Helen’s blog – part 1

Welcome to my blog. My name is Helen; I’m a Peer support worker at the Insight Team.

So, you may have a couple of questions from my introduction – “What is Peer support” and who are “the Insight Team”. The Insight Team work with people who are experiencing the early stages of psychosis or who are at risk of developing this. Psychosis is a medical umbrella term for what we tend to call unusual experiences – such as visions and voices.

Visions and voices are something I’ve experienced since high school. As a Peer support worker it’s these experiences that can help develop trust and connections with the people the Insight Team supports.

Although it can be very difficult to feel hope when you are in a bad place, I’ve always thought it’s so important to encourage belief in recovery – people who are struggling can and do get through it and get back to feeling like themselves. At the Insight Team we work with people for up to 3 years, supporting their recovery – but when people move on from our service, it can cause a lot of worry and questions around how they will mange their wellbeing, for both the person who has been supported by the Insight Team and their loved ones. It can feel like a loss.

This is where the idea for a booklet, co-produced with the people who use our service and their carers, came from. Something tangible which people can use to record their achievements and think about how they can promote their own wellbeing. We also used my journey through psychosis to develop the booklet – I think it’s so important that people feel able, and are empowered, to be at the centre of their own recovery. After all nobody quite knows you, like you. The input from people under the Insight Team and their loved ones was invaluable in developing the booklet – if it is going to support people as they move on from Insight, those same people need to be at the heart of the booklet.

Marking endings can be empowering and whilst the booklet, which we decided to call My Looking Forwards booklet, is ultimately used to mark the end of a persons care under the Insight Team, this ending also signifies a new beginning – the person looking to their future, with hope and knowing where to turn for support if it’s ever needed. Focusing on recovery is a big part of what we do at The Insight Team. We’ve also been working with the people under the service and their loved ones, who would like to record their recovery stories on film to inspire hope in recovery. Updates coming soon… watch this space!

You can read the booklet here – it’s useful for anyone coming to the end of something and beginning something new.