Nicholas’ Service update
Helpful Hours
Both of our Helpful Hours topics were available this month as webinars. We welcomed more registrations than ever before, with almost 40 attendees across both ‘audiology’ and ‘healthcare’ sessions.
Feedback has been really positive with an overall 4.70 approval rating out of 5⭐ for both subjects. The content has been really appreciated by our audience, so huge thanks to Helen and Emmanuelle for this month’s presentations.
If you haven’t seen the two webinars, there’s still time to sign up for a December session – Helpful Hours Webinars – Registration. ‘How to get the most from your audiology appointment’ runs on Wednesday 4 December and ‘Managing your healthcare with hearing loss’ on Monday 16 December.
I hope you get something from the sessions, but also, I’d love to get your thoughts on delivering the webinars. The content of each slide is written, but how they are presented is down to each peer support volunteer and their lived experience of the subject. The more presenters we have, the more stories we can tell. I look forward to reading what you think!
Community Outreach
Another successful month in the community, with five out of the six planned sessions going ahead by the time we sent this update.
It’s so good we can create and support these opportunities for the peer support volunteers to engage with their local communities and organisations.
Catherine, from the Edinburgh community session, explains that one visitor stayed chatting for over an hour and a half and the session became a: “beginners guide to everything hearing loss and hearing aids.”
The volunteers patiently talked through hearing aid instructions and features and explained the benefits of lipreading. The visitor mentioned she struggled with technology, but had a friend who could help her, and she left the session with enough leaflets for both of them. Before she left, she commented on how nice it was to speak to someone who didn’t make her “feel stupid.”
Huge thanks once again to all the volunteers ‘out there’ in community!
Helpdesk
Over 40% of the cases have been about hearing aids, hearing loops, or technology. As with the example in the community outreach session, it shows once again that while great strides are being made in the technical aspects of hearing, some people really appreciate checking the information they have had and equally, really value the explanations of people who have a similar lived experience.
With still a week to go before the end of the month, the Helpdesk has had 21 cases opened in the month and 14 different volunteers have been involved in the replies.
LinkUp Support Groups
This month, our LinkUp support group made a welcome return to Cookstown, Northern Ireland. We welcomed 11 participants to this event, which ran for one day.
All the aspects of our LinkUp support were covered from storytelling, to breakout group questions, and specific sessions on audiology and technology.
Holly said “ An enormous thank you and well done to Sue, Craig, Martin, and Lisa for all your hard work during the LinkUp Group. It was a huge success, everyone who came was engaged and the story telling section went brilliantly with lots of stories being shared and lots of connections being made. I look forward to sharing the photos and feedback from the participants with you very soon”.
It has been a fantastic calendar year of LinkUp support across the UK. A huge thank you to everyone involved.
Peer support volunteer, Martin, added, “Sue, Lisa and Craig did a fantastic job of setting it all up as I arrived after work just in time for the evening meal. This definitely works in gelling everyone before the next day, and it also helps in getting an earlier start to the proceedings on the Saturday.
“Storytelling went well and the breakout sessions got lots of information written up. There was a willingness from everyone to get something from the weekend, and I think the agenda worked well. Sometimes less can be better in terms of group participation. Technology and audiology sessions always prove to be popular!”
Holly added: “Thank you to all our peer support volunteers and staff who have been a part of the LinkUp Groups this year. They have all run so smoothly and we have had some brilliant feedback from our participants. Many have been positively impacted by the weekend, allowing them to make new friends or achieve new goals”.
Look out for photographs from our Northern Ireland group on social media soon.
Teams
Great to see so many peer support volunteers on the Teams Channel again this month.
Lots of interesting content, including hearing loss communication tips for Christmas from the BBC.
To survey opportunities, including this one from the University of St Andrews.
Check in regularly for more news and comments!