Project5, a new, not for profit community interest initiative, has launched to offer any NHS employee affected by the impact of COVID-19 free coaching and mental health support.
The brainchild of Devon-based Clinical Psychologist, Dr Craig Newman, Project5 will give NHS staff access to one-to-one support sessions with either accredited clinical psychologists, mental health experts or coaches, via an online booking system.
Dr Newman says: "Whilst the NHS has its own mental health response plan for staff, we hope that Project5 will free capacity and enable mental health teams to return to patient work as many have been deployed to support frontline colleagues."
This service meets the demands as described by Dr Shahzaib Ahmad, a Junior Doctor in Intensive Care, based in a Surrey hospital, when he talked to Channel 4 News on April 13 about the pressures of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Ahmad said: "Whilst the job has become physically more demanding, emotionally it's been much, much harder … Lots of us have had moments of just random emotional release, like crying because it does take a toll on all of us.”
Dr Craig Newman explains: "I wanted to create a free service for everybody who works in the NHS so anyone who feels that they need wellbeing support can access the help they need. There has been the most fantastic and heart-warming response from the mental health community, coaching and wellbeing groups all offering their services for free to support the NHS staff."
To date there are over 4,000 registered specialists who have volunteered their time to help with this initiative, which means Project5 can potentially offer the NHS workforce over 80,000 free sessions per month. This figure is rising all the time.
Project5's model is unique in the sense that it is not just a crisis response model but, by the very nature of the model’s learning-potential and reapplication of knowledge set-up, it will soon become a recovery model and therefore highly sustainable. It will be able to support the psychological wellbeing of the NHS workforce and others in caring professions beyond the immediate crisis period which we are now in.
Project5 only accepts volunteers with appropriate credentials and professionally registered professionals. Volunteers come from a range of backgrounds including clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, nurses and more.
There are clear training guidelines for all volunteers covering how to work with NHS staff, so they are up to date on identifying and handling mild or acute crisis such as self-harm or suicidal tendencies.
The volunteers are supported by supervisors and an experienced clinical psychological team that gathers evidence to understand what methods are working and what needs to be improved. Based on this, adaptations can be made quickly.
The clinical team then rapidly updates the training material and disseminates the new evidence-based information. This is immediately implemented on the front line. It is this method that allows the system to be sustainable, as it can rapidly respond and implement the changes according to the changing needs of the end users.
There is a high level of governance, to provide reassurance to people using Project5 - they know they're speaking with credible, highly trained support volunteers.
"There is always the expectation that we know how to support the psychological needs of our NHS, but the truth is, this pandemic is unlike anything we have seen before," says Dr Newman. "People talk about this being like a war, but unlike soldiers, key workers and carers are going home every night, anxious that they could potentially be infecting their loved ones. Being able to decompress and making the psychological transition between work-life and home-life has never been so stark."
Free mental wellbeing support service is the first of many planned initiatives from the Project5 team. As time passes and as NHS teams and carers are subjected to the ongoing physical and emotional challenges of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that further projects to support various mental health needs will emerge over the coming months, both nationally and locally. To support this, a fundraising campaign has been launched, called #HighFiveOurCarers designed to give the public an opportunity to raise money to support this initial project and any future mental health initiatives funded by Project5.
NHS workers who would like to use this service and wellbeing specialists who would like to volunteer are invited to go to the website where they can log on.
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