Mental Health Awareness Week: What we did

Diana McLeish, Executive Director of Scullion Law and specialist in marketing, business development and community engagement, shares how the firm celebrated Mental Health Awareness Week this year, focusing on one of the firm's core values, Care.

Our people are our greatest asset and their mental wellbeing is of the utmost importance to us at Scullion Law. Care is one of our core values: care for our self, care for our colleagues, care for our clients, care for the community and care for the environment. With a focus on self care, this is how we marked Mental Health Awareness Week.

Self care / wellbeing workshop

At the end of April, in preparation of the month ahead, we had a team show and welcomed transformational life coach Francesca Del Ballo to one of our team meetings. She shared hints and tips on self care and provided each member of the team with a toolbox to use if or when they feel anxious, overwhelmed, stressed, lonely or down.

She explained how to overcome feelings of self doubt and made us aware of things like imposter syndrome. She shared useful mindfulness hints and tips and encouraged us all to do more of what makes us happy.

We had an open table discussion (30 of us over Zoom) to share what we do to relieve stress and unwind. It was brilliant to hear things as simple as: spending time with friends and family, walking dogs, being in nature, wild swimming, running, listening to music, reading and dancing. During lockdown people have refocused what it’s most important to them: mainly health, happiness and general well-being. Many have tapped back into hobbies they’ve not explored for years such as painting, cooking and even hula hooping. 

Mental wellbeing surveys 

We are working closely with everyone in the team and regularly checking up with them via surveys and confidential feedback forms to ensure that they are doing ok.

LawCare 

We also have raised internal awareness of LawCare for anyone struggling.

Support network of coaches therapists and counsellors

We work with an established network of coaches, therapists and counsellors available upon request. We also offer this to all new clients who receive a complimentary 20-minute call. Thereafter, they can arrange the next steps directly. 

Working from home 

As the majority of our team continue to work from home, we ensure that we stay as regularly connected as possible: we have a firm-wide Whatsapp group (not obligatory to join). Plus we have regular lunchtime catch ups where people just connect/ chat, as well as monthly shows and weekly meetings. We have even met up for some socially distanced walks and a few of the team meet up at weekends to go for runs.

It’s very important to us all to take breaks throughout the day and get fresh air. We will continue to operate a blended working model to accommodate people who enjoy working from home as well as others who prefer to be in the office. The health and safety of all of our team is of the utmost importance to us.