“Ultimately, in order to keep doing our jobs and doing them well, we all need to look after ourselves and feel supported to do this.”

Psychologists Roisin and Ruth are each based (and job share) at Edinburgh’s Access Place.

The Access Place is the first set-up of its kind in Scotland. Located in Edinburgh’s old town, the building brings together an innovative, fully integrated service to support the needs of Edinburgh’s most vulnerable homeless population. As psychologists, both Roisin and Ruth are on site, working directly with teams to support them in their jobs.

Here they share more about their overall role and the current integral part they are playing in nurturing staff wellbeing – taking a trauma informed approach to supporting colleagues who have highly challenging jobs championing those in Edinburgh who have the most challenging of lives.

Roisin comments, “Particularly following the last two years, many staff are burnt out and stressed. The impact on them during the pandemic, and the fact that they continue to work in highly challenging circumstances to support the city’s most vulnerable, have taken a toll.

“This is a natural reaction. We each remind people of that. No-one is broken – it’s understandable that people feel this way given the situations they have been working with throughout the pandemic. This is why a big part of our job is about giving colleagues time within a safe space to offload and be supported themselves.”

“When we started earlier this year (and even now) we were always enquiring with colleagues to find out ‘What do you need?’ and ‘What would you like?’ in order to enable the right support. Everyone is different and we are flexible in helping people find the safe space that works best for them. Some colleagues prefer to come together as a group. For some, one to one consultations are better.”

“In our reflective practice groups, we all work together. These groups are underpinned by the principles of trauma-informed practice: safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration and empowerment. Everyone is welcome and people who attend can bring anything work related. Sometimes it is about a challenging experience. Sometimes it’s the impact felt around the challenge of systems. It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s about creating a safe and non-judgemental space within which people can speak up about what’s difficult without being shamed or criticised for doing so. ?It’s a shared space that recognises and acknowledges the stresses and complex range of feelings that can come with managing high levels of need, risk, and ultimately uncertainty in our day-to-day job.

“The groups also very much create a space where we are seeing colleagues support and learn from one another, share skills, knowledge and learning, and do so with compassion”.

In addition, Ruth runs a mindfulness group. She says, “It’s a lovely space to come along and be supported through a structured practice that fundamentally is ‘to just be present’. People here have incredibly challenging and busy jobs. Sometimes the work feels like it is never ending, and naturally it’s a highly emotive context. So group mindfulness is about learning to develop a non-judgemental attitude towards our experiences in the hope of facilitating increased self-compassion. Building your own personal buffer space and resilience. When we begin to notice and can step back from things, we can give ourselves the space to think, being able to move from automatically reacting to challenges. ??This has benefits for ourselves and the service. Hopefully it will help us step away from a pattern of firefighting, which is something that has been so prominent over the last few years.”

Roisin adds, “We also offer one-to-one consultation spaces to support people with the demands of this type of work. Groups are not for everyone and it is important that there is choice in the supports available. Some people who come to a one-to-one session will come to chat and work through particular difficulties they are experiencing. For instance, in the way they are working with someone. Getting the space to chat, reflect and focus on the complexities of their work, they often walk away with a different perspective.”

Ruth adds, “It’s early days but we’re very encouraged with the level of engagement colleagues are having with the wellbeing support we’ve put in place so far. Senior leaders in the Access Place very much see the need to have meaningful and ‘right fit’ wellbeing support as part of people’s employment experience. Ultimately, in order to keep doing your job and doing it well, you need to look after yourself. So services like the Access Place where the jobs are highly rewarding but deeply challenging, wellbeing support needs to be well designed to be meaningful and valuable. This principle is no different for any service. For wellbeing to be meaningfully supported, the right support needs to be part of the service infrastructure if we are to be successful in sustaining commitment to staff wellbeing.”

Both Roisin and Ruth’s job share (1 post) is funded for two years thanks to The Edinburgh Drug and Alcohol Partnership.

This funding recognises and supports Trauma Informed practice at a workforce level within a Trauma Informed service. There are also resources about Trauma Informed care and the recently developed Trauma informed toolkit, on the Scottish Government website