We are off to a mental health Professional Development Workshop in Kampala!

On-going professional development is hugely important in any profession and perhaps even more so when those professionals often feel isolated by working alone and far from others. Bringing practitioners together allows not only the development of knowledge, skills and understanding but also the building of new support networks.

Jamie’s Fund is proud to again be sponsoring a professional development workshop in at the National Psychiatric Hospital at Butabika in Kampala in September 2019. This follows last year’s very successful inaugural workshop.  This is a helpful location as it is reasonably central and also some of the tutors will also be from the government services.  The programme is being led by Joshua Ssebunnya. Joshua is a well-known psychologist with many publications to his name, and he is based at Butabika.  We are fortunate to have his support.

We are greatly encouraged that so far, we have 28 people coming from 17 different hospitals or health centres, across Uganda.  We are also delighted to be welcoming one isolated member of staff just over the north-western border from Arua in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Many of those attending are staff we have been working with over the past few years, but others we will be meeting for the first time.

Generous donations have covered about three quarters of the cost of the workshop, but we are still looking for a further thousand pounds or so.  If you are able to contribute please either e-mail info@jamiesfund.co.uk or go to the donation page and say your donation is for the workshop.

While we are in Uganda we intend to make the most of being there and to visit as many hospitals and health centres as we can.  This will enable us to see where people are based, to understand local issues and concerns and to develop relationships.  Also, and perhaps most importantly, it is encouraging for staff who can feel isolated to be encouraged and affirmed in the vital work they are doing.  Excitingly, the number of hospitals and health centres to visit has doubled as we have recently been made welcome to build the relationships with those run by the Catholic church in addition to the 12 we already work with affiliated to the Anglican Church of Uganda.

This increase in the number of locations will further stretch our slim resources but it will also means that we are supporting a much wider network of hospitals and health centres. This will further strengthen the support network that is already developing. We believe that as the network develops the hospitals and mental health staff in each area can do more to support and encourage each other.  Please click for a map of all the places we are in contact with.

Three of the Jamie’s Fund team are going to Uganda on this occasion: Linda Shuttleworth & Maureen and Ewan Wilkinson.  We are also delighted to be joined by Dr Simon Tavernor, a consultant psychiatrist in the UK who is considering working with Jamie’s Fund.

Maureen and Ewan Wilkinson will be writing a blog during their visit to Uganda and you are welcome to follow what they are up to here.

Ewan Wilkinson

A LEGEND RETIRES!

Nancy Mwebesa

Psychiatric Clinical Officer Nancy Mwebesa was given a memorable send-off by her friends and colleagues at Kisiizi Hospital at the end of June. After a lifetime working in Ugandan healthcare, Nancy is taking a well-deserved retirement. She won’t be going too far away, however, as we hear that she is going to make her home in Mbarara town, a couple of hours up the road. When we spoke with Nancy about retirement plans during our recent November visit, she was looking forward to the next phase in life, and having more time for her church, her garden, for friends, and for her handicrafts.

Some of us have known Nancy since 2010, our first trip to Kisiizi, to explore the possibility of a mental health partnership between Kisiizi Hospital and Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Trust.

At that time, Nancy began to tell us something of her story, which began with how she had come to undertake Psychiatric Clinical Officer training at Butabika, the National Mental Hospital in Kampala. She had completed it 3 years previously, which allowed the first PCO, Yusufu Kuule, to leave for Kampala to study Community Psychology at Makerere University. Nancy had started work as a young woman as a Nursing Assistant, but soon realised that she was capable of more, and trained as an enrolled nurse, and then as a registered general nurse. Her compassion for the mentally ill led her to further training and she finally qualified as a Registered Mental Health Nurse. Training is individually costly in time, effort and money, and she had hoped that was an end of it, but was persuaded that there was a need for her to train as a PCO. Reluctantly, she uprooted to Kampala with her children, to live in a rented room in the city for the two years, in very impoverished circumstances. However, she embraced every training opportunity offered with enthusiasm, and was obviously appreciated by her tutors for her ability and motivation.

As we got to know each other better, later in the visit, she told us of the earlier difficulties she had had to overcome in her long journey. She had 4 children, the middle ones being twins, and when the youngest was very small, her husband left her to take up a relationship with a much younger cousin, with whom he has remained and now has 9 children by. Nancy and he separated. Nancy was devastated, almost wanting to vanish from the face of the earth.

Later, she further told us of how as a child she used to blame her parents for her weak leg, but eventually realised they had done their best to seek treatment for her. (An injection for a skin infection had gone wrong and caused a wasting paralysis of the limb, which never fully recovered.) She did not start school until she was 12, through her parents’ worry and protectiveness of her. They feared that the long walk to school would be too much for her. Her father didn’t expect her to attend beyond Primary 3, but Nancy’s determination took her much further. Even at retirement, she also credits her father’s pride, love and encouragement for what she has achieved in life.

Nancy has talked to us about her willingness to tell her story. She says that it shows others that they are not alone, that recovery is possible, and that it is good not to dwell on or blame the past, but to find ways of moving on. An inspiring woman, Nancy Mwebesa.