See Me Champion Shona Craig kindly extended an invitation to See Me staff and Community Champions to visit the Personnel Recovery Centre in Gilmerton where she has created a wellbeing room, also known as the chill out room, for staff and residents of the centre. The Personnel Recovery Centre is a recovery unit for wounded, injured or sick soldiers, the majority of whom are experiencing mental health issues.
Community Champions, Suzanne, Bridget, Wendy and See Me staff Clare and me (Maeve) were joined by Karla from Mental Health Foundation on 28th November to have a tour of the centre, and see the room Shona has created as part of her efforts to challenge mental health stigma and discrimination in the workplace.
Captain D.D. Johnston gave us a warm welcome to the centre and an interesting presentation about the work they do. He explained that the soldiers complete Individual Recovery Plans looking at all aspects of their life and various training programmes designed to help with transitioning to civilian life (if the individual is not returning to the military) including employability, manual handling and first aid.
Shona works at the centre and was able to create the room with a £800 grant from the Welfare Fund (Welfare Funds are disbursed by the Army Welfare Grants Committee). She deliberately chose to use a room a few minutes walk apart from the main part of the centre to encourage people to take a few minutes to detatch themselves from whatever they are doing.
We were all impressed by how calm it felt when we entered the room.
The lights are kept low and a screen on one wall can be set to show relaxing images of a flickering fireplace or nature scene. Shona has commissioned a local artist to create a beautiful forest mural across one wall of the room. The armchairs are covered with velvet throws and there are cushions along the floor. Information about mindfulness and mental wellbeing is laid out along one wall, and adult colouring books with pens are stacked on a coffee table.
As a visitor to the centre it is easy to see the impact in terms of tackling stigma within the workplace of setting up a room like this — even for people who do not choose to use it; simply by creating this type of space, an employer is affirming a commitment to the emotional wellbeing of their staff.
Thank you to Shona for a great visit — and a very tasty lunch!! I hope more employers will follow this example in the future.
