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Luen’s blog: The wellbeing pandemic

How many of us, I wonder, can confidently say we’ve been comfortable, healthy and happy (a basic description of wellbeing), since the outbreak of coronavirus? Whatever we did during the pandemic, it has affected all of us, even if we weren’t ill. Depression, burn out, stress, anxiety, emptiness, lack of purpose, lack of routine and isolation are just some of the invisible issues caused or exacerbated by Covid-19 and the lockdown. Our resilience has been tested to its limits and our energy levels are at rock bottom. Kickstarting ways to improve our wellbeing must be high on our priority list.

And that’s particularly important at Forget Me Not because the families we care for need us more than ever. Babies with special and complex needs still continue to be born, families who have been shielding their child are simply exhausted and those who are grieving have had so much extra to endure. So everyone here needs to be on top of their wellbeing if we are going to continue to do our best work when it’s needed most.

As we’ve welcomed more of the team back from furlough, helping them re-integrate into the charity and its changed working methods, we’ve been evaluating the impact of what’s happening over the last few months on the wellbeing of our people. “How are you” has a whole new meaning at Forget Me Not and is now a genuine, meaningful and caring question extended to all of our people. We’ve been running virtual resilience and wellbeing sessions and have reviewed our existing wellbeing offer to our teams so that we can all feel and function at our best, in our professional and private lives.

This approach will help us to retain and support our talented team members, whilst attracting the very best people when we have vacancies. Looking after and valuing ourselves is essential to our success as an organisation. And the more successful we are, the more families we can help.