“You can’t pour from an empty cup”

Arcellia the assistant psychologist here at Timeout believes selfcare for carers is paramount to looking after the children in our care.

In 2020 in the midst of the pandemic Arcellia set up a self care workshop which was conducted over Microsoft teams, I am sure you will all agree the timing of the set up was crucial as we did not have as much contact in lockdown. These workshops involved group activities with various carers focussing on compassion, mindfulness and blocked care.

Blocked care means the carers can be influenced by the child’s behaviour’s on how they portray themselves and react to the child in their care.

Challenging behaviours such as being hyper vigilant resulting in no connection, the workshops helped by the different carers being able to discuss these feelings and normalising it. This was empowering for carers to discuss openly and freelymaking sure they knew were not on their own, support for our staff is so important to us at Timeout.

After lockdown the workshop could finally be held in the training room at the head office.

Arcellia tells me the philosophy behind  these selfcare workshops is if you look after your carers they will in turn look after the children in their care ti the best of their ability, with continued support.