09 Dec Winter 2020 – Team News

NEWS | INSIGHTS | ACTIONS | CHANGE

 

NEWS

Hello from all the team at Unravel! We hope you are keeping safe and well. With time swiftly passing by, it’s not long now until Christmas. Here at Unravel we think, even though it is going to be quite different compared to anything like we’ve experienced before, all of us are looking forward to the well-needed break to relax, reset and recharge. In this newsletter we would like to share some more recent insights and information about what we have been doing within our organisation to support you and the children we have been working with.

INSIGHTS

After the few last months of ensuring everyone’s safety and some sense of normality during these uncertain times, we are finally in our winter season. Despite any ever-changing agendas in our culture and social worlds, seasons keep flowing and moving between newly emerging seedlings into plants dying off, only to regrowth to occur and repeat the cycle of life again.

As an organisation, we have gone through many changes in our practices and outlooks during the last few months. None have been easy or straight forward. Many procedures have had to change and adapt, our professional and individual connections have needed to take a different shape and evolve, and it seems as if communication between us as individuals as well as with others has played a significant role.

Communication seems to be the glue we all need to apply, in order to achieve and maintain some sense of collective understanding, acceptance and purpose. Interaction with the external world is not the only direction we need to pay attention to. What is also very important for our wellbeing is the quality of inner communication. The culture and quality of our inner world influences the way how we communicate with our loved ones, colleagues and strangers, all beyond the level of our awareness. Therefore, it can be a healthy habit to create and practise, to regularly pause and pay attention to our internal experiences.

I would like to invite you to pause for a few moments and step out of the business of your plans and duties and become aware of where you are in colours, shapes, sounds, motion, temperature… How are you feeling right now?… Focus on sensations, locations and qualities. Think about what this season really means for you in terms of your values and needs…. What is it that you could connect with this coming winter period to allow yourself to feel relaxed, grounded, centred and allow your system to reset?

 These moments of communicating with our own inner world with intention, care and compassion, paying attention and listening, are incredibly important and help us reconnect with our values and  wisdom, necessary for accessing online in our day-to-day activities. When our actions are informed by our values and wise self, rather than led by the temporary emotional states, we can feel focused and centred even on the most challenging and long day.

Focus on being there for ourselves,  before we can be meaningfully available for others.

ACTIONS

During this busy term, as a team, we have been focusing on the things we are in charge of individually and collectively. Most of us have been working at schools supporting you and your pupils, working with private clients and care leavers, whilst others have been supporting those on the front line, ensuring the smooth process and change where needed.

It has been quite confusing and difficult at times to be able to follow and adhere to Covid-19 health and safety policies, I am sure you can relate to that, as even though there is national government guidance, many schools and individuals have been following those with different emphasis on certain aspects over the others. However, over the past few months we have been able to adapt and adjust to what suits best for our practitioners individually as well as in the schools they are based at. We have a clear policy in place to ensure minimising risks of contamination, particularly for those practitioners who move between schools. If you would like to learn more about this, please CONTACT US to discuss.

As part of our CPD this term, all of our practitioners have been able to access and undergo a refresher course on the most recent advances with trauma-informed therapeutic interventions including the Polyvagal theory and its application. It has been very interesting and inspiring training, which all our practitioners enjoyed and feel they have benefited from.

We have been spending a lot of energy and time delivering support to young people leaving care since August this year. This project was something completely new for us and has proven to be very challenging, revealing many areas where change is needed so that all of the professionals involved in the care of such children and young people can deliver their support in the most effective way. We have been gathering meaningful and valuable data to inform this change for the better. Many of the young people who received our support have reported feeling very positive and empowered following the intervention.

We do hope you can find time and space to enjoy this well-deserved break waiting for us this winter season. Please CONTACT US to discuss what we can do to support you as best we can through emotionally challenging times such as these or if you have any ideas on topics you would like to hear more about in our future newsletters.

CHANGE

Meet Jack, his daughter struggled with severe social anxiety and was supported by one of our Unravellers during the Covid-19 pandemic:

“…Absolutely brilliant service. Kind, caring, compassionate but truthful even when its hard to say. You’ve given me my daughter back and given her the tools to deal with the world around her.”