STR - Support Time Recovery - Activity 5.7 - Reflective account

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STR / Support Time Recovery Training course

VRQ Level 2 Certificate in Mental Health

Answer to Question 1

Description

During part of the course I have been working at a mental health drop in centre as a way of gaining some extra relevant experience for this STR course.

Feelings

It has been a very stressful time for me, but I really do think I have learned a lot during my time there. Some of my time there has been pretty negative and I have gone home very upset a few times, more often than not though I have had a good time and its been a great positive experience for me.

Evaluation

The main good points were probably working so closely with the service users and gaining more experience of being a service provider and not just a service user. I do think I can see things from both sides now and have a lot more understanding of how services are run. I had done a lot of work with service users before, but mostly in places where there are mostly different ones every week, not permanent ones.

The bad points were probably the service users I had to help deal with who were doing things (not together!) that were either very upsetting for the staff or for the other service users. I am not always good at hiding my feelings and can find it hard sometimes to not show my feelings when people are doing bad things.

Analysis

I do understand why some parts of working in the centre I found upsetting, during my life some very bad things have happened to people I have liked and its made me a very protective person. I also do not think I am really a 'people person' which has made it hard for me at times, most of the time I don't talk much, but I felt I had to talk to the service users and workers a lot during my work. Depending on my mental health situation at the time I can sometimes find that very hard.

Conclusion

I am really pleased I have worked at the centre as I feel I really did learn a lot and have grown as a mental health worker. Even the bad points I can look back on and see the positives of what I learnt from the experiences. I am stopping working there soon, as its too far to keep travelling to on a regular basis, but plan to use the things I have learnt there in my work at other more local places.

Action Plan

I plan to try to work on my people skills and keep gaining as much experience as a mental health worker as possible. I am looking forward to using the skills I have learnt both on the placement at the centre and during the course to help as many people as possible. I still have plans of continuing my studies and maybe doing a level 3 mental health course at some time, I just love learning and studying. If I can then use that experience and knowledge to help others, then that is even better.

Previous: STR Activity 5.6 - Keeping the boundaries and using support systems

Please note: The contents of the Level 2 Certificate in Mental Health Students workbook are copyrighted, so I have not included any of the questions, purely my answers which are only copyrighted to me! If you have access to the workbook it will make a lot more sense to you. Please do NOT copy my answers and use them as your own, I have just put them here to give you ideas for any parts you may be stuck on.