Sharing the Load at The DPJ Foundation

Kate, Emma & Kay of the DPJ Foundation

At our next Powys Agri Wellbeing Support network meeting in September we will welcome Kate Miles, the new Charity Manager at farming charity The DPJ Foundation, to the group.

The DPJ Foundation was set up in Pembrokeshire in July 2016 following the death of agricultural contractor Daniel Picton-Jones. Daniel’s suicide rocked the community, and his wife Emma realised very quickly the lack of support that was available for those struggling with poor mental health in rural communities. Over the past four years the charity has grown to cover the whole of Wales, providing bespoke counselling services to farmers under the banner Share the Load, and mental health awareness training sessions to an increasing number of organisations working in this sector.

Kate started work with the charity just a few weeks ago, but is already settling in to her now role, as we found out when we caught up recently.

What is your role at The DPJ Foundation?

I'm the charity manager, so that covers the financial management, the marketing and business development, liaison with funders, potential funders, and partners and volunteer management. I also manage Kay Helyar, our new training manager, who works part-time and who’ll be delivering our training. I'm also the ultimate “troubleshooter” if there are safeguarding queries or concerns around the service. 

Kate Miles, DPJ Foundation's charity manager

Tell us more about the service you offer at The DPJ Foundation

There are three main strands to our service:

1. Awareness raising 

We have largely done this through social media (Facebook and Twitter). So every day we post an uplifting message with an agricultural related photo to make people aware of the telephone number for our Share the Load service. We also do talks in Young Farmers’ Clubs, Round Table, smallholders and various other groups of various descriptions. We are about to launch a campaign that ran successfully last year calling for knitters to knit bobble hats for us that we can sell to raise funds as well as raising awareness of our work.

2. Mental Health Awareness training 

We've recently concluded six sessions online. So we were delivering face-to-face training, but we've now moved to online delivery due to the pandemic which has positives and negatives. We find that the dropout rate is higher, but it means that we can obviously run a lot more sessions and potentially reach far more people.

3. Share the Load – counselling service

This is the main strand. Share the Load is our 24/7 call line (0800 587 4262) and we also operate by text. It's staffed by volunteers who have received training from the Samaritans and they provide a listening service initially. Some of these calls will then lead to referrals to a counsellor. People should receive contact within 24 to 48 hours from a qualified counsellor to make an appointment for a meeting within a week. We will offer as many sessions as that person needs but six is our core offer and generally most are concluded within that period. 

We have a panel of counsellors across Wales. Some are able to offer counselling in Welsh as well as in English, some are able to work with under 18s. 

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training for the volunteers

Do you work with children?

Generally, no. We would only do that if the school counselling hasn't worked or isn’t an option. That would be our first route because there's funded counselling already in place and also in terms of the holistic well-being for that individual it is quite important that the whole system is there in place to support them.

Saying that, we do have some counsellors who are able to work with younger people and we have some who are also able to offer support online and / or by text. But in general it's the face-to-face counselling although obviously a lot of this has switched to telephone during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Where does the face-to-face counselling take place?

We try to work with the individual. So if they want that counselling to take place on their farm, for example, then we have counsellors who can provide outreach and will do that. It might be that it's at a neutral location or it might be at the usual rooms that the counsellor uses. We try to make it as accessible as possible for the individual so that they will take up the counselling that is on offer and get the help they need.

Our counsellors are registered with the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy (or other accredited bodies). So they've all been through the training. They are paid counsellors who have their own qualifications and insurance.

Tell us about the Regional Champions

As well as the 20 - 26 volunteers who staff the Share the Load helpline we have about the same number of Regional Champion volunteers, who are our eyes and ears on the ground in the community, including several in Powys. So for example they're making sure that there's a poster up in the local pub or feed merchants through to giving talks and collecting donations, but again, their role has changed during the pandemic because they're not able to get out and about in the same way. But equally as a lot of them are farmers, they are out and about because they are key workers, so they're still working. 

Fundraising presentation

Do the counsellors offer practical as well as mental health support?

Just mental health. There are organisations like Tir Dewi, the Farming Community Network and RABI who offer practical and financial support. If somebody's looking for practical help then we would signpost to one of those other organisations. When someone accesses our service we send a welcome email which includes a list of useful contact telephone numbers including the above organisations and others such as the NHS CALL helpline and Farmwell.

What are some of the key themes coming out of the counselling sessions?

Obviously the counselling sessions themselves are totally confidential. Broadly speaking though we have seen during the lockdown an increase in the number of young people accessing our service. And I think that's been echoed with other mental health services from what I can gather. There's been a lot of negative chatter on social media around young people breaking the lockdown whereas, in fact, there's been a lot of good work done by young people as well. So a young person I imagine could feel quite got at throughout this time really.

Then physical health problems can have an impact on mental health, perhaps even leading to self-harm. I also know we've now provided domestic violence training for all our volunteers on the basis that we were seeing an increase in these cases.

The farming community is often regarded as ‘hard-to-reach’. What are you doing differently to engage so successfully?

We are very focused on the industry and we try to use people within that community. Many of our volunteers come from a farming background whilst others are from a mental health background. They have an understanding of the community. Also some people who've accessed our service tend to become advocates for us – they share their story as they want others to benefit as they have.

It's really important to be where farmers are and that might be their home, it might be their farm or where they actually go to trade. To reach everybody we need to be in all those. Social media is great because it reaches people who are on social media, but there's a large demographic that aren't and so it's trying then to use more traditional means. So for example, we've got the bale stickers which are popping up across Wales at the moment and it's about drip feeding the message so that people who want help almost can't say they don't know where to go. 

A DPJ Foundation training session

How does the mental health awareness training fit into the overall picture?

We've probably reached around a thousand people in total since we've been in existence over the last four years. So people will be aware of different types of mental health disorder and have a very initial introduction to suicide and suicide prevention. And our real objective is that they come away feeling more ready to have conversations with other people about their mental health, but also we include a section about keeping themselves safe and how to look after their own mental health. So it's almost like a preventative session in some respects.

We're training people who are working in that farming community, so Young Farmers’ Clubs, vets, Animal Health officers, feed reps, etc. Hopefully after the training they feel able and equipped to have a conversation with somebody, or leave one of our flyers on a kitchen table, or know to ask our advice about what steps to take next. We would love to be even more successful and we really want to be in a position where everybody knows that we exist (although we aren't quite there yet). 

Many thanks to Kate for telling us all about her new role at The DPJ Foundation. 

If you want to find out more, or are interested in volunteering, you can contact Kate by emailing kate@thedpjfoundation.co.uk or ringing 07984 169 652.