Desperately seeking patients...the NHS, really?

The idea of 'marketing' services and seeking out patients for some in the NHS is seen as a bit of a taboo, even for experienced communicators, like myself, who have worked in NHS communications and public relations for over 11 years (and for over 18 years in total).

'Change the way you think' campaign poster

Very often we have great service and staff stories to tell and this can be done very easily through local media and increasingly, through social media.  Sometimes we have an even bigger message that we must tell as many people as possible and we need to turn to marketing tactics to help spread the word.

However when spreading that word is also about a subject such as mental health, it gets trickier again.  For some this is a taboo, something we can't even chat about with mates at the pub.  In fact it's just those people our current mental health campaign is aiming to reach.

Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT for short in the NHS filled world of jargon and acronyms) exist to help people find ways to cope with emotional stresses and strains, depression and anxiety that just won't go away and the overwhelming feelings some of us can be faced with at one point or another in our lives.

Across the country these services get a poor reputation as they're really hard to access due to waiting times being up to a year in some places. We have great commissioners who have ensured these services have good resources so anyone who needs to can get help the same day - you can even join one of our stress management seminars the following week.

But we just don't think enough people know about this service. So we have enlisted the help of the creative types at DS.Emotion and we've been working together on ideas for a campaign to make people think again about mental health services and to think if they could actually benefit from the help and support of our skilled team.

Put simply ,our campaign says to people with emotional problems, those feeling stressed or anxious, "Time to change the way you think" - and for those who access our service, that's just what we aim to do.

It's been no mean feat; in just around a month we've discussed ideas and concepts to really try and help to change the way people think, reviewed and tested messages, designed and tweaked creative visuals and launched the campaign.  In about a month! We're really proud of the work we've created with DS.Emotion and the support we've had from the experts at Boutique Media and from our colleagues in the IAPT team and others across our organisation.  

As you read this, our really important messages are on local radio in Leeds, on buses around the city, at railway stations and on social media - they'll be dropping through thousands of letter boxes around Leeds in the next couple of weeks too.

Awareness of mental health issues has changed radically in recent years, we have a great service in Leeds to help you or someone you may know, so let's all change the way we think about mental health.  

www.iaptleeds.com

Gillian Neild, Communications, PR and Marketing Manager, Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust

@GillianNeild

Privileged to work in the community

"I’m passionate about community services because
I work with children with neurological conditions
and long term conditions to assist them in
activities and participation in their own environment."

Lauren Haworth is a Community Children's Neurological Physiotherapist and tells us a little about her role with the trust...

"Initially I decided to join the trust as I wanted to be associated with such a large organisation with such a good reputation. After joining on a six month temporary contract, I never left and have been here seven years now. I love my job!

I trained in the North East at the University of Teesside and completed a previous rotational physiotherapy role in another West Yorkshire NHS trust. I specialised in Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy, but felt that Children's Physiotherapy was an opportunity and an experience I had to try. It is very rewarding working with children.  

Every day is different in my role. I am very privileged to have my treatment area in a school, or health centre, or patients home, or swimming pool or trampoline! I treat and assess children in environments appropriate to the goals we are working on and negotiate family orientated treatment plans to accommodate the child and family as much as possible.

By working in the community, I think we are able to see the real challenges and difficulties affecting our patients in their own homes and environments and I'm proud to be able to assist with this."

Stammer School

Laura Gibson, is a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist at the trust's Stammering Support Centre. After watching 'Stammer School' on Thursday, she has offered her thoughts on the programme and compared the advice shown with what the support centre in Leeds do.   

"As soon as I saw the Channel 4 programme, ‘Stammer School’ advertised I quickly added it to my planner. I work as a Specialist Speech and Language Therapist at the Stammering Support Centre based in Leeds where we see children and adults from the Yorkshire and Humber area and beyond and I was really interested to learn about how the therapy approaches differed from those used at my place of work.

It was great to hear everyone’s stories and the different reasons why people had come to the ‘Stammer School.’ Everyone’s stammer or stutter, was different both in its nature and also the impact that it had on each individual’s life. I was struck by how Musharaf had wanted to do some teaching work experience whilst Vicky had wanted to speak out at a charity ball.

There were a couple of things which would be different from the “Stammer School” at the Stammering Support Centre:

1. We tailor our therapy packages to the individual: we believe in an eclectic approach to stammering therapy at Stammering Support Centre. We always tailor our assessments and therapy approaches to the individual and we have different assessments[1] and therapy for different age ranges. So for example, one person may attend 1:1 sessions whilst another may benefit more from our ‘Talking Out’ outdoor pursuits group program.

2. We focus on long term outcomes. Whilst independent programs can make massive improvements over a short period of time, it can be hard to maintain specific strategies. Our aim would be facilitate the development of skills and strategies which would enable the individual to independently manage their stammer in the longer term.

3. Holistic management. Often with therapy it is not just about the stammer but also the environment as talking may be more difficult in certain contexts or with certain people. We would be interested in identifying those variables and also working with the individual, the family, friends, teachers, employers – indeed anyone who could make a significant impact on the environment of the person who stammered.

4. Evidence based approaches. At the centre we always base our work on the latest research and clinical evidence. We would not advocate or trust any approach that had not been through rigorous evaluation. That is why we evaluate everything we do with clients to make sure that it is as effective and efficient as it could be. We are also concerned with researching innovative ways of working and developing new strategies[2].

If you are interested in hearing more about our work at the Stammering Support Centre, email ‘Getting the Word Out’ to stammeringsupportcentre@nhs.net and we will add you to our distribution list for our monthly newsletter."

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[1]Our assessments for children and young people are free due to charitable funding from Action for Stammering Children.

[2] Development of app for young people and adults who stammer.

Changing Our Minds To Change our Lives

Recently I met with Gill who is the director of Phoenix Health andWellbeing. We were brought together by Jon Woolmore, Chief Executive of Community Links,  who suggested a connection between the work York Street Practice and Phoenix do. Phoenix is a charity that specialises in offering 'high quality relaxing or remedial complementary therapies' which is based in Leeds. Their website explains their ethos and work: 'We are a charity supporting people with mental or physical health issues. We offer counselling and body work therapies to a range of people who are referred to us by medical professionals, mental health support workers or associated charities. These referred clients can have a range of complex needs but many experience low self-esteem, anxiety and social isolation. This can be reflected in their perceptions of themselves, their sense of isolation and level of self-care. The use of counselling and physical treatments provide  real contact with another person in a safe environment enabling the client to experience care and to feel genuinely valued as an individual. By coming along for one of our therapy sessions you are supporting our charitable work'.

We sat in a coffee shop near York Street and talked about what our respective services did and, as always, with these conversations we moved to how we can be part of the work to build best cultures and services in Leeds. Part of this call is to create best conversations. We cannot have best cultures and services if we don't have best conversations. Conversations of listening, learning and birthing new ideas and actions. It's a great sign that these conversations and actions are occurring all over our city. You can't see these networks and movements from a high office window. But they are there. It takes a different sort of seeing to note these and be aware of their power and potency.

We discussed the issues of wellbeing, work stress in life and at work and the necessity of positive spaces in our hectic lives. In this a story was shared. The story was of a trainer who worked with business people. The trainer led a group of business folk into a simple relaxing exercise lasting a few minutes. The aim was to let go, relax and just enjoy the moment. After the exercise a woman in the group said 'This is no use to me. I don't have 5 minutes a day to do this!' This frankly is an amazing statement. It says that we are too busy to relax, chill and give ourselves a few moments of letting go. It reflects how work demands can make us feel we don't even have time to make an instant coffee. We make no judgement on the lady who said this. We do say that if we don't make time for change then change won't ever come. If we wish to find some positive space and peace in our lives the chance is that we will have to make the time and space to do this. It just won't just happen. This has been recognised for a long time. One 16th century spiritual writer, Francisco de Osuna, advised meditating because it provided a refuge when faced with stressful situations. We have to withdraw to go forward.

Maybe one reason we don't change in the ways we wish is that we don't give the change the energy and time required for that change to appear and become stabilised. So is there any hope when we know we need to change but think there's no way we can make the time? We think there is. We need to change our thinking. We need to draw a good inner picture to ourselves of why we want this change, of the benefits and how much better life will be when the changes start coming through. We need to create a vision. A vision that moves us and connects with us. Finding what one writer called 'visional power' is what can start us off wanting the change and wishing to make it happen. This is not something we can just do once then forget. It's something we need to repeat daily so the vision of what we can be starts to grow and conversely we start to grow into that vision. The most powerful cases we have seen of people breaking the addiction to alcohol have not been those who have stopped drinking but rather those who have found a state of sobriety, a positive state of living without drink. This story holds to us the challenge of living in a busy world with so much stress. It also holds to us that we have 'visional power', the power to dream that we can act and live differently and seek the steps for that to happen. The work that Phoenix and York Street do are on the surface quite different  - different client groups, different sectors and different specialisms. Yet in the depths - where it really matters - the work for hope, wellbeing and people feeling better about themselves - it's just the same.

John Walsh, York Street Health Practice
Gill Trevor, Director, Phoenix Health and Wellbeing