Olivia & Holly's volunteer placement with us!
They were a fantastic addition to our team and spent their time carrying out vital research for us as well as attending engagement events with our Community and Engagements officer, Andrea.
We asked them both what they had thought about their time with us and what they had gained from the experience. These were their thoughts in their own words:
Olivia
“I have really enjoyed my time at Healthwatch Rotherham! The team is so welcoming and helpful and I was allowed to research issues and concepts that I am really interested in, and produce resources in these areas. I also loved attending engagements, I became more confident and was able to talk to a variety of people about their experiences within a Healthcare setting, as well as just learning about their lives. It is so important to meet people and learn about their experiences first hand. University helps you learn the theoretical foundations, but interacting with people allows you to develop new skills that can't be taught in a classroom.”
Pros:
The team is very nice! From the moment I was placed with this organisation they made me feel comfortable and answered any questions that I had. They also allowed me to do work in areas that I was interested in which I really enjoyed and found very interesting. We had regular check ins, so if we ever had a question or were confused with anything then they’d be answered straight away. There was a mixture of in person events and also working from home which really worked for me as it meant I could fit my university work around my placement. This was super helpful for me as I can get stressed easily and overwhelmed, but because of how kind and welcoming everyone was, I was not stressed or overwhelmed!
Cons:
I don’t have any! All my questions were answered during placement and the team made sure that we were able to do research we were interested in. I have really enjoyed my time at Healthwatch Rotherham.
How did your placement benefit your studies?
Working alongside the Healthwatch team enabled me to put theories into practice. During university you learn about mental health conditions, issues within the NHS etc. but you never get to see it first hand. Through engagements, I was able to understand the effects of how mental health and NHS support can really benefit a person, but more importantly how the lack of support can really negatively impact a person’s life. Learning about individual’s stories (instead of being taught figures) really helped me understand how serious some issues are, and I always tried to empathise during lectures but had not been able to have that face to face understanding, and now that I have, those figures are no longer figures but are people’s lives and stories.
As well as engagements, we wrote reports for the Healthwatch team. I think this was my favourite part of my placement as I love learning about new things and we were given topics I would never have researched. Writing reports further developed my academic writing which will transfer into future reports and essays. I also learnt how to take notes effectively, by this I mean there was a lot of information available online and I needed to quickly decide which websites were reliable and accurate, as well as deciding which information presented was appropriate to put within the report.
How did your placement benefit your future prospects within a Healthcare profession?
I learnt a lot of skills that I will be able to use within a Healthcare profession. I grew my confidence and was able to interact with a variety of people, making them feel comfortable enough to open up about their lives and any Healthcare issues they were experiencing. As well as this, I think now I am able to select what parts of the conversation are relevant to the job I am doing. I listened to everything that was said, and I learnt how to respond carrying on the conversation but at the same time being mentally aware that important information was said and that needed to be documented later. I was also able to write reports/resources, and I learnt how to change my academic writing style depending on the desired audience. For example, I wrote a report about the maternity services within Rotherham which was very formal and academic as I was reporting figures and needed to ensure specific information was portrayed. On the other hand, I was able to produce a powerpoint on eating disorders and body image, which we made more accessible and easier to read and understand. I was able to ensure the important information was written down but it was in an easier to read format. I really want to work within a children’s healthcare setting in the future and so this skill will be super helpful as I will need to be able to switch between the different writing styles.
Holly
“Being on placement at Healthwatch Rotherham has been amazing! Being able to go out into the community and find out what people’s experiences of healthcare services have been has been really eye opening and it’s been great just hearing stories about people’s lives and their own experiences in general, especially as you can’t really have these experiences sitting in a lecture hall. Also, the team at Healthwatch Rotherham have been amazing. Whether I‘m on an engagement or working online at home, they have been incredible in checking in and making sure everything has been going great and it’s been great to see how much this team is invested in helping the citizens of Rotherham’s voice be heard.”
Pros:
During my time at Healthwatch, I had an amazing experience working with an incredible team who are invested in helping improve health services for the community. It has been incredibly fun and insightful to go on outreach with the community to find out more about the challenges that different groups of people face in terms of healthcare and gave me a unique insight into various issues that I had never considered before. It was really exciting to be able to write up some of the comments I gathered from the community, in hopes that it might help policymakers make positive changes that can impact lives.
Furthermore, the staff have been absolutely amazing and always making sure we were comfortable and checking in on us, making me feel like a valued member of the team. There was a mixture of in person engagements with the community and doing research and training online which has been great as this flexibility has helped me be able to juggle my work for university and dissertation with my work for my placement.
Cons:
The only con I think I have found is that travelling to placement can be challenging especially as it can take 1-2 hours through using a combination of trams, trains and buses to get to our destinations. However, despite the travel times, I believe it was a great experience regardless as it helped me be able to engage with lots of groups that I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise without travelling. Overall I have very much enjoyed my time at Healthwatch.
How did your placement benefit your studies?
As a Psychology student, this placement has given me the opportunity to talk to a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and with different special needs. Talking with these people has given me experiences that have helped me to understand and apply my knowledge about various disorders in real life, especially about what challenges they are facing today. Hearing these stories from people who have walked different paths in lives has really helped me understand how people can have completely different experiences and be able to connect with stories that I’ve never previously had any experiences with. Instead of looking at figures and understanding theories, these stories helped me understand how these experiences can really impact lives and how much of an emotional impact they can really have.
Also this placement has helped me work more on my academic research skills as we were asked to write several reports from how self-esteem, body image and eating disorder impact mental health to how waiting times for assessments impact disorders such as ADHD and autism. While researching I needed to find relevant information and write it in a non-academic way within a certain time frame, which is something I had never really done before, and helped me be able to develop my research and writing skills to be able to convey information in a way that would be accessible and easy to understand for the general public.
How did your placement benefit your future prospects within a Healthcare profession?
In terms of future prospects, after I graduate I am planning to do a masters in speech and language therapy and hopefully continue on to become a SLT in the future. Similar to how it impacts my studies, this placement has helped give me the opportunity to find out and understand more about people with special needs. In particular, when researching waiting times for people wanting to be assessed with an ADHD and autism diagnosis, I got the opportunity to consider issues that I haven’t before such as how difficult the long waiting times for assessments made the lives for those who needed that diagnosis to help gain further support and help at school and at work and how that could impact their access to support with other mental health concerns. Additionally, the engagements we’ve had with the community have been fantastic. At one of the engagements to Rotherham Minister, we engaged with a group of individuals with neurological disorders such as autism which has been brilliant as I very invested in helping individuals with special needs and that particular opportunity was really helpful for me to find out more about the community and the challenges they are facing today especially in healthcare.
