Some time ago, an employee was absent due to ill health and ultimately had to give up her job. For me, it is particularly important to communicate openly about things, in both good and bad times. My employees took it upon themselves to offer to take on more work and support me as I tried to manage both the job and my ongoing studies at the same time. It was an intense but happy time, and it showed me our team can work well and we can support each other when things are tough.

We often have difficult cases to deal with in our day-to-day work. This can be very stressful for our staff. In times like this, I’m happy to provide support: my team can contact me at any time with a view to discussing difficult situations together or even passing patients on to another therapist.

The period of working from home was very challenging for us. Not least because those chance encounters at the coffee machine were suddenly a thing of the past. We tried to make up for these things with informal digital formats. But we will meet up again outside more often and create that sense of community as soon as we can.