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Friday, October 25, 2024

Why We’re Endorsed by Waythrough

You may have noticed a new part to the part of our website which was previously called ‘Commendations’ – it now reads ‘Endorsements and Commendations!’ This change/addition is a result of the Campaign earning its first organisational endorsement from the wonderful, lifesaving charity; Waythrough. So, to celebrate, we thought we’d put together this little article about why the endorsement came about…

In 2012, on one of the many psychiatric hospital admissions I (Aimee, Founder of Shake My Hand) I’d had since 2009, to discharge me from my detention under the 1983 Mental Health Act, there was a meeting with the Psychiatrist and my Community Mental Health Team. The Psychiatrist told my Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN) that he thought I needed to be sent to an out-of-area psychiatric hospital that specialised in my diagnosis at the time of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) because there were no services like that in our locality. He explained that without this specialist treatment, I was going to just keep bouncing in and out of both medical and psychiatric hospitals and could very likely end up killing myself because the professionals in our area had no knowledge or training to help and support someone with BPD.

With my CPN being who she was, she took the recommendation seriously and before being discharged from the psychiatric hospital, she arranged for me to have an assessment with a specialist hospital in York (I live in Northumberland). In the end, the specialist service determined that because of my flight risk and the fact that they weren’t a secure unit, they wouldn’t admit me. So, with the plan of another assessment with a different hospital, I was discharged from my section and in Summer 2012, I met with a Ward Manager and her Deputy from a private healthcare specialist psychiatric hospital in Bradford (around 127 miles away!). In the assessment, they explained that they were a medium secure hospital and that on the ward I would go to they had a timetable where inpatients had Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) numerous times per week as well doing other therapeutic groups like Reading, Arts and Crafts, and Walking Group. They said that you were woken at 8am for the Ward Morning Meeting and did the groups and Therapy sessions until 3pm and then at 6pm there was a Communal Reflection Meeting and then lights out at 10pm.

Now, anyone who knows me will know I’m a very productive person and I really benefit from keeping busy and having various commitments. Back then though, I absolutely hated the thought of the timetable and everything being so regimented, strict, and structured! So, when they said they could offer me a bed, I refused to go. Within weeks, I made a suicide attempt and after refusing to have the lifesaving medical treatment, I was sedated and put on life support to be given the treatment under the 2005 Mental Capacity Act. When I was woken, my Mum said I needed to go to the specialist hospital and now being terrified at how close I came to dying and having all the aftereffects of being on life support, I agreed (I later found out that if I’d refused, there was a plan in place to have me sectioned and taken there anyway!).

I was in that specialist private psychiatric hospital for over two years and in October 2014, I was transferred to a ‘rehab’ unit (but instead of it being a ward, everyone had their own bungalow, and the staff were in one 24/7) in my local psychiatric hospital. I’m glad that happened because I think it would have been a huge shock to the system to have gone from having people around me all the time to being in my own home in the community. The rehab unit was like a step in between – which was the entire point of it, I guess!

Whilst I was in the unit, I had an assessment with Richmond Fellowship – a charity who provide a million and one different services – including employment support, supported housing, and floating community support! – to support people with mental health problems. I remember being asked what I felt I needed from them; like, how many support workers I would like to have, how often I wanted to see them, how long I wanted my support sessions to be, how long I thought I would need them… So, from Day One, Richmond Fellowship involved me in every aspect of my care and so, when I was finally discharged on December 1st, 2014, I moved into my own home and began having my support sessions with them.

Over the following ten years, despite my support workers from Richmond Fellowship changing a few times – understandable considering the length of time – I haven’t had a single problem (pretty impressive considering the number of complaints I’ve needed to make with another service in a much shorter period of time!) with neither the workers nor the organisation in general. They not only saved my life literally a handful of times in calling ambulances, but they also saved it through other, more subtle means too like supporting my blogging and helping me do things that got me out the house and attending therapy appointments etc. I think that the largest, most amazing, and lifesaving quality they have illustrated though, is that when they’ve saved my life, they’ve never given me reason to feel resentful toward them. There have been so many times where services like my local Crisis Team, have stepped in to save my life but afterwards, they’ve left me feeling a lot of hate toward them because they’ve then treated me poorly or made decisions that haven’t been helpful or at all beneficial for me. Richmond Fellowship were never like that.

Fast forward to more recently I was in an online meeting for the Working Together Committee (a group of a couple of service users and all the most senior staff in Richmond Fellowship) when it was announced that it would be our penultimate meeting because of the merger. And I remember saying “hang on a minute, what?!” And it turned out that there had been plans underway for a fair amount of time to merge Richmond Fellowship with Humankind (a charity offering help and support to people with addiction) and create one large organisation. I was initially really nervous because I always thought that Richmond Fellowship were good with communicating things to service users and actually, just with communication in general(!), so I immediately thought that this lack of information was a sign that Humankind had already had a bad influence!

Fortunately, though, at that meeting; I asked, “how can I still be involved in helping develop the service and give my insight as a service user?” and before I knew it, I was receiving email after email from Humankind staff – mostly the entirety of the wonderful and lovely Communications and Marketing department – full of opportunities to be involved in the merger. So, over the following months – until the end of September – I attended numerous meetings, and a large number of them were regarding branding. I absolutely loved and admired how much thought went into this area; an area which a lot of people would likely argue isn’t too important or who would say is more of a behind-the-scenes kind of topic/element that isn’t worthy of so much thought, time, and effort. I actually learnt so much from these meetings and this work with the Comms and Marketing team; things that have actually proven so super helpful in the creation and development of Shake My Hand.

The meetings and involvement opportunities helped me to grow the upmost respect and appreciation for Humankind deciding to merge with Richmond Fellowship – it was a complete contradiction and turnaround from all those initial nerves and anxiety with the belief that they would be detrimental in some way. I actually felt quite bad for thinking those things because it was almost as though I’d judged them before I knew them – something which I’d like to think is definitely not a quality of mine – but they made me feel better in their recognition that the early days hadn’t been done right. The announcement and the way the announcement came about wasn’t the way they’d ideally wanted service users to find out about it. I mean, for a while after I found out, it still wasn’t widely announced and so many service users were just spreading/sharing rumours and gossip; and half of it was so far from the truth but I couldn’t correct a lot of it because it wasn’t officially announced so I didn’t want to breach confidentiality and trust or anything like that.

Putting all that thought and effort into the branding and other communications and marketing elements to the new organisation, made the launch of the new charity with its name of ‘Waythrough,’ feel so much more rewarding and exciting! And the opportunities I was given around the launch events made all that hard work in the run-up really worthwhile because I was asked to give three speeches (though I only managed to do two) with the first being the Internal Launch where over 900 staff signed in and the second being an in-person event in Durham which meant being put up in a hotel there overnight! I had the Durham speech filmed so you can actually watch/listen to the entire thing below…

When I created Shake My Hand in June, it almost felt natural and automatic to approach Waythrough with the ask of them endorsing the Campaign with some social media content and other methods of support which will be announced etc soon! I think that the two hardest parts to making this approach, was creating all the necessary documents (I had already done a Campaign Strategy, but it seemed relevant to also have a Brand Strategy and a Marketing Strategy!) and finding the right/best person/people to send everything to! In the end, I thoroughly enjoyed putting the two additional Strategies together and it took about five people who proved to be relevant and had the different, required authorities to make the decision to endorse. But, we got there in the end and after our Graphic Designer (who you can read about on our Meet The Team page) put together two ‘We Support…’ graphics for organisations and well-known, relevant social media pages/accounts to use to express their support of the Campaign, Waythrough agreed to endorse it and promptly posted the graphics on their three social media accounts:

Direct Link To The Instagram Post: Waythrough (@waythrough_uk) • Instagram photos and videos

Direct Link To The Tweet: Waythrough on X: "We are proud to share that our volunteer Aimee, is running an inspiring campaign, which aims to encourage people who have been sexually abused to report their experience to the police. 💗 Learn more about @ShakeMyHandUK on their website. ⬇️ https://t.co/7LaacWZMqA https://t.co/wnJRiOVbHE" / X

Direct Link To The Facebook Post: (2) Facebook

I think that it’s also really worth saying that aside from the impact and influence Waythrough have had on my personal mental health journey and recovery, another reason to seek endorsement from the charity is the facts around the relationship between survivors of rape and abuse and mental illness:


So, a huge thank you to Waythrough for being our very first organisational endorsement – it’s an absolute honour and a pleasure to have your support and respect and everyone at Shake My Hand are sincerely looking forward to our future, very exciting, plans together!

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