Free Mental Health Awareness Course Sheds Light

Friday 31st May we hosted a free course to help shed some light on mental health which covered subjects such as the current legislation around mental health in the UK. “The course was free as we wanted to give support to as many people as possible, especially for carers/relatives of someone experiencing mental health or have mental health concerns. ” Said Director of PA and PSHCE Jo. “We have wanted to do something like this for some time as we felt it was needed and would help so many. We only had to have a quick look through some of the feedback forms to know we had done something right with comments such as
“outstanding course”, “your passion for working with people shines through”, “inspirational” and “ has made me reflect on my own practice” .”

For more information regarding up coming courses, how to engage with us as a client or as a potential PA for our clients please feel free to contact us by clicking here.

From Leicester to the Rugby World

The kind act of the Castle Donington RUFC Diamonds has seen us make it in to the Rugby World magazine. At the start of the month the Diamonds were kind enough to donate 6 carrier bags of food to our clients from their annual tour. The news of their efforts was impressive enough to stand out to the editors of the Rugby World Magazine and we would like to thank the girls for being so amazing.

Rugby girls are real Diamonds.

We are one of the proud sponsors of Castle Donington RUFC’s girl’s section, the Diamonds, and today they showed us yet another reason why we are so proud. The girls have just returned from their annual end of season tour, this time to Wales, and with all of the unopened food purchased for their packed lunches and breakfast etc they have donated it to our clients.

Mini and Junior Chair Nick said “We always buy too much food as we don’t want our girls to go hungry but this year we wanted to do something nice instead of just handing it out to anyone within the rugby club who wanted it. With the kindness shown by BTC we felt that it was only right to repay the kindness.”

Breaking The Cycle have watched the group spring up in September 2017 and have enjoyed watching their success in growth and in getting to the area semi final. We would like to thank the club for their kindness and wish them good luck for next season.

BTC proudly sponsors Castle Donington RUFC Diamonds.

Making a Connection

It has been a difficult week for me as a PA, one of my clients has gone from being vulnerable to being to being mentally ill. The work that I have been able to do with the client has allowed me to chip away and find out what is really going on with them.

The client is now getting additional support but it isn’t easy seeing them in a hospital. I am so glad that the local authority has agreed to allow me to support my client, we have made a connection, one that they have not made with others before me. This was pointed out to me when I visited them today and the Doctor said “So your the PA, your client has spoken lots about you. They really like you.”

A win is different for everyone, for me making a connection with someone who needs a friend is a huge win for me.

PA Training with relaxation and defense

Today our PAs enjoyed the opportunity to relax, share ideas, improve their knowledge around neurological and psychosis and learn how to defend themselves if the there ever came a need to do so.

The session started with a lesson in wellness yoga to help with calming yourself down and becoming more aware of your body and emotions. The PAs found the whole experience very enjoyable, even those a little skeptical at the start. They were then given the opportunity to explore the differences between neurological and psychosis to allow them to provide a better level of empathy and understanding to our clients who live with these conditions.

The afternoon offered a more active sessions as the basics of protection and defense was taught to our PAs. We were able offer an insight and increase the confidence of our PAs if they were ever to be placed in that kind of scenario.

We would like to thank those who took part and for those who took the sessions, it is important to use to give these tools to those who work so hard to offer our clients an amazing service.

PSHE reform welcomed by BTC

The Department for Education has today launched statutory guidance to accompany introduction of compulsory health education, relationships education and relationships and sex education (RSE) in 2020.

Breaking the Cycle have provided local schools with PSHE for a number of years and welcomes the new change. We feel that providing our children with a range of skills such as relationship building, online awareness and how to protect themselves is a key tool in this day and age.

The government announced compulsory health education last year along with relationships education in all primary schools and ‘relationships and sex education’ (RSE) in all secondary schools. The new guidance has been updated to reflect consultation on draft guidance late last year, and covers a range of issues relating to physical and mental health, wellbeing, safeguarding and healthy relationships.

PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education is the vehicle through which schools deliver health, relationships and RSE education on the curriculum. Schools are now encouraged to begin updating their PSHE provision in order to be ready for 2020.

PSHE education also covers economic wellbeing and careers. With the emergence of issues such as online gambling and the urgent need to better-prepare young people for the world of work, the PSHE Association – the national body for PSHE – stresses the importance of covering PSHE in its entirety, even though these aspects are not yet compulsory.

For more information from the PSHE Association’s website please click here.

For more information on our PSHE provision please click here.

Self Management

Today has been a great day for me as a PA as I’ve seen one of my clients show amazing determination and self management. Whenever I take time off, be that over Christmas when the company has a shut down period or when I go away on a holiday I worry about my clients. So many of them rely on the routine that I provide and the stability of having someone able to prompt them to make good decisions or someone that they can bounce their ideas off of to allow them to judge what is a good decision.

I have recently come back from some time off to find one of my clients had decided to have some time off from their medication, something that lead the CPN, the doctors and myself to become worried about. There was lots of discussions about the possibility to readmit them to hospital, which would have been a blow to both them and myself as they had come so far.

However we are a humanistic company and work hard to empower and enable the client, and through some guidance and my desire to go above and beyond I was over joyed to see an increase in their medication consumption. It was, at first, a day here and a day there of morning or evening medication being taken but suddenly this became more consistent. Then they started to take both morning and evening and this week they have been able to, on their own, control their medication correctly.

This for some may seem over the top but for someone with extreme mental health this has been an amazing step back on track, something that makes me proud to be in this job.