Unlocking confidential mental health and wellbeing support for anyone working in health and social care in Gloucestershire.
Call us free on 0300 421 7500
Our phone lines are open:
9.00am to 4.30pm, Monday – Thursday
9.00am to 12.00pm, Friday
About
What is The Wellbeing Line?
The Wellbeing Line is the Gloucestershire Staff Mental Health and Wellbeing Hub, offering confidential mental health and wellbeing support to anyone working in health and social care in Gloucestershire.
The service is available to all staff, no matter your role. It is completely independent of your employer, and nothing is written in your personal records.
Our team is experienced in understanding mental health and provides a confidential “safe space” for people to talk about their mental health and wellbeing.
Mission and Vision
Mission
To support collaboration across the One Gloucestershire Integrated Care System to destigmatise mental health and ensure the development of compassionate and psychologically safe organisational cultures.
Vision Statement
The Wellbeing Line aspires to create an environment where compassion is the thread running through every level of organisational wellbeing. Resulting in improved emotional wellbeing and stronger mental health for all staff working in health and social care.
Support Provided
The Wellbeing Line offers support for individuals, consultations for team leaders/managers and also support to teams. All support is tailored to your needs, or to the needs of your team. Find out more below under ‘How We Help’.
We can support you with a wide range of mental health issues that may be impacting your work and personal life, including:
- Work-related concerns such as grievances, redeployment, moral injury, difficult working conditions.
- Emotional wellbeing/mental health concerns, including exhaustion/burnout, trauma, depression, anxiety.
- Personal circumstances such as bereavement, relationship issues, lifestyle changes, underlying health conditions.
- Covid-related concerns such as Long COVID, anxiety or stress related to factors caused by the pandemic.
HOW WE HELP
Support for Individuals
We offer support to any individuals who are feeling worried, anxious or depressed. We encourage you to make initial contact with us by phone, for a supportive and non-judgemental conversation. We will then work together to make sense of what is going on and think about possible ways forward, which may include further support and, in some cases, further clinical assessment with a clinical psychologist.
Consultation for Team Leaders and Managers
Managers and team leaders are welcome to call or email if they are concerned about a colleague and/or if they would like to think about ways to support their team. We offer a telephone or MS Teams consultation with a clinical psychologist and think together with you about possible ways forward.
Individual Consultation
Managers and team leaders are welcome to call or email if they are concerned about a colleague. We offer a 30-60-minute telephone or MS Teams consultation with a clinical psychologist and think together with you about possible ways forward. We recognise the pressures that managers and team leaders are under, and this is intended as a supportive conversation to help you explore ways of supporting your team members and helping to normalise conversations about mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
Peer Connecting Sessions
We also run regular 50-minute facilitated peer support sessions for those individuals with Line Management responsibility, who support others in health and social care across the Integrated Care System (ICS). This is an opportunity to connect with those who have similar responsibilities and to share ideas, as well as providing time and space to reflect on the impact of the role on you personally and how you can support yourselves and each other more generally.
Leading with Compassion Programme
This programme is currently being developed, please get in contact with us for more information.
Support for Teams
As well as bespoke support, we also offer a range of interactive semi-structured sessions for teams and it is important to us to ensure our support is targeted at the specific needs of each team. If you would like support for your team, then we would encourage managers and team leaders to speak with one of our clinical psychologists in the first instance to discuss options. The purpose of this initial consultation is to help us understand more about the team and any requirements for the session. We aim to design this session with you so that it meets the needs of the team.
We provide a variety of sessions for teams, with the main focus on connection, thinking about the emotional impact of work and how to look after individual and team wellbeing. We are able to attend team meetings, arrange separate sessions or help plan and facilitate mental health and wellbeing sessions or training at AwayDays. Sessions can be offered face-to-face or on MS Teams.
All of our work with teams is informed by Compassion Focused Therapy, using strategies and techniques that have been developed through the compassionate mind model. This model addresses the compassionate care needs of health and social care staff and helps to provide a buffer against the potential impact of our work.
Here are some examples of team sessions we currently offer. All sessions can be provided either face-to-face or on MS Teams:
Meet The Team (15-30 minutes)
This session introduces our service and how to contact us and provides information and resources about The Wellbeing Line. It also provides an opportunity to begin conversations about the mental health and wellbeing of your team or service and to think about your own support needs.
Bringing Compassion to the Workplace (60-90 minutes)
This session is a mixture of taught information, experiential exercises, and open discussion. It introduces some of the ideas from the compassionate mind model, whilst allowing staff a space to think about and discuss how this relates to them, and to think about the benefits of drawing on compassion focused principles during times of challenge at work. This is generally aimed at services or multiple teams who work closely together.
Looking After Your Mental Health and Wellbeing (60 minutes)
This is a taught session, which explores themes around the build-up of stress, noticing the signs of stress, how to understand our emotions, and how to look after ourselves by finding ways to practice compassionate self-care.
What gets in the way of Compassion? (60 minutes)
This session is designed as a follow up to the Looking After Your Mental Health and Wellbeing Session. We review some of the topics covered in the initial session. We then go onto explore what might be the barriers to self-compassion and receiving compassion from others. We think together about how we might overcome these barriers, and think more in-depth about how we can embed compassion practices into our workplace.
Decompression/Reflective Practice Session (60-90 minutes)
Using a Compassion Focused Staff Support framework, this session offers open discussion, encouraging the team to reflect on some of the challenges of working in health and social care. It aims to foster connection within the team using techniques from the compassionate mind model, to help people understand individual perspectives and to develop team cohesion.
Bespoke Sessions for Teams (30-60 minutes)
We are able to run sessions on specific topics that are related to mental health and wellbeing. These might include: sleep, stress and burnout, encouraging self-care, understanding common mental health difficulties, and mindfulness.
Compassion Focused Staff Support (CFSS; Six 60-minute sessions)
This group programme introduces teams to different strategies and ideas from the compassionate mind model, and includes breathing exercises, mindfulness techniques, as well as encouraging staff to develop their own compassionate “kit bag” to help and empower them with skills to look after their mental health and wellbeing.
Thriving in General Practice (60 minutes)
This session is specifically for our colleagues working in GP surgeries, and within the Primary Care Networks. This workshop was developed by GP Dr Katie Heil and offers staff the opportunity to learn about self-care and burnout with practical exercises, group discussion and a personal workbook.
Bespoke Sessions for Team Leaders/Managers (60-90 minutes)
We can offer any of the above sessions, but with the focus aimed at those colleagues who are leading teams/services.
Meet the team
Marie
Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead
Marie has worked within the field of health and social care for about 30 years, within the probation service and within hospital and community settings. Marie returned to the NHS during the pandemic to support in the development of mental health and wellbeing services for staff. Prior to this, Marie had worked for nearly 10 years to support the mental health of our armed forces, providing assessment and therapy to serving military personnel. Marie has a long-standing interest in supporting people who have experienced trauma and traumatic events and is passionate about creating a culture of compassion within health and social care where the wellbeing of staff is considered as important as that of the people for whom we care.
Marie
Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead
Marie has worked within the field of health and social care for about 30 years, within the probation service and within hospital and community settings. Marie returned to the NHS during the pandemic to support in the development of mental health and wellbeing services for staff. Prior to this, Marie had worked for nearly 10 years to support the mental health of our armed forces, providing assessment and therapy to serving military personnel. Marie has a long-standing interest in supporting people who have experienced trauma and traumatic events and is passionate about creating a culture of compassion within health and social care where the wellbeing of staff is considered as important as that of the people for whom we care.
Rebecca
Clinical Psychologist
Rebecca has worked in the NHS for 20 years. She has worked for both physical and mental health services, which have covered community, inpatient and care home settings. Rebecca has also worked with groups, carers, couples and families. Rebecca has experience providing supervision, consultation and teaching to a variety of professionals and students working within the NHS. More recently, Rebecca has provided psychological support to individual staff and teams working across healthcare. The main aims of these sessions have been to allow staff to talk about their experiences of working during the pandemic, reflect on the challenges and changes that they might have encountered and think about how they can look after their own wellbeing.
Ellie
Assistant Psychologist
Ellie’s previous role involved working with children and young people in a community mental health service. Before this, she worked with adults across inpatient settings and in a learning disability team. Having worked with a range of people, she is sensitive to a person’s individual needs and experienced in supporting them to talk about their mental health and wellbeing.
Jess
Assistant Psychologist
Jess has a background working in adult mental health, and prior to this worked in a research setting with children experiencing emotional difficulties, and their families. Having worked as a Healthcare Assistant on mental health wards and as a mental health crisis practitioner, Jess is experienced in supporting people in distress and in having conversations about mental health and wellbeing.
Selina
ASSISTANT PSYCHOLOGIST
Selina has previous experience working as an Assistant Psychologist in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and prior to this worked as a Healthcare Assistant on mental health wards. Selina volunteers as a helpline listener for a mental health charity, giving her the experience in providing emotional support over the phone.
Sabina
Administrative OFFICER
Sabina joined the NHS in 2018 and has worked with various teams who offer mental health support. Sabina also works with the out of hours District Nursing team who support palliative patients, and also volunteers for GRASAC (Gloucestershire Rape & Sexual Abuse Centre) as an emotional support worker.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to access The Wellbeing Line?
How do you protect my data? Will my information be shared?
All contacts with The Wellbeing Line are confidential and no details are shared with your employer, occupational health or HR – unless this is something which you would find helpful to have support with. Some notes are made during your call, which are then transferred into completely anonymous data – which is used to help us shape the service and to comply with national data reporting requirements. Any notes with identifiable information are stored securely and deleted after 90 days. In the event that we are concerned about risk to you or to somebody else or where there are safeguarding concerns, we might have to breach confidentiality, but will always discuss this with you first and try to find a way to manage it together.
Why do we collect your personal information?
- To enable us to help you find the best possible support.
- To enable us to contact you for feedback about our service and/or about the support you have gone on to receive.
- To enable us to monitor our service delivery, to identify gaps in service provision and to ensure we are making our support available to all employees.
How do we use your personal information?
- Personal data is recorded in our clinical system, which is confidential and does NOT form part of any wider clinical data sharing system.
- We are able to access your personal data if you have had contact with any NHS services (eg: GP; Mental Health services). This enables us to work with you to join up your care. However, those other organisations are NOT able to see that you have been in contact with The Wellbeing Line.
- If there is any circumstance in which we need to keep your personal details elsewhere (eg: recording attendance at a team support session), this will be in a locked folder on our computer system, which is password protected and is only accessible to The Wellbeing Line team.
- We will share some anonymised data with your employer. This enables us and them to look at trends, which will help to inform service development and support colleagues in the future.
- As part of our reporting requirement we will share anonymised data with NHSE/I.
Read our full privacy policy here: https://thewellbeingline.co.uk/privacy-policy/
How do I contact The Wellbeing Line?
What happens when I call or email?
Will I get a follow up call?
What makes The Wellbeing Line different from occupational health/other services available?
Will I receive counselling through The Wellbeing Line?
Do I have to be referred by my GP, Occupational Health or my employer?
How soon can I speak to someone?
Are The Wellbeing Line staff/employees trained?
Our team has a wide variety of experience and training within mental health.
Contact us
Freephone: 0300 421 7500
E-mail: hello@thewellbeingline.co.uk
Our freephone support lines are open between 9am to 4.30pm, Monday – Thursday and between 9am to 12pm on Friday.
We are, however, able to facilitate calls outside of those hours by prior arrangement.
If you prefer to email in the first instance, then we will aim to respond within two working days to arrange a telephone call.
Prefer us to call you? You can contact The Wellbeing Line on any day of the week to request a call back and we will aim to get back to you within two working days. Click the ‘Request A Call’ button below to send us your details.
Please note that The Wellbeing Line is not an emergency service – if you need to talk to someone urgently about your mental health, at any time of day or night, then you can call the Samaritans (FREE) on 116 123 or contact the Gloucestershire Crisis Team (24/7) on 0800 169 0398. If you need help but are not in a crisis, you can contact the NHS by dialling 111 from any phone. If there is an immediate danger to life, please dial 999 or go to your nearest Accident & Emergency Department.
The Wellbeing Line is provided by and partnered with the above.