For Professionals in Caring Roles
People who work in roles focused on caring about the emotional needs of others (for example - healthcare, social work, management, occupational health and HR) are often exposed to high levels of distress and or behaviours that can be challenging to deal with. The emotional toll this can take on those who care can be enormous and quite often goes unnoticed. These are some of the most valuable people we have in our workforce (after all, if we don’t value the basic principles of care, where does that leave us?) and yet we routinely fail to consider how the emotional and cognitive load they carry is impacting on their productivity and the quality of their work.
The difficulty is that when we don’t recognise, notice or process the emotional needs of those who care for others, especially in very difficult circumstances, the capacity they have as human beings to provide the quality of care that the vast majority aspire to is significantly reduced.
Most professionals working in caring roles are highly dedicated, skilled and compassionate people, driven to do the very best they can by those they care for. People don’t tend to do this job unless they are passionate about it - I am in no doubt about that. However, often organisations have cause for concern about the quality of care their customers or staff are receiving, and quality of care falls short of our expectations more frequently than we would like. Investigations and inquiries release their findings, make recommendations and changes to practice and offers of training ensue. However, often these well-intentioned actions make little difference. This is because we often treat the issue as a skills deficit rather than looking at the context in which people are trying to care and keeping in mind the emotional impact of the act of care on the care giver.
How we can help
I have extensive experience of supporting people who provide care in challenging environments and an area of specialist interest in developing factors within organisations, teams and individuals that enhance our capacity to care. I have provided supervision, consultation, workshops and reflective practice groups in residential and in-patient settings for many years and I am keen to continue to offer this support to staff who care across a range of settings.
We can offer the following services to help increase the capacity of those in caring professions to offer that care with resilience, compassion and dedication. These offers are based in extensive experience of working alongside nurses, support workers and health care assistants with the intention of supporting them to provide the best possible care to vulnerable people.
- Workshops - providing opportunities for those in caring professions to build up their abilities to care for their own well-being in relation to their work
- Reflective Practice - to reflect on the emotional load of caring work, separate caring staff’s own issues from those of those they care for, and consider ways to take steps to manage this more effectively
- Case Consultation - to make sense of particularly challenging behaviours and presentations from a psychological, trauma-informed perspective in order to facilitate better caring solutions.
- Post Incident Support – sometimes, in the course of our care things can go wrong, and we can be exposed to traumatic situations. Effective post incident support from an experienced and qualified psychological professional can be crucial in mitigating the impact of that trauma.
If you are working in a caring role or employ people who are and would like to explore accessing the above services or just want to know more, you can contact me here.
