Search results

This paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of academic and professional Higher Education (HE) staff in the UK.

A mixed-method survey questionnaire was sent to almost 300 UK HE staff to secure qualitative and quantitative data to enable data triangulation.

The study found an adverse impact on academic and professional staff's mental health and wellbeing, further resulting in stress and anxiety. Several reasons for the increased stress and anxiety levels were identified, but social isolation and the increased workload were the most commonly reported. The most affected groups by the pandemic were females, younger staff, full-timers and those with disabilities or caring responsibilities.

This study offers a range of strategies to support staff's mental health and wellbeing; as such, it is of great interest to policymakers to inform their decisions of similar crisis events in the future. It also addresses some of the COVID-19 areas of research interest for the UK parliament.

The study's originality derives from exploring the pandemic's impact on UK HE staff's mental health and wellbeing by including professional staff's experiences alongside those of academics. It also expands the scant evidence concerning the pandemic's impact on HE staff in the UK.

This paper aims to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of the learning process in practice and explores the case of a local authority school Pilot Wellbeing Programme (PWP) intervention. The aim of the PWP was to create the best workplace conditions and circumstances for people to flourish and mature, both individually and collectively. Findings show that the socio-physical environment plays a significant and leading role in supporting this work, as does the consistent modelling of higher level behaviours including integrity, respect and acceptance by intervention managers and school leadership teams. It was also important that the change processes were continually tailored and nuanced to meet the evolving needs of the staff and organisation throughout the intervention. Emphasis was also placed on encouraging individual involvement and commitment by implementing inclusive measures that fostered trust and openness.

The intervention worked to the organisational learning process model.

Headteachers (HT) are still playing a key role as caregivers to their staff. Wellbeing is something people in school generally expect to be “done” to them. Personal accountability for one’s own health and wellbeing is still a growth area in schools. Any change processes implemented to support this process need to be continually tailored and respectfully nuanced to meet the evolving needs of the staff and organisation throughout the intervention. Accruing quantitative evidence to support the effects of wellbeing work in schools is painstaking and challenging.

HT have traditionally taken the role of school staff “caregiver”, overseeing staff wellbeing often to the detriment of their own wellbeing. This situation is becoming unsustainable as HT’ capacity for this kind of work is diminishing. School staff need to accept an increasing role in the maintenance of their own personal–professional wellbeing.

School staff who do not mind their own wellbeing act as a poor model to their pupils who may ultimately emulate their behaviour. Additionally, as staff sickness absence due either directly or indirectly to stress becomes a growing issue in schools, educational standards will be increasingly difficult to attain and maintain. Wellbeing mechanisms need to be put in place now to stem this possibility.

The intervention is unique in as much as it took a deliberately holistic approach to school staff wellbeing by including all school staff in the change programme. Previous similar programmes have targeted professional staff only, excluding non-teaching classroom staff and school support and maintenance staff.

The purpose of this paper is to present the baseline results of a school development project where the aim was to improve school community staff's occupational wellbeing in co‐operation with occupational health nurses.

The Wellbeing at Your Work index form for school staff developed for the study aimed to account for occupational wellbeing and satisfaction in terms of the activities maintaining the ability to work as well as the working conditions, working community, worker and work and professional competence and the need to develop them.

The most problematic factors of occupational wellbeing were the urgency and pace of work at school and the problems in working space, postures and equipment. In addition, the activities supporting resources, including stress control, exercise, relaxation and mentoring, were inadequate at work.

The sample of school staff (n=271) consisted of 12 schools in Eastern Finland, and the results cannot be generalised widely due to the small and geographically defined sample. However, the results are suggestive for other schools elsewhere in Finland.

The content model for the promotion of occupational wellbeing presented in the article and the results obtained provide a broad and practical approach to the development of school staff's occupational wellbeing. Occupational health care services are meant to support school communities, and they should therefore provide better information of their services and develop their competence based on the content model of occupational wellbeing.

The work index form based on the content model serves as a good tool for schools and occupational health care in evaluating and developing occupational wellbeing.

Burnout in mental health staff is acknowledged as a major problem. The purpose of this paper is to gain an understanding of mental health staff views on improving burnout and mental toughness in mental health staff.

Ten participants from two mental health rehabilitation units across the north-west of England took part in a Nominal Group Technique. Participants consisted of mental health workers from varied roles in order to capture views from a multidisciplinary team. The main question posed to the staff was “What strategies and techniques do you think could help improve burnout and mental toughness in mental health staff”.

The study revealed that the top three ideas to take forward to help improve burnout and mental toughness in mental health staff were improving the culture/organisation, improving staff wellbeing and education. Additionally, staff were highly motivated and enthusiastic about engaging in discussion about what could be done to improve their wellbeing and the importance of taking this forward.

This study is unique in involving mental health staff in discussing their ways of improving their mental health. It is also unique as it has found the nine strategies to do this and these could be used in targeted training for mental health staff.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the strategies utilised to facilitate the wellbeing of workers of an alcohol and other drug (AOD) therapeutic community (TC)

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative study that involved in-depth interviews with 11 workers from an Australian AOD TC organisation that provides both a residential TC program and an outreach program. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis

Three main interconnected themes emerged through analysis of the data: the challenges of working in an AOD TC organisation, including vicarious trauma, the isolation and safety of outreach workers and a lack of connection between teams; individual strategies for coping and facilitating wellbeing, such as family, friend and partner support and self-care practices; organisational facilitators of worker wellbeing, including staff supervision, employment conditions and the ability to communicate openly about stress. The analysis also revealed cross-cutting themes including the unique challenges and wellbeing support needs of outreach and lived experience workers.

Rather than just preventing burnout, AOD TC organisations can also play a role in facilitating worker wellbeing.

This paper discusses a number of practical suggestions and indicates that additional strategies targeted at “at risk” teams or groups of workers may be needed alongside organisation-wide strategies.

This paper provides a novel and in-depth analysis of strategies to facilitate TC worker wellbeing and has implications for TC staff, managers and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact and value of a scholarship of teaching and learning-led (SoTL) professional development in higher education (HE), with a focus on practitioner wellbeing.

The research was a small-scale mixed-methods design, surveying 21 participants and interviewing 3 current students or recent graduates from a UK-based MEd in Teaching and Learning in HE. Data were mapped against an evidence-based framework for wellbeing.

A SoTL-led form of professional development, an MEd in Teaching in Learning in HE, offers participants opportunity to exercise the “Five Ways to Wellbeing in HE”, which has positive outcomes for staff and students.

The research project was not designed to explore the programme’s impact on wellbeing, but to explore its impact and value on individuals and institutions. Reading data against the “Five Ways to Wellbeing in HE” was retrospective, and individual wellbeing was not measured. However, the theoretical implications are that wellbeing is an additional benefit, which adds to the value of SoTL-led professional development in HE, and that further research is required to explore this more fully.

The wellbeing framework outlined in this research and applied to HE can be used as a model for shaping SoTL-led professional development, to the benefit of the entire learning community.

This paper proposes a connection between wellbeing, SoTL-led professional development and the SOTL.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of attending a Recovery College (RC) on NHS staff attitudes towards mental health and recovery, clinical and peer interactions, and personal wellbeing.

Qualitative and quantitative data were collected via online surveys from 94 participants. Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics were used.

Themes were identified for change in attitudes towards mental health and recovery: new meanings of recovery; challenging traditional views on recovery; hope for recovery; and increased parity. The majority felt that the RC positively influenced the way they supported others. Themes relating to this were: using or sharing taught skills; increased understanding and empathy; challenging non-recovery practices; and adopting recovery practices. Responses highlighted themes surrounding impacts on personal wellbeing: connectedness; safe place; self-care; and sense of competency and morale at work. Another category labelled “Design of RC” emerged with the themes co-learning, co-production and co-facilitation, and content.

It is important to understand whether RCs are a useful resource for staff. This research suggests that RCs could help to reconcile Implementing Recovery through Organisational Change’s 10 Key Challenges and reduce staff burnout, which has implications for service provision.

This is one of the first papers to directly explore the value of RCs for staff attending as students, highlighting experiences of co-learning.

A community-centred approach to health called Community Wellbeing Practices (CWP) is being offered to patients at all 17 GP practices in Halton in order to respond more appropriately to patients’ social needs, which are often an underlying reason for their presentation at primary care services. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Delivered in partnership with a local social enterprise this approach is centred on the integration of community assets and non-medical community-based support provided by the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. The core elements include community navigation, social prescribing and social action approaches.

The CWP initiative has supported more than 5,000 patients over the last four years and has evidenced demonstrable improvements in a range of health and social outcomes for patients.

The initiative has been well received by clinicians and social care professionals and has contributed to a cultural transformation in the way health and care professionals are responding to the identified needs of the community.

Using community-centred approaches in this way may help to augment clinical outcomes as well as reduce demand on over stretched public services.

Community-centred models such as the one in Halton have the potential to empower citizens to play an active role in creating healthier communities by catalysing a “people powered” social movement for health.

The CWP model in Halton is a good example of the way community-centred approaches to health can be integrated with health and care pathways to augment clinical outcomes and reduce demand on over stretched services.

Supporting the mental health of children and young people is a global priority. The issue is not specific to England. However, evidence suggests that one in ten children and young people in England has a mental health need. This represents approximately three students in every classroom. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of schools in supporting children and young people’s mental health. Whilst the paper acknowledges that teachers are not trained health professionals, it is argued that a whole-school approach to mental health can support individuals in schools to remain mentally healthy. The elements of a whole-school approach are identified and discussed and some of the challenges in relation to implementation are considered. Critical to the development of a whole-school approach is the commitment from the school leadership team to promoting student and staff wellbeing.

This is a policy paper not an empirical study.

This paper has outlined the policy context in the UK in relation to children and young people’s mental health. It has addressed the risk and protective factors which can cause or mitigate against mental ill health and it has outlined the elements of a whole-school approach to mental health.

This paper explores the contribution that schools can make to supporting students’ mental health. There is limited research which addresses mental health in young people from a non-therapeutic angle.

The central aim of this study is to incorporate two core personality factors (neuroticism and extroversion) in the job demands‐resources (JD‐R) model.

It was hypothesized that neuroticism would be most strongly related to the health impairment process, and that extroversion would be most strongly related to the motivational process. The hypotheses were tested in a sample of 3,753 Australian academics, who filled out a questionnaire including job demands and resources, personality, health indicators, and commitment.

Results were generally in line with predictions. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that job demands predicted health impairment, while job resources predicted organizational commitment. Also, neuroticism predicted health impairment, both directly and indirectly through its effect on job demands, while extroversion predicted organizational commitment, both directly and indirectly through its effect on job resources.

These findings demonstrate the capacity of the JD‐R model to integrate work environment and individual perspectives within a single model of occupational wellbeing.

The study shows that working conditions are related to health and commitment, also after controlling for personality. This suggests that workplace interventions can be used to take care of employee wellbeing.

The paper contributes to the literature by integrating personality in the JD‐R model, and shows how an expanded model explains employee wellbeing.