Hello all,

 

My name is Lealah and I’m a newly qualified clinical psychologist working for Hannahs, a charity for people with disabilities and/or mental health problems based in Devon. I trained at Plymouth which has a big community psychology focus (including having community psychology placements in the voluntary sector alongside our substantive NHS placements) and as a result was part of setting up a community psychology interest group based in Plymouth which we are trying to reimagine at the moment. I’ve just joined the BPS community psych section so will hopefully be able to use that to steer us in the right direction. The South West has a strong history of community psychology elders and activists so we are looking to re-energise that movement down here again.

 

I am writing in particular to flag your attention to an event we have coming up here at Hannahs that myself and a few psychology colleagues have organised to gather together people interested in a particular aspect of Community Psychology in the South West. Please see the invite below:

 

 

Hannahs at Seale Hayne, in Newton Abbot, Devon, will be hosting an evening on Wednesday 14^th December at 6pm for psychologists or other interested professionals to scope interest around working together to offer a free service for people struggling to navigate the benefits system. The idea for this stemmed from a group of us attending a conference called ‘Psychologists and the benefits system: time to get off the fence’ where we were incredibly moved by some of the painful stories shared that day of how difficult it is for people to navigate the benefits system, find support and access psychologists quickly and easily to support them in their plights – often to do something simple like writing a letter in support of an application or making a phone call, or attending a meeting with someone.

 

The idea of the evening is that we will do a very brief hello and welcome and outline why we are trying to set something up, a bit about our ideas and then open the evening to discussion about how we can moved forward as a collective. Attending the evening isn’t a commitment – we are just looking to scope interest from those getting involved and hear ideas about how something like this could work.

 

We know there are many fantastic, enthusiastic psychologists and trainees in the South West keen to do something to target the social injustice we are seeing for people with disabilities and mental health problems at the moment and are hopeful that this could be a good opportunity to bring together this fantastic resource and ‘get ourselves off the metaphorical fence’ into action!

 

It should also be a nice opportunity for some networking – we will be offering everyone 1 free drink and a mince pie so we can enjoy the festive spirit too. There is a lovely bar and restaurant here too so anyone who wants to stay on for food/ catch up is welcome.

 

Please email Lealah at [log in to unmask] to let us know you are attending so we can make sure we have enough mince pies for all.

 

 

 

Hopefully some of you are able to make it – we have some psychologists, some trainees, some solicitors and people that work in CAB coming along at the moment so it promises to be a useful evening – do let me know if you have any questions or want to know more. Equally if you are doing something similar in your area I would love to know and perhaps we can share ideas.

 

Many thanks

 

Lealah

 

 

 

Dr Lealah Hewitt
Clinical Psychologist

 

Hannahs at Seale-Hayne

Newton Abbot

TQ12 6NQ

 

Office: 01626 325847

E-mail: [log in to unmask]