How our Healthwatch Sefton Manager is coping working safely from home!

Some of you may know me. My name is Diane and I am the manager at Healthwatch Sefton.

Since Friday 20th March, I have been working safely from home. With a daughter back from Brighton University, a 13 year old daughter not in school, a husband still in work and Bella, my gorgeous Old Tyme Bulldog, working from home didn’t sound too complicated.

That’s until, you have meetings!!! Email invitations to meetings using online platforms like Zoom, Skype and Microsoft Teams were coming through to my inbox and that’s when things got complicated. You don’t think about how an open plan house could impact on your work. Previously on the odd occasion when I worked from home, I would choose a quiet spot and set up the laptop but where do you go when Bella starts barking during a meeting at the postman or your husband decides to set up the power hose to clean anything that could possibly be cleaned in the back garden!

One day, it got to the point when I thought, right, the bedroom may be the best place to set up for a meeting with Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. So the meeting is going ahead, without the usual internet glitches, when suddenly the street is filled with the blaring of car horns; family members coming to wish a neighbour ‘Happy Birthday’. Desperately trying to find the mute button on the ipad, other people at the meeting were trying to work out what the noise was.  Just as I was apologising, still not being able to locate how to mute the audio, happy birthday was blasted from one of the car stereos. I was asked to point my ipad out of the window so everyone could have a look!! How embarrassing.

Now that I am in my 11th week of home working you should see me, I am a pro at this virtual meeting thing, not!

One of the great things about using these online platforms is being able to see other members of my team, other colleagues and also our wonderful volunteers.  Last week we held our second coffee morning for volunteers past and present and they have been a great success in keeping us all in touch. Its lovely to see so many friendly faces. Our volunteers help us with our Enter and View visits, attend meetings to represent us and support us with engagement stands at local hospitals. We are only a small staff team and without them we would not be able to engage as widely as we do. As its national volunteer week, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of our amazing volunteers for all the support you give to the team and to thank our community members who have signed up as a Healthwatch member.

Anyway enough from me…. I am off to set up our next virtual volunteer coffee morning… wish me luck.

PS. Don’t forget we have 10 amazing volunteer opportunities still available, why don’t you apply to be one of our locality representatives : http://hwsefton.dev.onpressidium.com/exciting-volunteer-roles-that-make-a-difference/