The Staff Support department provides a workplace counselling and support service to Trust staff.
It is now common practice for organisations to consider the well-being of their employees by providing direct or indirect access to counselling agencies. Counselling/support allows employees to stop and take time to look at issues that have been affecting their work and home life.
As this is a service run by staff for staff, notes are not kept in the same way as they would be in patient services. Private and confidential notes are kept only for the counsellor’s reference. No personal information discussed in the session leaves the department, although statistical information taken at the first point of contact is used to show the activity of the department. No person, area of work or department is identified through this statistical information.
It can be difficult to separate problems at home and problems at work and both have an impact on the individual, so the department makes no distinction between personal and professional problems.
All of the Staff Support counsellors are qualified to at least diploma level, with a minimum of five years’ clinical experience and have regular approved clinical supervision.
Facilitated Support Groups
Facilitated Support Groups are designed to allow staff to explore issues which are having an impact on their working lives. Groups are usually three-weekly, lasting for one hour, at a time and venue convenient for the team.
The emphasis of these groups is support. One is either receiving support from others or giving support. That means that if difficult themes or issues are be raised, they will be discussed in a private, confidential, supportive and non-blame environment.
Support groups differ from individual support in that:
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Members recognise that they are not alone in their experience.
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Members realise the importance of being helped and helping others.
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Members can identify changes that they can instigate themselves which may improve their working lives.
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Members can improve their relationships with each other.
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Members can reduce discrimination and assumptions about each other.
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Members learn team cohesiveness and realise the strength of acting and working collaboratively.
Contact Staff Support on 0121 678 2790
