental Health First Aiders worked as an effective network to raise further awareness of the support available.
A weekly meeting was held with a core group of eight proactive Mental Health First Aiders. All had an interest in developing their offering throughout the Trust and getting staff the support needed. Innovative ideas were discussed, leading to a proliferation of additional support being offered across the Trust.
Maria put together a directory of all Mental Health First Aiders who felt they were in a position to help others. The Directory was shared widely; using email, Facebook and managers, ensuring everyone knew who they could contact for support.
Care packages were put together by the Mental Health First Aiders for struggling staff, and as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, the Mental Health First Aiders organised an art competition. The campaign raised a lot of well-deserved attention, with families of NHS staff also getting involved. The artwork was collated in a booklet which was then sold to raise funds for future Mental Health First Aid events.
“I could have just done the training and left it at that, but I knew from the start that Mental Health First Aid could offer incredible support,” explains Maria.
“We knew we had a ticking time bomb with the pandemic and we had to act.”
Historically Maria had been using a feedback form, collating data to ascertain when and where Mental Health First Aiders were using their skills. During the pandemic she has experienced a surge in these electronic forms being returned to her, with staff reporting the use of these skills several times a day, every day.
Maria found this was the case for her personally too when working on the staff helpline. “We had an increased number of staff calling saying they were feeling desperate or overwhelmed,” she explains.
“There was a lot of fear, exhaustion and people were hopeless about the future, some even suicidal. I used my Mental Health First Aid skills on every single call that came in.”
Other teams across the Trust, such as the Recruitment, Retention and Wellbeing Team with four trained Mental Health First Aiders, also saw a big uptake in staff contacting them for support. “Mental Health First Aid skills were being used by all trained Mental Health First Aiders, daily,” explains Maria.
Mental Health First Aid skills have become so pervasive within the Trust that they have also influenced how a department operates. For example; Mental Health First Aid skills are now part of the Suicide Prevention Strategy. Similarly the Trauma Team, Learning & Development, Recruitment Retention & Wellbeing, as well as the Staff Health & Wellbeing Team have all embedded Mental Health First Aid skills into their own strategy. This organisational approach is proving to be successful and Maria hopes to see it grow further.
While the transformation of the wellbeing of staff at the Trust has been immense, Maria is keen the work keeps expanding. She has recommended wellbeing rooms for staff and hopes that a wellbeing conference will take place in the near future.
At the time of writing, the priority is the vaccination programme, but the active Mental Health First Aiders are continuing to provide much needed support across the Trust. Significantly, the Trust has also set aside further investment to train an additional eight Instructor Members.
Initially the training was open to anyone, and while this is still the case, Maria’s vision is to ensure support is representative of everyone working at the Trust. Having run an in-depth study looking at who has been trained so far, Maria found a shortfall
of young men from non-Christian, ethnic minority backgrounds, so is hoping the Trust will target and recruit Mental Health First Aiders from these backgrounds. Maria commented;
“We must get into more places and raise the profile even further for all staff. Everyone recognises that Mental Health First Aiders are essential for healthcare workers. I can’t imagine not having them as a massive resource alongside the other resources.”
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