Rosie Axon and her colleagues at Chiltern Music Therapy will explore how moving away from the 9-5 and traditional hierarchies in the workplace can improve your wellbeing and enable you better care for yourself and others.

Improving your work / life balance is a phrase people are considering more and more, given the recent blurring of work and home life boundaries due to the pandemic. In a country with an aging demographic, workers in all sectors may find themselves caring for families, older parents or children alongside their usual work schedule.

How does this impact your mental health or ability to self-care? Does your employer truly care about caring for its employees? In the health and care sectors, this dual responsibility of caring at home, whilst caring for others at work can have a drastic impact on well-being. 1 in 6.8 people experience mental health problems in the workplace, and women in full-time employment are nearly twice as likely to have a common mental health problem.

Yet, being cared for by your employer (above and beyond small changes to the working day or hours) is often seen as a luxury in workplace benefits, despite evidence that better support for mental health at work could save UK businesses up to £8 billion per year. If you were able to change just a few things in your workplace or within your working life, would you be able to look after yourself and your needs, as well as caring for those around you? What would you need to feel cared for?

This open conversation will explore how an innovative organisational structure has enabled one company to truly care for and about its employees. Chiltern Music Therapy is a self-managing and employee owned non-profit with 51 staff. Over the past two years, they have worked hard to create a collaborative and caring operational system which is inclusive, regardless of personal circumstance.

The journey isn’t yet finished and this conversation with the team will see staff members discuss how the change to self-management has impacted their work-life balance and enabled them to give greater care to those they support as well as those at home.

The dialogue will allow the audience to experience being part of a self-managing team and will challenge them to explore how small changes to their working life or suggestions for their employers could improve their mental health, and ability to care for themselves and others.

Speaker:

Rosie Axon, ARU Music Therapy graduate, founded Chiltern Music Therapy in 2011 with another ARU graduate Helen Bartlett, having previously worked at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability and Hertfordshire NHS Trust. As a certified Neurologic Music Therapist, MATADOC assessor and Neonatal Intensive Care Music Therapist, she is an advocate for continuing professional development for Music Therapists, passionate about collaboration and joint-working with other health professionals and committed to furthering evidence-based practice within the field. She is also a Partner for the Health and Care Professions Council.

Twitter: @rosieaxon LinkedIn: Rosie Axon

Event presented as part of Mental Health Awareness Week.