live well - Mental Health Worker Livewell Southwest Employee Review

Managers within the team were nice. Staff had shared goals.

Lots of red tape in getting things approved for patients. Short staffed always. Hard to raise concerns about some management.

- Rewarding work, seeing positive changes in patients is a highlight. - Hybrid working, being able to work from home makes the job more manageable. - Lovely team, everyone working there knows exactly what you're going through and are happy to offer support.

- Under-managed, the management team are unable to offer substantial support due to their large workload, which would be helpful as a trainee when you're learning the intricacies of the role. You are encouraged to seek support from co-workers, but that support isn't guaranteed because they're also busy with their own caseloads and admin work. Standard operating procedures cover most things, but for everything else it's anyone's best guess until someone from the management team picks you up on it many months later. - Scope-creep, the role is designed to assess and treat mild-to-moderate mental health conditions; however, that is rarely the case and you will often find yourself taking on patients that are beyond your job role and pay grade. - Poor work-life balance, necessary admin work is not considered to be paid work. You are fortunate if a patient doesn't show up for an appointment, as you then have a spare 30 minutes in the day to complete everything while being paid. It is not uncommon to take admin work home. - Burnout, there are a lot of studies showing how easy burnout comes in this role for all of the above reasons. This is especially hard in the trainee year when you're trying to record a treatment session to pass your course - the marking criteria for this recording is strict and patients don't fit into perfect boxes, so you often feel as though you're manipulating the treatment session to serve your purposes which doesn't feel good.