Hello Friends of Sporting Chance,
As a way of introduction, I’m Alison, a trained counsellor working as a therapist in the Sporting Chance clinical team. My main areas of work fall under the remit of the clinical department including holding a client caseload, assessment and treatment planning across our stakeholder referral pathways, complex case management and generally trying to be helpful to the triage and residential teams as they need me!
I also support the Education team in creating and delivering clinically led education content. This has been an area of development for Sporting Chance over the last 18 months and it’s been an exciting time to be involved with the expansion of education material that is based in clinical expertise and is relevant and tailored to the sporting context.
One of our main growth areas has been in developing mental health education for staff of sporting organisations, beyond performance or player facing staff. Over the last year we have been involved in developing e-learning modules for the FA, and practical skills sessions for supporting mental health in the workplace within Premier League clubs. Sporting Chance is very well placed to further develop staff training as we find it marries together our clinical expertise in mental health with our very specific understanding of what it means to work for a sporting organisation and all of the particular pressures and expectations in these environments.
To meet growing interest in this area, we have recently completed a comprehensive recruitment process to bring on board seven therapists from across the country to develop and deliver innovative staff training. We had huge interest in these positions and the standard was very high. The seven therapists who form this initial pool have a huge amount of expertise in mental health, delivering education and training and working within the sporting environment – many have been working with Sporting Chance as part of our therapist network for years.
We are absolutely delighted to have them onboard; they are a huge asset to the Education department. From my perspective I am very happy to now have a bigger team to be working with, to share and develop ideas. We look forward to updating you as this project develops!
Alison