"The impact my Employment Specialist has had on my life"

For a large part of my adult life, even with a diagnosis of a chronic mental health condition I did not have much support beyond friends and family. I had an excellent Psychiatrist but in the many months between appointments I was not receiving help and support that I needed to stay well, be supported at work, to have someone to speak to, to have someone that would help me to reach my potential whilst being aware of the intricacies of complex mental health.

And then Elaine came along. She is friendly, kind, motivating, creative in her approach, committed and she really understands me and my condition and challenges. She also quickly established strong collaborating with my Community Psychiatric Nurse (who I also met frequently). Their strong communication and joint working meant they were both aware of what was going on for me, any recent updates, general mental health – so I never needed to repeat myself and the way they worked together was amazing. They were the dynamic duo!

Through regular meetings with Elaine I was able to discover a whole new perspective on what I was really capable of within my career, how to get that across in a CV and better ways to prepare for an interview. Living with a chronic mental health condition is very difficult and times you really doubt your potential and things can get very upsetting but with someone like Elaine always hyping you up, always reminding you of all the good things you’ve done, what you’re capable of, why an organisation would want to hire you etc – it’s impossible for that not to have an immediate (and lasting) impact on the way you view yourself and your confidence levels.

So, due to Elaine's continuing support and development - a month ago, I started my dream job working in mental health and I couldn’t be happier. I still have a check-in meeting with Elaine every fortnight and she’s supporting me in my transition into this new job which has also been great. If it wasn’t for people like Elaine doing what they do, many of us with mental health conditions would struggle to work, and many others would be working but in very challenging scenarios without support which has a huge impact on general wellbeing.

Its been very difficult to put into words everything that Elaine has done for me and helped me with. But if I had to put it into one word, I’d say 'transformative', and I’ll be forever thankful that I was fortunate enough to be allocated to her for support in the workplace.