My name is Scott Pomberth and I work as a Carer Peer Support Worker in the City Crisis Resolution Home Treatment Team at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.
I have been in this role since April 2022, and I am settling in well. The team I am in now is much larger than the previous team I was in and getting to know everyone, and remembering their names was a challenge!!!
This is the first time I am directly working with and supporting carers and families face to face, and I am finding it very rewarding. The feeling of knowing you have made a difference to people’s lives, by using my Peer Support Training skills and knowledge, even if it’s just a small difference is fantastic. The eight core principles of peer support are an integral aspect of the work I do and can be utilised in many ways so that each carer or family member can receive a specific support package which meets their individual needs.
I have a high turnover of people who I support as my role allows me to work with carers and families whilst their loved one in under the Crisis Team. Each case is unique and requires me to give carer information, assess the needs of the carer and take into consideration their welfare in different ways.
Since April 2017 I have also been involved in a research study called NEON, which stands for Narrative Experiences Online. I wanted to be involved with NEON as from a personal perspective, I have always wanted to promote mental health in any forums that I could to demonstrate to a wider audience that a person who has experienced mental health distress can achieve their goals and dreams, just like any other person who hasn’t had a similar experience. I have achieved one of my goals and dreams as I have become a co-author on several papers with NEON over recent years.
Secondly, one of my outcomes I had hoped to achieve from my involvement, was to influence people within academia in how they perceive people with mental health distress. I feel fully confident that this has been achieved as the NEON researchers, in the first instance, had similar views as myself. I do believe through my involvement; the researchers have increased their knowledge and awareness of how people with mental health distress live their lives daily.
The paper that I have co-authored has now been published by the Journal of Medical Internet Research. It is freely available to the public at Journal of Medical Research website. The paper analyses data collected with people who took part in two clinical trials. It compares the characteristics of people who have used and not used mental health services to see if there is any difference between these two groups.
I think this paper is very important in many ways. The researchers leading the paper included the opinions and feedback from people who have suffered mental health distress as they produced the paper, and have really validated them, and I feel that the study is a true reflection of pure coproduction. The researchers have genuinely embraced the involvement of all participants and made them feel valued. As part of this work, we co-produced an involvement plan to document a meaningful role for experts who are not professional researchers, which has been published, download the Appendix - Involvement Plan. We hope that other teams involving experts who are not professional researchers will think about producing an involvement plan like this.
I have been thinking about the findings of the study, which followed correct procedures by analysing all participants who had been randomised in the trial. The study found that people who used services were generally more poorly than those who were not. I found this interesting as I expected the people who used services would mostly become less poorly with treatment than people who decided not to use services. As population we are encouraged to seek out medical services if we become mentally unwell with the expectation that attending medical appointments and being concordance with medication will improve our wellbeing. This is also the case for people who become physically poorly too.
I was particularly interested in finding out the causes for why these outcomes were different to what I expected. I wonder whether service users may have felt slightly less poorly but not fully recuperated, may have been more unwell in the first instance, or in fact felt worse after engaging with treatment options. The non-service users may have felt less poorly because of finding their own pathway towards recovery. This could have included using their own coping strategies, taking good self-care of themselves, eating healthy and having good sleep hygiene. The improvements and outcomes for both service users and non-service users have been narrowed down, resulting in an accurate conclusion as far as possible.
As a Carer Peer Support Worker, I think that more research should be done in this area. I think that research on how the impact and supporting role of a carer, family member, sibling or friend has on an individual experiencing mental health distress would be invaluable to inform NHS Trusts and other health care providers with first hand experience and knowledge of what works for all involved.
At Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, we train staff in something called Carer Awareness and the Triangle of Care. This demonstrates the importance of the patient, carer and professional involved in the care of someone. In my opinion, I would ensure that all members of staff should receive this training, and research could be done to determine whether staff members who complete this training have better outcomes with patients and carers than staff members who don’t.
Scott Pomberth
Carer Peer Support Worker