Kelly is a truly amazing nurse and care coordinator. She is so kind, calm, compassionate, and caring she has made an enormous difference in my experience of mental health services and my well-being. Kelly became my care coordinator in May after I had experienced some quite distressing difficulties with services and professionals, and a brief stint under the CRHTT, in the first year of the aftermath of my dad taking his own life. This would be a challenging time for any young adult, and for me is particularly complicated by complex prior traumatic experiences and attachment difficulties. My quite severe difficulties with attachment are particularly triggered in the context of caring relationships, which can make forming and maintaining therapeutic relationships difficult.

I can display some quite challenging behaviours at times when triggered, but rather than sending me away and re-enforcing my belief that I am bad and will be left when vulnerable, Kelly has really stood by me since she took over. Even though I’ve only known her 3 months, she seems to know me and my triggers really well and in part, I think that’s because of how much she listens to me with an open mind, rather than pre-judging me based on what she thinks my behaviours might mean - given I do go non-verbal quite a lot when triggered, that can understandably be a challenge!

Before seeing Kelly, I had extremely little trust in the AMHT - I didn’t think they would be able to help me, I felt left alone and my needs were entirely not met. It can be extremely difficult to build positive and helpful therapeutic relationships with my context, but Kelly is showing me how it can work. She is the only mental health clinician who I really feel has sat with me through the difficult feelings after my dad’s suicide - she hasn’t avoided it, ignored it, or stopped me talking about it; instead, she’s been brave enough to sit with me through it, and for that, I’m monumentally grateful