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Training Fund | Creating a Psychologically Informed Environment

Training Fund | Creating a Psychologically Informed Environment

Training Fund | Creating a Psychologically Informed Environment

Thursday, April 18, 2024


Operations Manager, Rebecca, talks about the profound impact PIE training, made possible by the Training Fund, has had on her team’s own sense of professional wellbeing and satisfaction, as well as on the delivery of their day-to-day client services.  

Adullam Housing in Denbighshire, North Wales, provides quality housing and community support plans for people working to build stable lives. As well as prioritising the safety and security of residents, the Adullam team helps their clients to better integrate with the community and build self-esteem, confidence, and life-skills that will help them thrive when the time comes to move on from the service. The ready steady cook community garden-to-kitchen initiative, for example, is a favourite of residents and staff alike!

The Need

Adullam supports clients across all levels of need. This means their staff must have a really broad understanding of the complex needs they could be supporting very vulnerable clients with at any given time. Further to the existing programme of training around safeguarding, incident management, trauma informed care etc, Operations Manager, Rebecca Atherton, recognised a growing need to offer staff more guidance around creating Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) in their practices.

For Rebecca, developing a PIE approach is as important for staff wellbeing, stress levels, job satisfaction, and retention, as it is for welcoming and supporting the clients, who the team is then so much more emotionally equipped to serve. Creating a better understanding of why clients sometimes struggle to engage with both the support and the community, opens the door to new ways of working with them towards a safe and productive environment, that is beneficial to staff and service users alike.

The Training

With the help of Homeless Link, Rebecca was able to source training that stressed PIE as a holistic way of working, that prioritises mindfulness of clients’ unique circumstances at all engagement stages, rather than presenting it as a box-ticking exercise. But after relentless cutbacks, being able to fund this essential training didn’t seem possible – until they heard about the existence of St Martin's Charity's Training Fund during the 2023 Frontline Network Conference.

“It was really straightforward and painless to apply. I was very surprised at how quick it was. I’m so glad we did it; it’s been invaluable. Applying for training is often so much work and I was expecting to have to jump through hurdle after hurdle. But with the Training Fund, I answered the basic Why? What? How Much? questions, and the money was paid. Which meant the training could be delivered to staff really quickly, and so our clients started benefitting from it really quickly as well. Thank you for making the training possible - it’s spurred us on a new journey of being a more PIE-informed service.”

The in-person, full-day training workshop was broken into interactive modules that gave the team lots of time and space to ask questions and share reflections, removed from hectic day-to-day delivery. Focussing on practical ways that you can implement a PIE approach into daily practices, the training took the group through various materials, exercises and case studies, stressing how adopting and working on the techniques is an ongoing process that requires regular reflection and re-evaluation.

“It’s our starting point of a journey and it really did open our eyes up to quite a few things and give direction of where we want to head. We can't do it all overnight, but it's given us a framework – each month we're looking at something else to evolve or progress so that it keeps it on the agenda. Because PIE isn’t just a piece of training you do and then put your notes in a drawer. It's something we want to continue developing within the team, as well as further afield hopefully. As awareness builds and more people are starting to take notice of it, hopefully it can spread to other departments, organisations, local authorities, even the Welsh government and beyond, until we're all ultimately working in the same way.”

The Impact

One really affirming, and often overlooked, training takeaway was the reassurance of how many things that are central to PIE that the team already does instinctively. Using the Pizazz self-assessment framework, they have been able to track their progress as they begin weaving the practical suggestions and recommendations developed on the day into their work in tangible, simple, but really high-impact ways.

Starting with quick, environmental wins, like decluttering the notice board – replacing a bombardment of jostling flyers with colourful, focussed, and regularly updated key information – that has resulted in a marked uptick in client engagement. The team has also transformed its main client meeting room from stark and formal, to a warmly lit and softly furnished space, complete with plants, tea and coffee provisions, and a flat-screen TV. The latter has been central to the newly instigated ‘fortnight championship’ that encourages clients to socialise over video games.

The feedback on the new space has been resoundingly positive from clients who have said how much more comfortable they feel discussing their situations in the warmer environment. Their support staff agree and have also found it a calmer space in which to engage productively with their own line managers, expressing surprise at how much the aesthetics of a room can change mood and thought processing.

“Crucially, staff report more patience when working with clients who present with anger and frustration as they now understand more around trigger responses, the amygdala, ACE’s impact on client behaviours and the ability to regulate emotions. One staff member has reflected that this has increased her empathic response by understanding that aggression is not aimed at her personally, but more of a survival response learnt from ACE’s impact. Staff are now better able to understand challenging behaviours and not take them personally, whilst helping clients understand their reactions and talking them through when it is safe and appropriate to do so. This ultimately helps clients with self-reflection and their ability to identify their own trigger responses.”

Having found supervision amongst her team to be already strengthened by what they learnt from the PIE training, Rebecca is looking forward to the next step in Adullam Housing’s PIE journey – implementing group clinical supervision. This will be a chance for staff to unpick some complex cases, discuss how to keep working with individuals when they’re not sure what else to try, and to understand signs of their own burnout and how to protect themselves.

 

If you have, or your team has, a training need that you are struggling to pay for

APPLY TO OUR TRAINING FUND

and we will do all that we can to help.

 

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