Staying Effective: Team working with violence, suicide & self harm

This day has been designed in response to the increasing pressure frontline teams experience when working with people who present with high risks. The day will focus on the tensions that impact staff most: providing care whilst managing risk; doing complex work but not having time to think and surviving the emotional impact of difficult relationships. Participants will be introduced to evidence based and psychologically informed models for understanding the impact high risk work can have on teams and organisations – and they will learn skills and structures for their practice.

The day will combine teaching, discussion and workshops. The aim of the training is to enable staff to bring their skills to the fore, develop them, and use them to maintain safe, positive and enabling relationships with the people they are trying to help, and each other, often against the odds. This can enhance safety and enable progress.

The day is designed for front line staff and mangers from across the criminal justice, voluntary and mental health sectors.

Participants will leave with:

• Structures and skills for maintaining team health in the face of difficult work
• Skills to make sense of anxiety, tension and things ‘going wrong’
• Confidence in being able to collaborate with colleagues and service users
• Techniques to identify and enhance the good practice that gets forgotten

The day will be facilitated by Keir Harding and Eleanor Fellowes. Both have significant experience within mental health and criminal justice services, supporting high risk individuals and the teams working with them.

For further information please get in touch via contact@beamconsultancy.co.uk or visit our website.

A light lunch will be provided with refreshments served throughout the day. The venue is located within walking distance of Kings Cross Station and was chosen as its income supports initiatives to improve the lives of local young people.

Facilitators

Keir Harding - Keir has worked in mental health in the NHS for over 15 years. This includes 8 years in specialist Personality Disorder Services where he led teams to win an NHS Wales award (2010) and be the only mental health team shortlisted in 2016.

Keir's MSc involved studying how organisations work effectively with the difficulties often labelled as personality disorder. His research project examines how a team he was part of was able to save several million pounds from their Continuing Health Care budget by effectively managing some of the anxieties within the organisation.

Keir has developed a number of Day Therapeutic Communities, is a Dialectical Behaviour Therapist and Occupational Therapist. He is experienced in consulting to organisations and individuals around complex mental health problems and has trained hundreds of NHS, Criminal Justice and 3rd Sector staff in this area.

Keir has published literature in this area, contributed to Guardian and Independent articles, led symposiums at national conferences and writes a successful blog on the issues associated with Mental Health and Personality Disorder.

Keir founded Beam as he recognised that organisations often struggle with those who feel chronically suicidal and use potentially lethal self harm. He wanted to improve the experience of service users by helping organisations work more effectively and providing a realistic community option when it seems that enforced residential care is the only way forward.

Eleanor Fellowes - Eleanor has extensive experience in the criminal justice system, working as both a frontline probation officer and manager in community and prison settings. She has served on the Editorial Board of the Probation Journal and published a number of articles. Her research around the tensions between care and control in the work probation officers undertake was published last year. Since leaving the probation service Eleanor has been teaching on the Personality Disorder Knowledge and Understanding Framework, from awareness to post-graduate level. She has also undertaken work as a consultant for West London Mental Health Trust and the Portman Clinic and is an Honorary Psychotherapist at Camden & Islington NHS Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Service. She is a candidate at the Institute of Psychoanalysis.