Meet Emily Young, our Wellbeing Co-Ordinator, this Mental Health Awareness Week

We are supporting Mental Health Awareness Week and what better time to introduce you to our Employee & Volunteer Wellbeing Co-Ordinator!

Name and job title

Emily Young, Employee & Volunteer Wellbeing Coordinator

If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

Passionate, enthusiastic, caring

How did you come to work at Myton?

I was looking for a part-time venture to work alongside my private work as an Anxiety Coach.

I was eager to use my wellbeing skills more widely at the same time as giving back within a context where I could make a difference.

The Myton Hospices was the perfect fusion.

If you had to describe Myton in three words, what would they be?

Positive, friendly, nurturing.

What does your role entail?

My role is to coordinate the wellbeing provision across Myton to ensure that our staff and volunteers wellbeing needs are supported.

I am involved in researching, designing and devising wellbeing initiatives that support the wellbeing needs of our staff and volunteers, dovetailing with national campaigns where appropriate and networking with other hospices and wellbeing functions to ensure best practice.

I provide support with bespoke wellbeing needs brought to my attention where needed and provide wellbeing coaching and anxiety support if required.

Together with my line manager Tom Marston and other colleagues, I provide training for line managers on how to sustain wellbeing in their teams, hold wellbeing conversations and create wellbeing plans.

What is one thing about Wellness and Wellbeing that you wish everyone knew?

It’s about the WHOLE individual, wellbeing does not just stop at physical health, it’s about understanding and seeing the whole person in a holistic way that includes physical, mental, social, financial wellbeing to name a few.

Why is it important to consider Wellbeing in the workplace and personal life?

People come to work to do a role, yet sometimes other aspects of being a human being can affect them.

By taking time to see and understand the whole person, we are better able to support them to feel their best selves.

Whether it’s by listening, signposting to internal and external sources of support or being flexible.

Our lives are busy and sometimes it is important to stop, tune in to notice how we feel in our minds and bodies and in doing so increase our self-awareness as to what we need.

In an organisation such as Myton, having space to reflect and process a day can really help wellbeing remain at an optimum.

What project are you working on right now that you’re really excited about?

Mental Health Awareness Week is this week and I am super excited about what we have planned.

As an Anxiety Coach I am really pleased that the Mental Health Foundation have chosen Anxiety as their theme this year!

What is a skill you’d like to learn and why?

How to crochet, I get so tangled! I want to make a funky cardigan out of granny squares.

If you could have dinner with anyone, dead or alive, who would you pick and why?

My Nan, I miss her stories, her bacon sandwiches and her zest for life.

What would be on the menu?

Bacon sandwich, nan style

If you could travel to any event past, present or future, what would it be and why?

PRESENT HERE and NOW.

A bit of a boring response maybe. Let me explain why.

As an Anxiety Coach I work very much with people to be in the moment fully engaged with their senses in the moment they are in.

We miss so much of life by focusing on what might happen, or by ruminating on what has happened.

Life happens now and anxiety hates the present moment it needs thoughts about the past or future to survive.

So NOW is my friend.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I enjoy spending time with my teenagers who are teaching me a lot about life especially anything technical!

I like to run, sew and ride my motorbike – a funny combination I know!