RETIRING CHAIR Q&A
Highlights and challenges in an eventful 15 years
Last November’s ‘virtual’ Design in Mental Health Network 2020 AGM saw Jenny Gill, among the organisation’s longest-standing members, and the Network’s Chair since 2013, step down from both the role and the DiMHN Board. For this ‘question and answer’-style article, Jonathan Baillie, editor of The Network, asked her to reflect on her professional career, her experience as a service-user, and how it has guided her work as a healthcare planner, and some of her greatest challenges and achievements in a 15-year-long association with an organisation which has always striven to raise standards in mental healthcare settings, to the benefit of both services-users and staff.
JB: Jenny, Can you tell me a little about your own professional background and experience in the mental healthcare sphere, and your first introduction to the field?
JG: Training as a secretary in the late 1970s, my first job was in the medical secretariat at the local hospital. This was followed by a decade or two in the family travel business. Following the sale of the business, I moved back into health in the 1990s, working at the local health authority. During this time, I was fortunate enough to be funded by the (Calderdale and Kirklees) Health Authority to undertake and be awarded an MSc in Health and Social Care Management. During the decade I worked at the Health Authority it went through many changes, and I undertook many roles – from dealing with extra contractual referrals, to contract management and commissioning of services. My final role was as the National Service Framework manager for adult mental health for Huddersfield, an exciting time for mental health, when, finally, there was money available to improve services.
Work as a healthcare planner With the disestablishment of the HA in 2002, I started to look at my next move, and secured a position in the private sector as a healthcare planner, specialising in mental health. At the time I had little idea of what was entailed, but very soon I knew that I loved the work, from the strategic forward thinking, data crunching, and planning, to the ‘where next’. The design process, and the people on various teams, the satisfaction of being part of a design process working with clinicians and service-users and all the other disciplines working in a new facility – all of which resulted in an exemplar building – gave me a lot of satisfaction. Above all, I loved the continual learning, and exploring new ideas with different people from all over the country.
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Earlier in her career, Jenny Gill was funded by her local health authority to undertake and be awarded an MSc in Health and Social Care Management.
JB: I believe that at one stage you were a service-user yourself. Can you tell me a little bit about this, and do you believe your own experience has proven valuable in giving you additional ‘insight’ into what makes a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ service-user environment and experience? I’d imagine that you’d feel that taking into account ‘lived experience’ is an essential element in designing fit-for-purpose mental healthcare facilities?
First experience of depression JG: At the age of 15 I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital suffering with what was termed a ‘nervous breakdown’ in those days; severe depression accompanied by anxiety and anorexia. I was an inpatient on an adult ward (CAMHS services were few and far between in the late 1960s) for six months, receiving various treatments, including ECT. I struggled with depression,
requiring inpatient treatment for about eight years. While I realise now that I continued to experience depression, it didn’t reappear with any severity until 20 years later, when it was triggered by my son reaching 15, and again I disappeared into the depressive cycle, accompanied by anxiety and anorexia. This resulted in more inpatient admissions (although no further ECT), but with a referral to a clinical psychologist, which was the key to my recovery. Again, it took about eight years and many painful and disturbing sessions with the psychologist, but finally, in 2006, I was discharged, and I have been so fortunate not to have had a recurrence. Working through my issues has left me a very different person emotionally than I was before; it has given me self- confidence, I’m ‘comfortable’ in my own skin, and I enjoy life.
As you can imagine, there were massive differences between the environments from which services were delivered in the 1960s and 1970s and today. In those days it was a more ‘hospital’ environment, staff wore uniforms (that was good in that you knew who was staff and who were patients), accommodation was mainly in dormitories, medicine was administered from a trolley with everyone queuing up, lights went out at 10 pm, and if you weren’t up in time for breakfast, you’d missed it.
Reduced ligature not evident The furnishings were hospital-style beds; I don’t think we went in for very much reduced ligature at that time, chairs were all plastic – good for cleaning, but hot and uncomfortable in summer. Washing facilities were shared, and therapy – including the rooms used to deliver it – sparse. From my perspective, one of the good things was that the wards were single sex. Twenty years later wards were mixed sex, staff didn’t wear uniforms, and medicines were administered in the same
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