New mother starts new career at Rosewood Mother and Baby Unit

As we mark National Careers Week with our year-round recruitment campaigns and trust-wide training programmes, we caught up with Community Peer Support Practitioner Megan Grant, to find out about her new career with KMPT.

The national awareness week provides a focus for careers guidance across the UK and helps support young people develop awareness and excitement about their future pathways.  We are #KMPTProud to highlight how 34-year-old Megan’s experience as a former service user led to a career with the trust.

The new mum’s mental health was seriously affected by the birth of her son and the pandemic:  “The world was in lockdown which made my transition to motherhood feel almost impossible.  I had hit rock bottom, felt like a failure of a mother and simply could not see a way out.”

Megan was admitted to Rosewood Mother and Baby Unit in Dartford and after three months inpatient specialist perinatal mental health care and treatment she described:  “feeling not only wanting but needing to become part of this incredible sector that saved my life.”

Designed by mums for mums, Megan says the stay was ‘one of the best things that could have happened to me’, especially her sessions with an on-site Peer Support Practitioner, who very quickly ‘became a beacon of hope and allowed me to finally see some light at the end of the tunnel’.

An integral part of Rosewood’s on-site and community multi professional team, including nurses, social workers, therapists and doctors, are Peer Support Workers, who join a patient’s care team and use their lived experience of mental health problems to support the wellbeing of others.

Mothers are admitted with their babies and, after feeling well and being discharged, Megan volunteered to spend time at the unit:  “Re-visiting my old room and seeing all the staff again was an incredibly strong reminder of just how far I had come and proof that the same can and will happen to other mums.”

Today, Megan is a happy and healthy parent and employed by the trust as a Community Peer Support Practitioner; she uses her own experience and empathy to connect with, support and offer hope to new mothers, and their families, who are experiencing serious mental ill health.

Did you know that one in five women will experience a mental health problem during pregnancy or after birth?  Sadly, 70 per cent of them will not seek advice or support as they do not think it is important or do not want to be a burden.

These shocking statistics and her own lived-experience further compelled Megan to pursue a career with KMPT.  The support, guidance and training she continues to receive from the Trust since becoming part of the team gives her the confidence to look forward to a long and rewarding career helping others and providing inspiration for recovery.

Find out more about Rosewood Mother and Baby Unit.