Daniel Dalton’s message for our workforce
It is fantastically exciting that we able to work together with other people to make mental health and mental wellbeing right at the middle of what everyone is doing in Suffolk and North East Essex.
The really important thing is that people get the help when they need it as soon as possible and that means we need to have mental health awareness and mental health support everywhere that people are getting their care and treatment. And it also means we need to walk side by side with all the other people who are providing care in the system and that means people in social care, housing, primary care, our charity partners, and other health care settings.
And, I think what that means for us is that staff who really want to care and want to spend their time with the people who use our services can do that instead of spending time doing complicated and pointless paperwork, tasks, tied down in thinking about who fits in our services and who doesn’t and getting the help and care to people too late when they have already become so seriously ill that they can’t work with us as well as they would do if we were there where they live and in the places where they normally access their care.
There is nothing more important than making sure we are in the communities where people are living, because that way those communities can become healthier and we can really make a difference to the way people live their lives.
If I gave you an example of what it might be like; instead of having to come to your GP and then your GP sending a referral through to a mental health team where you might sit on waiting list for a long time only to see someone who thinks maybe they are not the right person to help you and sending you back to your GP disappointed. Instead what could happen is you could see someone at the place where you come to your GP so we wouldn’t have to have people waiting to see professionals. But instead they would be able to get the right kind of care and support from an expert, like you, right in the place where they normally make all their contacts, and perhaps not even having to travel from place to place in order to see those experts.
So we will not have to deal with waiting lists or the pressure of managers asking us to keep those waiting lists down or to keep people away from care and treatment, but instead we would be making our services available to the people who need it when they ask for it.
I can’t imagine there could be anything better than knowing you come to work in order to care and treat people rather than in order to work on a waiting list or a pressure that is building up on your shoulders.
You can find more information on the #averydifferentconversation workforce page.
