Supporting rail staff to manage remote contacts with vulnerable people Samaritans have just launched a guidance document I wrote for them earlier this year. The document is for people working on customer services or social media platforms at train operating companies across the UK. It provides support and guidance to help them support and signpost…
My book on how to support someone after a miscarriage, ectopic or molar pregnancy has been published. It has information on miscarriage, ectopic and molar pregnancies, the possible physical and emotional impacts and other related issues. It explores how to talk about them, practical matters, providing ongoing support and helping someone through pregnancy after loss….
The Miscarriage Association has recently published a hub of information and support resources for employees, employers, managers, colleagues and HR staff. After a year spent researching, writing and creating the information, case studies and films, it’s fantastic to see them live. Ironically, I suffered a missed miscarriage during this time. Needless to say the Miscarriage…
1915 In 1915, Margaret Llewelyn Davies edited and published ‘Maternity – Letters From Working Women’. This moving collection of letters from members of the Women’s Co-operative Guild details their experiences of pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, stillbirth, infant death and parenting. At the end of every letter was listed the family salary and the number of miscarriages,…
I’m pleased to report that my rewrite of the Supporting someone you know leaflet from the Miscarriage Association is online and in print now. We identified the need to update this resource as part of the pregnancy loss and mental health project – but obviously its application is much wider. We didn’t do any resource-specific…
I have just finished researching and developing a series of resources around pregnancy loss and mental health for the Miscarriage Association. Research I did extensive desk research and conducted a survey of the Miscarriage Associations supporters and stakeholders. In one week we received 1716 responses from people who self-identified as having had mental health problems…
The WRISK project is a collaboration between the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (bpas) and Heather Trickey at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. They are aiming to draw on women’s experiences to understand and improve the development and communication of risk messages in pregnancy. They asked me to blog about my experience of…
In 2013 I ran a training session for Action on Postpartum Psychosis on giving peer support online as part of their award-winning peer support programme. I’ve been working with them ever since. I’ve done a further five training sessions, including one when heavily pregnant and another four months after Oaklan was born. Now my maternity leave…
Last week Oaklan and I went on an adventure to London for the launch of the latest version of Mind’s flagship booklet ‘Understanding mental health problems’. I wrote this when I was pregnant and it was great to see it finally published. It’s the first title to be published in the new full colour format –…
I’m really chuffed to be able to share that both Mind and the Miscarriage Association received awards at the British Medical Association Patient Information Awards 2017 for information and that I researched and wrote. The awards aim to ‘encourage excellence in the production and dissemination of accessible, well-designed and clinically balanced patient information’. They look for…
Last year, James Withney of The Recovery Letters emailed to see if I would be interested in contributing a letter to the published anthology. The Recovery Letters are addressed to people experiencing depression. They share experiences and give friendship and hope for recovery. I’ve always believed in letters and writing as a way through difficult…
I don’t usually blog about individual Mind booklets and online resources I write or update (you can see the list here). But my most recently completed product is pretty close to my heart. It’s called Understanding eating problems. Changes and updates I’ve tried to emphasise that you can find eating problems incredibly difficult to live…
Learning materials for health professionals I was really chuffed to hear that the Miscarriage Association learning materials for health professionals were given a 5* review in the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists’ journal The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). I did a lot of work on these resources and it’s brilliant to get such positive…
I was chuffed to see the blog I did for Mind on managing mental health in a relationship was in Mind’s top 10 most read blogs of 2016.