We had another great turn out at the April meeting and thanks very much to everyone who came along. A warm welcome to people attending their first meeting and we hope you come along again soon!
We were joined by Claire de Soldenhoff, Service Manager for Penumbra's Edinburgh Wellbeing Services.
Claire explained that the wellbeing services consist of five separate teams (number of peer workers are in brackets).
*Community Link Workers in GP surgeries
*Lothian Eating Disorder Service for Adults and Young people. (4)
*Thrive Welcome Team - covers Edinburgh apart from South West (10)
*Thrive Locality Team - Self-harm Project.
* Firrhill and St Stephens Court (3)
We were also joined by Peer Practitioner Jane Cairns who is based at Inchkeith House covering North East Edinburgh. A huge thank you to Claire and Jane for coming along to talk to us particularly at such short notice. Much appreciated!
Jane spoke about her role and the mutual benefits of using her experience of living with a mental health condition to support the person she's working with.
Jane mentioned the importance of building trust and a rapport with the person when meeting at the first of eight sessions and is amazed by how hard people work on themselves.
Jane told us that she knows from personal experience how lonely it can feel when you you're struggling to do even the simplest tasks like getting up out of bed. An important part of her role involves sharing her experiences and offering hope that things can and do change.
Jane finds her job very rewarding particularly when people start to take back control for themselves as a result of learning new ways of managing their lives through self-management strategies. One size doesn't fit all and Jane will work with the person to see which tools or action plans work best for them.
We spoke briefly about Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP) which is a self-management tool and you can see examples of what may be in a WRAP in the feedback we gathered at previous workshops we facilitated some years ago. Please click HERE to view the document.
Health in Mind have a variety of mental health and wellbeing services and you can find out more information on their website. The iThrive website also has information on peer support and other services.
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