Campaign launches to promote careers in prison mental health team | News

Award-winning campaign, ‘Someone like me’, is rolling out across the Partnership to recruit new staff to the prison mental health team.

The campaign, which launched today (4 March), focuses on challenging perceptions of working in the North London Mental Health Partnership’s prison mental health team. It aims to open people’s minds to the opportunities, benefits and rewards of working in prison mental health care.

Steve Cook, Managing Director of Specialist Services, said: “We have never done a focused campaign on prisons before, but prisons form a really critical part of the work we do.”

Mr Cook said he is hoping the campaign, backed by videos featuring mental health staff talking about their roles, will change the way working in prisons is seen.

He said: “This is a new era. We have a new model of working and with that new model comes new opportunities for staff and better outcomes for our patients.”

There are misconceptions about what it is like to work in a prison, which can make it difficult to recruit staff. The campaign will be focusing on reaching professionals in hard to fill roles – nurses, psychologists and speech and language therapists.

 

The Partnership has joined forces with a range of stakeholders, including the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists to launch a series of webinars which will delve into a ‘day in the life of’ a mental health practitioner working in prisons.  

“I think the biggest challenge is getting people to step over that threshold and consider prisons as a career, but also understand that there is great work, valuable work and massively rewarding work that goes on,” added Steve Cook.

If you are curious about what goes on behind the prison walls and would like to find out about working in our prison mental health team, sign up for an upcoming webinar:

• What do speech and language therapists do? – 26 March, register to attend  
• A day in the life of a mental health nurse – 23 April, register to attend 
• How the role of a psychologist is changing – 29 April, register to attend