How we help

Support for you

We offer support when you are feeling worried, anxious or depressed and we can discuss anything related to work or your life outside of work that is impacting your wellbeing.

You can self-refer and our service is confidential, with nothing written in your occupational health or HR records.

We encourage you to make initial contact with us by phone, for a supportive and non-judgemental conversation, however you can also contact us through email or the callback request form on our website if that is easier.

We will work together with you 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.

Support for teams

As well as bespoke support, we also offer a range of interactive semi-structured sessions for teams and team-based training. We are able to attend team meetings, arrange separate sessions or help plan and facilitate mental health and wellbeing sessions or training at away days. Sessions can be offered face-to-face or on MS Teams.

It is important to us to ensure our support is targeted at the specific needs of each team, therefore we 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.

The focus of our work with teams is on connection, thinking about the emotional impact of work and how to look after individual and team wellbeing. All of our work 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.

Below are some examples of team sessions we currently offer. We can also offer any of these for groups of managers/team leaders who are working closely together to lead teams/services.

Request support for your team

Support for leaders

The Wellbeing Line offers tailored support to leaders and managers in health and care settings, recognizing the pivotal role they play in promoting mental health and wellbeing within their teams. The service is designed to help leaders develop the skills, knowledge, and confidence to effectively support the mental wellbeing of their teams while also managing their own wellbeing.

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.

The range of interventions offered include:

Manager’s Consultation – for Line Managers Concerned About a Team Member

If a manager or team leader is concerned about the wellbeing of somebody in their team, they can reach out to The Wellbeing Line for a telephone or MS Teams consultation with a practitioner psychologist. These consultations are approx. 60 minutes in length and provide a confidential, supportive space to discuss concerns and explore ways forward.

Team Support Consultation – for Line Managers who want to support their Team or Service

Leaders are offered a telephone or MS Teams consultation with a practitioner psychologist to discuss the mental wellbeing of their team and to plan team leader led interventions and/or support sessions facilitated by a member of The Wellbeing Line.

The Wellbeing Line encourages and empowers leaders to co-create solutions alongside their teams, ensuring that the support provided is appropriate, personalised, and effective. This collaborative, person-centred approach helps ensure that team leaders are equipped to manage the mental health and wellbeing of their staff in a way that aligns with both individual needs and organisational priorities.

Training Programme – Leading with Compassion: Let’s Talk about Mental Health (one day, plus four peer connecting sessions)

This programme has been designed to explore how we support our own and our colleagues’ mental health in the workplace. It supports leaders to develop compassionate leadership skills and increase their knowledge, skills and confidence in supporting the mental wellbeing of their teams. The programme helps to destigmatise conversations about mental health and wellbeing, fostering a healthy and supportive work environment and creating a culture of psychological safeness.

After the initial one-day training, four facilitated Peer Connecting sessions are offered to the group, and these are provided on MS Teams (4 hours). This is an opportunity for group members to come together to share ideas and concerns and to reflect on their learnings when embedding some of the practices with their teams. After this, there is the opportunity to join ‘drop-in’ Peer Connecting sessions, which are currently held monthly.

Peer Connecting Sessions for Line Managers – monthly “drop in” sessions (closed group)

In addition to the peer connecting sessions provided as part of the Leading with Compassion programme, The Wellbeing Line offers monthly 50-minute facilitated peer connecting sessions for line managers. These sessions bring together leaders and managers with similar responsibilities to share experiences, exchange ideas about supporting their team, and reflect on the impact of their leadership roles on their own wellbeing.

Each session is run as a “closed group”, so that leaders can develop a sense of psychological safeness and connection with each other to aid open and honest discussion.

Consultancy, Training and Resources (Consultation Pathway)

If the team lead is at the beginning of their journey thinking about the mental health and wellbeing needs of their team/service there is opportunity for a more in-depth consultation and phased approach, which also involves The Wellbeing Line consulting with other stakeholders and individual members of the team/service (often through focus group sessions). Please contact hello@thewellbinegline.co.uk to find out more.

Request a call back from us to find out more.

Support for organisations

As a psychology led service, The Wellbeing Line draws on evidence based psychological theories and models to help organisations create a workplace culture where staff feel valued and their mental wellbeing is supported. We can help to:

implement staff health and wellbeing strategies
develop and co-ordinate specific wellbeing projects
connect organisations with each other to cooperate and collaborate on shared wellbeing objectives
identify gaps and propose tailored interventions that align with the needs of the workforce
develop policies and communication strategies that are trauma informed and person-centred

Example Team Support Offers

Meet The Team (15-30 minutes)

This session introduces our service, explaining the work of The Wellbeing Line and introducing the Compassionate Mind model. It begins conversations about the mental health and wellbeing of individuals and teams, including basics about compassionate self-care and reducing the stigma around mental health.

Looking After You - the Basics (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.

Workbook available to accompany this session.

Looking After Your Mental Health and Wellbeing (60-90 minutes)

This session includes a mix of teaching, experiential exercises and discussion. This explores themes related to the cost of caring and understanding the impact that this can have on our mental health. The content of the session can be flexible, but the aim is to explore in more depth what might impact our mental health as well as what might be the barriers to looking after our own wellbeing at work. We look at ways of developing self-compassion, as well as how we can practically look after our wellbeing in the workplace and what strategies we can implement as a team.

Workbook available to accompany this session.

Bringing Compassion to the Workplace: Developing a Compassionate Culture (60-90 minutes)

This session includes a mix of teaching, experiential exercises and discussion. It covers similar themes as “Looking After Your Mental Health and Wellbeing”, but the focus is on how this can be implemented as a team, how to develop team cohesion, and developing a shared set of values. The aim to support the team to develop their own ‘Compassionate Charter’ to support their mental health and wellbeing at work. This is generally aimed at services or multiple teams who work closely together.

Compassion Focused Staff Support (CFSS; Six 60-minute sessions)

This group programme builds on themes and topics covered in the above sessions. It 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. The aim is to encourage and normalise discussions to support the team to develop their own ‘Compassionate Charter’ to support their mental health and wellbeing at work.

Decompression Session (60-90 minutes)

This session aims to foster connection and build team cohesion using techniques from the Compassion Focused Staff Support framework. This is a facilitated open discussion, encouraging the team to reflect on some of the challenges of working in health and social care. This process encourages self-awareness, improves emotional regulation, helps people understand individual perspectives and builds resilience within teams by helping team members process difficult or emotionally charged situations together.

Reflective Practice (Six 60-minute sessions)

Reflective Practice is a facilitated session run with the purpose of giving colleagues a confidential, supportive space to consider the impact of the work that they do. This might include thinking about the impact that this has on them as an individual or as a team, it might also be a space to explore some self-care/wellbeing practices.

The Wellbeing Line is also running a pilot project providing reflective practice to non-clinical teams whose role means they are exposed on a regular basis to potentially distressing material.

Psycho-Education Sessions (30-60 minutes)

On request, The Wellbeing Line can provide training sessions to teams on many topics related to mental health and well-being. These might include:

sleep
anxiety, stress and burnout
how to have mental health conversations
listening and responding to difficult news (including suicide, death and illness)
understanding common mental health difficulties
vicarious and secondary trauma
understanding moral distress and moral injury
mindful self-compassion
neurodiversity and mental health
the importance of taking a break

We have also developed a series of 30-minute webinars which are for standalone viewing, or we can facilitate webinar+ 30 minutes discussion with the team to help embed learning.

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, originally developed by Glos GP Dr Katie Heil, has been updated by The Wellbeing Line and offers staff the opportunity to learn about self-care and burnout through practical exercises and group discussion.

Workbook available to accompany this session.

Post Event Team Reflection (PETR; 90-120 minutes)

The Wellbeing Line provides facilitated debrief sessions, called Post Event Team Reflections (PETR), to teams following particularly distressing/adverse events. The intention is to “mobilise” peer support, help individuals to share their thoughts and feelings about the impact of the event, to normalise the range of emotions they might experience, to help them understand natural responses to such events and to be able to self-monitor for future signs that they might need additional support to help process the event.

This offer is currently only available to staff working in Gloucestershire Health and Care, but if you are from another organisation and would like to discuss this further then please contact hello@thewellbeingline.co.uk

Take a Break

This session includes a mix of teaching, experiential exercises and discussion. The aim is to introduce teams to the science behind taking your breaks at work. It offers ideas and suggestions around how to take a ‘good break’ and helps to explore some of the barriers to taking a break at work. The Wellbeing Line provides additional consultation and support to team leads to help them embed learnings from this session to explore barriers and enablers to creating a healthy team culture around taking breaks. The Wellbeing Line is running a project exploring the the impact of taking breaks can have on a service. Teams who are interested in this session and involvement in this project are encouraged to contact hello@thewellbeingline.co.uk for more information.