"VoiceBox - an NHS treasure."

About: Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust / Adult Mental Health Services - Community (City)

(as a service user),

I post as a catherine wheel, but today I could post as a success story.  Don't hold your breath, you won't be hearing "success" and the local "Mental Health System" in the same sentence from me very often. Most definitely not now I'm a woman in the Certain Ages - nothing to lose, everything to gain!

I'm located in the local mental health "services" City East, based at the Stonebridge Centre in Nottingham.  Now here's the success :

VOICEBOX

It's one of those group things held somewhere around here on Thursdays.  It's for people who have voice hearing experiences who would like to have a cracking good life, relate to people, go to places and events etc feeling a tad more ok about their voice hearing experiences.  Yes, we do still take our voices with us.  Oh well!!

VOICEBOX is about us lot getting together to share our suggestions of things to try, stuff we've read about, accounts of someone who knows someone who tried this, we pool our knowledges and skills and strategies, etc.  We do this in a safe group so we can pick up out the pool and work on and explore all our stuff so that we can for ourselves work out what we can put into place ourselves to have our cracking good times.  We share how we've got on, what tweaks we've made to get something to work for us.  Sometimes one of us does a strategy and shares: Never, oh, no, no, no, never again!  We're here for each other - a laugh, a celebration, a pick us up in our bad bits.  It's ours.  We call the shots. Go at our paces.  We can attend for as long as we want.  And we can leave when we think, yeah, I'm done here.

Yes, we do make mistakes, especially me!  And we make fantastic discoveries, and successes of things. And on the strength of all this my success story is: I've quit.  Yes, a couple of weeks or so ago, I quit VOICEBOX.   Whopping success. For VOICEBOX, for all persons VoiceBox, and for me. Because I feel it's the right time for me.  No, I've not learnt it all, no I can't use strategies and manage my voice hearing perfectly.  And most definitely not every single time!  But I've quit because VOICEBOX has got me here.  Because everyone at VOICEBOX is a success, because we don't make inflated claims and share falsehoods about what we can do.  I quit because I'm a success because VOICEBOX never sets anyone up to fail and hence become the victim of their voices.  

It's a facilitated closed group so if you're interested you would have to get in touch with a sorter outer.  Just ask around. It might not be the group for you.  But it's worth exploring.  I don't know what we gargle with at VOICEBOX but you know, you might find it tastes rather nice!  I reckon VOICEBOX is a NHS treasure.  Sorry all you other Trusts!   

Round here I reckon VOICEBOX steals all the gems in our local crown.  But don't think for one minute I'm letting our Trust get complacent.  Come on... what do you expect? It's the top gems and jewels in a sometimes tarnished local crown!  I'm in the Certain Ages now, remember!

So thanks everyone  VOICEBOX  all of you.  And I mean it!

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Responses

Response from Sarah Toone, Service Manager, City LMHT East & South, 145 Thorneywood Mount, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust 6 years ago
We have made a change
Sarah Toone
Service Manager, City LMHT East & South, 145 Thorneywood Mount,
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust
Submitted on 11/09/2018 at 13:41
Published on Care Opinion at 15:39


Dear A Catherine Wheel

It was so lovely to read your post. I got a great sense of how you found the group worked for you and your description of how the groups supports people who hear voices will undoubtedly encourage others to give it a go. Your exit from the group sounds perfectly executed by yourself and I hope you continue with not feeling a “victim of your voices”, to quote your phrase. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience of this group and I hope others feel as enthused as I did when reading it and will ask their team about the possibility of attending this group.

I will share your post with all the staff and future participants involved in this group. I also want to let you know that, on the strength of feedback and the evidence base for this approach the City LMHTs will be continuing to offer Voicebox after this successful trial run.


Thank you for your time in writing and sharing this post

Kind Regards

Sarah

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Update posted by A Catherine Wheel (a service user)

Hi Sarah

Many thanks for realising just what a valuable group VoiceBox is and for doing as much as anyone can to secure its future. VoiceBox can make a positive difference for voice hearers. That matters to me. It also matters that you listen, put things in motion, and make changes.

I hope you haven't been holding your breath for a reply. If you have then you must be taking an air treatment with the NHS! My tardiness results from an act of folly taking the coming off paroxetine challenge to a level quite somewhere else. However you have already listened and helped me with this one. Admirably.

Thank you Sarah. I'll keep in touch!

Love A Catherine Wheel In The Certain Ages!

Response from Jane Danforth, Involvement & Experience Officer, Involvement, Experience and Volunteering Team, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust 6 years ago
Jane Danforth
Involvement & Experience Officer, Involvement, Experience and Volunteering Team,
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust

My role includes working with service users, carers, volunteers and staff to listen to your stories and feedback about care experiences. Working in partnership with Care Opinion is one way we gather feedback, meaning we find out what we do well and how you think we should improve. We really do want to hear from you and we reply to every story.

Submitted on 31/10/2018 at 15:55
Published on Care Opinion on 01/11/2018 at 11:09


picture of Jane Danforth

Dear Catherine Wheel In The Certain Ages!

I really like your comments about listening and making changes and the detail you have provided in your story. I can't re-iterate enough how important it is to share feedback as changes really can happen and you have proved this!

Like Sarah, I will also share this story with staff and on Twitter too.

Thanks for making my day!

Good luck for the future

Jane

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