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 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!