Dear colleagues,
Emma and I receive lots of resources on well-being and mental health, most of which we add to our well-being website so that you can access them. But I thought I’d share with you some resources that we’ve received lately that might be useful to you, with particular reference to Mental Health Awareness Week.
Supporting colleagues’ well-being resource
This resource was developed by Bristol Dementia Wellbeing Service, Devon Partnership NHS Trust and was shared by Fran Ashby (thanks Fran). Although designed for care home colleagues, a good proportion of it is relevant to us all, whatever our roles.
Here’s a snippet from the above resource which I found particularly relatable. There’s also an excellent visual aid included to help your well-being and some mindfulness techniques towards the end of the document.
Care professionals app
You may be aware that there is a new dedicated app for the adult social care workforce in England to support care workers throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
- Care workers get access to guidance, learning resources, discounts and other support all in one place
- Support will be offered on mental health and wellbeing through toolkits and resources
- The Care Workforce app will unite 1.5 million care workers across more than 18,000 care providers
The app is available to download from on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, as well as being accessible online at:
https://workforce.adultsocialcare.uk
Just some of the information you’ll find in the app are:
- Latest Updates and Advice (COVID-19)
- Mental Health, Well-Being and Development
- Offers and Discounts
- Positive Stories
Mindfulness
Our in-house mindfulness expert, Sarah Nearney, sent us some resources which you may find helpful. This website provides some free mindfulness resources for you to access in your own time: http://www.freemindfulness.org/download
And this resource has been running daily mindfulness sessions with various teachers, and also online retreats for 3-5 days: www.gaiahouse.co.uk, which are open to everyone.
We have a couple of copies of the book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World in our well-being library available to loan, just let me know and I’ll arrange to have a copy sent to you.
A note of kindness
And as the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week is kindness, I wanted to remind you of this lovely letter to us all from Zoe Cornock. It’s about not being hard on yourself for not exercising – which I feel you could relate to lots of things at the moment that you tell yourself you should be doing.
Sent with a hug,
Naomi