What I’ve learned whilst helping charities to improve their support services
I often work with a wide variety of charities and healthcare organisations to improve their support services. I’ve collated some common themes and insights from projects with organisations like Rape Crisis, Prostate Cancer, Breast Cancer Now, British Heart Foundation, the NHS, Crohn's and Colitis UK and many more.
Here are some of the common themes and insights:
1. People are often really worried about taking up someone’s time and they may feel like others may need the support more than them. This can be a large barrier to people reaching out for support that they need and want.
It can be important to reassure people that this is why the charity or organisation exists to help support people like themselves and that they aren’t taking up time from anyone else. This barrier has been made worse over the last few years as people are very worried about taking up time from the overstretched NHS.
2. Sometimes support emails and messages can be triggering; it’s important for people to have control about when they might receive them.
Providing trigger warnings and enabling people to plan when they are going to get emailed or called about support can be really helpful. Being caught of guard by an unexpected email or message about something very sensitive can be really hard for people to manage.
These are just a few of the things that I’m noticing whilst helping a wide range of charities to improve their support services. Do reach out if you are looking to make improvements to your services, it would be great to chat!
3. Sometimes charities are helping people in more ways than they realise. The impact of sharing a post on social media that helps people to feel validated and seen can be huge, it’s very hard to measure this impact but I’ve often heard how important this can be for people.
Seeing similar stories and experiences represented across social media can really help people not to feel alone and it can make it easier for people to want to talk to friends and families about what they are going through. I’ve often heard how impactful it can be when celebs and well-known figures talk about things like Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer and Miscarriage.
4. So many people get so much out of helping others, it can often be a large part of someone’s healing process.
I often get told by participants at the end of research chats how nice it was for them to be able to share their story, be listened to and have the opportunity to help improve the experience for others in the future. I’ve also seen across multiple projects how much people jump at the opportunity to more formally provide peer support and give back to charities by helping others.