Compassion

Focused Staff

Support Adopting Whole Systems

Approaches In collaboration with …

Kate Lucre Consultant Psychotherapist

“Our group feels like a strong compassionate thread holding the team …”

The Context

Facing reality… 2000 staff leaving NHS MH Services every month (Guardian 2018)

Staff operating in conditions of threat have reduced capacity for compassion to self and others (Henshall et al. 2015)

Practice of compassion can be helpful in how we respond to threat (Arch et al. Allen & Leary, 2010; Arch et al, 201; Breines et al, 2015; Gilbert, 2005; Neff et al, 2007)

Where to start?

… Prevention is perhaps better than cure

Compassion Begins

at Home

If we are to support TIA, this process must begin with staff support

Principles of common humanity

Understanding Vicarious trauma and burn out

Creating the conditions for the cultivation of compassion across 3 flows

Move away from medical model of illness and wellness to a compassion

Focused understanding of the reality of suffering

What happened to you? Rather than what is wrong with you?

Concept of compassion fatigue now dismissed

Replaced with empathy distress

Neurological processes separate

Compassion as the antidote to the ‘cost of caring’

Hofmeyer, A., Kennedy, K., & Taylor, R. (2020). Contesting the term ‘compassion fatigue’: Integrating findings from social neuroscience and self-care research. Collegian, 27(2), 232–237.

From CFT perspective, compassion is linked to very different psychologies which we aim to develop:

The Two Psychologies of

Compassion

A sensitivity to the suffering of self and others (and it’s causes) with a deep commitment to try and relieve it and prevent it

• The ability to understand, approach and engage with suffering and distress

• The desire and motivation to alleviatesuffering, uproot it’s causes and seek to prevent suffering in the future

Courage sits at the heart of these

Why this work is tricky…

Threat

Soothing

DriveThreat Based Drive More striving

than driving

“There is a cost to caring” Figley 1982

PTSD

VTBurn Out

Compassion Focused

Staff Support Group

Training for staff in compassion and compassionate wellbeing

Holding function for

the team

Clinical work

Clinical Supervision

Creating an affiliative space for whole team to come together

Introducing the basic model

Specific focus on impact of immersion in suffering for health care staff

Introducing compassion and FBRs

Focus on team function

Personal practice and self care

Compassion involves turns towards and

not away from difficulty

Developing a compassionate

motivation involves specific competencies and capacities which

can trained

Compassion is more than

kindness and runs deeper than care

Understanding our own 3 emotional

systems c an help us begin to bring balance

Training our minds and bodies in

compassion begins with the breath

We just find ourselves here with brains we

didn’t design influenced by circumstances we

didn’t choose

“coming together as a team before we started felt like

setting out our compassionate intention to ourselves and

each other”

Compassion Focused Staff Support Group

Exploration of the impact of the work

Establishing safe haven and secure

base functions

Sessions every 2 weeks for an

hour

Open ended not time limited

External group

facilitator Whole team .. Whole system

Space of Safeness

Soothing Rhythm Breathing

Compassionate

mind online

Reflection

Curiosity

Playfulness

Understanding

ChallengeCompassion

in action

Feedback and Check In

Developing the Group

Flow…

Self Other Self Self Other Self

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Championing CFSS

Creating sustainability

within the whole system

Empowering clinicians to invest in the

model

Developing capacity for

future facilitators

Today SAH ….

Tomorrow the

World!

Building capacity for compassion within the workforce

Fostering the development of a secure base and safe haven

CFSS model reflecting and reinforcing clinical model

Learning compassion from the inside out

Then …

Developing compassion focused therapeutic interventions