Maureen Wilson on the importance and value of listening and the aims of mental health charity Listen Well Scotland
TFN recently reported on the Scottish Children’s Services Coalition highlighting the lack of funding for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). A greater investment and focus on prevention and early intervention was suggested as an important factor ensuring not only that young people get the care and support they need but also for delivering cost savings for the NHS.
Recent publicity in both national and local press has highlighted the importance of listening as an early intervention and even prevention, for young people experiencing stress and anxiety which is impacting on their mental wellbeing.
Listening is often vastly misunderstood, underestimated and undervalued, yet its potential therapeutic benefits are immense
Maureen Wilson
Listen Well Scotland is a Scottish charity which promotes the strong connection between listening and health and wellbeing. It provides quality listening training which is unique, safe and robust. Credit rating by Edinburgh Napier University for our foundation and advanced courses provide academic and professional validation of the training material. Course feedback from participants indicates demonstrable benefits for their work and everyday lives. Over the past few years 500 NHS staff accessed our training, valuing the depth and relevance of the content. Course reviews regularly stated that “This course should be made mandatory for all NHS Staff” and “I thought I was a good listener until I came on this course.”
Listening is often vastly misunderstood, underestimated and undervalued, yet its potential therapeutic benefits are immense. There is an urgent need for more people across Scotland to learn to “Listen Well” and so be able to make a difference in local communities where mental health and social work teams are stretched beyond capacity. Listening has the potential to transform communication within families, schools, organisations, workplaces and communities and so positively impact on mental wellbeing. Listening empowers others to tell their story, find their own solutions and so experience that resilience within themselves.
Listen Well Scotland believes by working with others it can make a positive contribution to the mental wellbeing of young people throughout Scotland through our training and our one to one listening service “Listening Time4U”. This year, as part of a pilot, we have already begun to provide Listening Time4U in the school context in collaboration with CAMHS and school staff. This service has been shown to bring definite benefit to pupils. As a result the school has requested the continuation of Listening Time4U, with other schools already expressing interest. In a separate school pilot our two day listening course was also well received with very positive and constructive feedback from S6 pupils. The outcome of that pilot is that Listen Well Scotland hopes to launch a new Schools’ Listening Course – The Listen Well Award –in June 2017. This course has the potential to improve peer communication and so contribute to the mental wellbeing of young people within our schools.
We may be a small charity, still relatively little known, but we are confident we have much to offer. We would want to be able to deliver our training free to individuals and organisations providing support and help to young people who are especially vulnerable. In order to do that, we ourselves need funding support. With the waiting time for psychological support being around 18 weeks Listening Time4U, delivered by trained and experienced listeners, could bridge the gap and perhaps even reduce the need for that support, and so have a positive impact on NHS costs and waiting time.
When is the importance of listening going to be taken seriously? Are we actually missing a very obvious contribution to the mental wellbeing of young people because it seems too simple?
Listening is not a soft option. It requires people willing to learn how to listen well, with the clear understanding of its connection with health and wellbeing. Listen Well Scotland has a robust volunteer recruitment and training programme which takes up to a year to complete. We are committed to ensuring the integrity of our training and practice. All registered listeners (not counsellors) with Listen Well Scotland receive regular supervision and are covered by our professional indemnity insurance.
We ignore the importance of listening at a cost!
Maureen Wilson is executive co-ordinator at Listen Well Scotland.
