Not-for-profit organisation offering FREE high-quality coaching support for key NHS and care workers directly impacted by COVID-19

For key worker participants

If you’re thinking about receiving FREE coaching via our initiative:

• Read our FAQ’s to find out more about coaching
• Read feedback from previous participants
• Watch a video from Ciara, a consultant anesthetist who received some coaching, to hear about her experience.
• Click HERE to sign up for your free coaching

Once we’ve received your application, you’ll hear directly from your coach as soon as possible to set up your first session.

Diversity and inclusion: We welcome applications from key workers from all departments and backgrounds who have been, or are, directly impacted by COVID-19, including BAME, LGBTQ+ and people with disabilities.

If, for any reason, the chemistry with your coach isn’t quite right you’ll have an opportunity to work with a different coach at any point, and sessions will be held at your own convenience. You can stop whenever you feel the time is right or continue with more than 6 sessions if you’d like to.

For organisations including trusts

If you think people working within your organisation could benefit from Coaching Through COVID, we’d welcome a conversation with you to discuss how we can bring the programme to you.

For example, you may have direct contact with staff who could benefit, or you may wish to explore the role of champions in engaging colleagues in the programme.  We’re keen to collaborate with you so that together we can bring this support to more of those who need it.

We’re aware that, regardless of whether or when there is another COVID surge, the experience staff have already had may leave a long tail, and that wellbeing, and capacity to resource oneself will have a direct relationship to compassionate leadership, self-compassion, and effectiveness – and thus to patient care and safety.  Our coaching is intended to serve those directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and includes those who have worked, or are currently working, in COVID-infected zones in acute trusts, care homes and community settings, those who are helping to resource and support those areas, and those in mental health trusts who are dealing with issues and crises exacerbated by COVID-19.  This includes clinical staff, nurses, cleaners and porters. The programme is not intended to serve those in management roles to whom we believe their organisations would normally offer coaching which would be paid for by those organisations.

Please contact us here to discuss: info@coachingthroughcovid.org

For internal champions

As a champion of coaching, you’ll have the opportunity to promote and bring Coaching Through COVID directly to colleagues, to help us reach people from all backgrounds and departments and to easily connect them to the programme. You may have your own inspiration on how to get started, and equally we can support you through our two mentor champions, both anaesthetists at the Royal Free Hospital in London. Follow THIS LINK for ideas on how other champions have brought the programme to their colleagues.  To find out more about this role, or to start now, please contact us here: info@coachingthroughcovid.org

Internal champion Dr Ciara Donohue (Consultant Anaesthetist, Royal Free London NHS Trust) says:

“The sense of overwhelm has been both a driver and a challenge in setting up this programme. Those who have found the bandwidth to engage have relayed to me just how precious and resourcing their coaching experience has been. How opening up a safe space with a neutral party has allowed them to organise the chaos, prioritise, regulate. We have been incredibly touched and humbled by the generosity of your offer to care for us as we try our best to care for our patients and colleagues. With the passing of the first COVID surge our workforce are bruised and weary. In this period, the coaching relationship you are providing to help us to reflect, restore and potentially grow feels like such a blessing.”

Watch Ciara’s video on her experience of the programme HERE

For volunteer coaches

PLEASE NOTE : at present we have suspended recruitment to our pool of coaches, please do check back in a month or so to see if the situation has changed. 

If you’d like to offer your services pro-bono as an accredited coach, register HERE.

We welcome accredited coaches from all backgrounds.

Please do bear with us if we can’t immediately match you with a key worker. We’re finding, as are other similar service providers, that these things take time: key workers may be overwhelmed, exhausted or finding it hard to sift through different offers.

To find out more about our coaches, see ‘How we work’ below.

One way for us to make it easy for key workers to find out about us and trust what we’re offering is through building relationships with organisational representatives (see more at ‘For organisations including trusts’ above) and internal champions (see ‘For internal champions’ above) – and we’re developing those relationships all the time.  Many of these relationships have come through introductions from our coaches or existing trust relationships, so if you know anyone who you’d like to introduce to us, we’d be delighted to talk to them. Please get in touch with us here:

info@coachingthroughcovid.org

Volunteers to help us connect/stay connected

As we grow relationships with more trusts and care providers, please consider being a light touch focal point for the programme.

You may be a coach or other professional who enjoys building and managing relationships, and who would relish the challenge of forming and nurturing connections with our clients/partner organisations.

You’d have the opportunity to build a relationship with the internal champion(s) within the trust or organisation, and with the organisational representative (perhaps Learning and Development or Organisational Development), and to help us keep an overview of the coaching. You can see more about the role HERE

If this fits the bill for you, or you’d like to explore what this role involves, please get in touch by emailing:

info@coachingthroughcovid.org

How we work

Our purpose : To be of service to key workers who’ve worked in, or are currently working in ‘COVID infected Zones’ in acute trusts, care homes and community settings, and mental health trusts who are dealing with issues and crises exacerbated by COVID-19, or who are helping to resource and support these areas…by offering these workers high-quality professional inclusive coaching and other timely, demand led resources bespoke to individual needs and schedules… in a way that is relational, tangible and sustainable… to help them find meaning, learning and growth from their experiences, attend to their own wellbeing and deliver sustainable care to those they serve.

The programme isn’t intended to serve those in management roles to whom we believe their organisations would normally offer coaching paid for by those organisations.   If you work in the NHS or social care, and you’ve been or continue to be affected by COVID-19 and aren’t sure whether the programme is for you – do get in touch/fill in the form – we may still be able to help.

Our values:

• Be of service
• Reduce suffering
• Do no harm
• Agile
• Courage
• Ethics & integrity: check intentions &
• ‘Do the right thing’
• Collaborate
• Compassionate leadership
• Inclusiveness & diversity

We’re delighted to be partnering with Professor Amy Edmondson’s Fearless Organization to ensure we attend to psychological safety as a key enabler of team effectiveness, innovation and sustainable growth. We also endorse the GMC’s approach to compassionate leadership and seek to mirror this in offering compassionate coaching. We’re also delighted to be partnering with the Compassion Institute to offer clinicians and coaches an opportunity to develop the inner practices to reduce secondary stress, compassion fatigue and burnout and support wellbeing, flourishing and growth.

To find out more about our purpose, values and approach, click HERE

What makes us different and distinctive?

• Our commitment to compassion in all that we do
• Our relationships with internal champions (although we also encourage key workers to contact us directly)
• Our selection and development of accredited coaches who are:

1. At an advanced stage of ‘coaching maturity’ (relational, compassionate, take a systemic approach, eclectic – not wedded to a single technique but able to formulate and deliver the interventions that they consider appropriate)
2. Psychologically-minded – able to work with a range of psychological issues and know when and where to refer on for other support. Our team includes resilience trauma therapists and wellbeing specialists
3. Able to adopt a holistic participant-led approach, offering support on anything participants bring to sessions

How to apply

Participants

Find our simple registration form HERE. You’ll be matched to a coach as soon as possible, and they’ll contact you to arrange your first session. If, for any reason, the chemistry isn’t quite right you’ll have an opportunity to work with a different coach at any point, and sessions will be held at your own convenience. You can stop whenever you feel the time is right or continue with more than 6 sessions if you and your coach would like to.

Accredited coaches

We’ve had an overwhelmingly positive and generous response from coaches. Key workers are weary and are sometimes bombarded by offers, so it may take time for matches to happen. If you’d like to join us (and don’t mind waiting), register HERE

About us

As COVID-19 took hold of the UK in March 2020 Mark McMordie, whose facilitative compassionate leadership is key to how we work, planted a seed: how can coaches and others step up to support key workers? And here we are.

The current core team comprises:

Carrie Rooney
Carole Osterweil – Visible Dynamics
David Elliott
Dr Kate Sherratt – consultant anaesthetist, Royal Free Hospital
Dvija Mehta
Ella Clark – Ella Clark Coaching
Lindsay Wittenberg – Lindsay Wittenberg Ltd
Liz Hall – Liz Hall Coaching & Coaching at Work magazine
Maria Foxwell
Nicky Bradley
Pauline Muldoon – Lee Hecht Harrison
Dr Raviro Mangwiro – consultant anaesthetist, Royal Free Hospital
Sasi Panchal – project management specialist & leadership coach

Previous core team members :

Mark McMordie – The Conscious Leader and Coaching Through Covid co-founder, whose brainchild this initiative was.
Dr Charlotte Kingsley – consultant anaesthetist, Royal Free Hospital
Dr Ciara Donohue – consultant anaesthetist, Royal Free Hospital
Fiona Byrne – programme & project management
Gina Lodge – Academy of Executive Coaching
Sarah Barlow – Imakeitso

For more information on our sponsors and supporters, see ‘Supporters and sponsors’ below

What people say

Dr Ciara Donohue, consultant anaesthetist at the Royal Free Hospital, talks about how both receiving coaching and acting as an internal champion have made a difference.
Watch Ciara’s video

Dr Marc Wittenberg, another consultant anaesthetist at the Royal Free hospital, shares how coaching helped him decompress, make sense of challenging experiences, relieve high degrees of stress and anxiety and prepare him for a second wave, Watch Marc’s video

Supporters and sponsors

Hype London

23x.net Ltd

Our eco-system is a compassionate inclusive collaboration in service of a shared purpose. We wish to thank every coach and supervisor who has stepped forward to support the programme and everyone who gives their time so generously – including the above supporters of our programme.

We’re also endorsed by the following professional coaching bodies, and coach training providers:

Academy of Executive Coaching

The UK International Coach Federation
The Association for Professional Executive Coaching and Supervision
The European Mentoring and Coaching Council
The Association of Coaching Supervisors
The Association for Coaching
Hult-Ashridge Executive Education
Henley Centre for Coaching & Behavioural Change

Resources

Whether you’re a coach, coach supervisor or a programme participant, here’s a brief taster of the resources at your disposal:

‘Caring for Professionals’ : tips and advice for healthcare professionals working under pressure’.  A practical, very accessible guide from www.caringforprofessionals.com

‘Anxiety First Aid’ by Mezzana Partners – slides of a webinar offering practical tips for managing anxiety.

‘Managing mental health challenges faced by healthcare workers during COVID-19 pandemic’, published in the BMJ 26 March 2020 – Neil Greenberg and colleagues set out measures that healthcare managers need to put in place to protect the mental health of healthcare staff having to make morally challenging decisions (Neil Greenberg, Professor of Defence Mental Health, Mary Docherty, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist, Sam Gnanapragasam, NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow In Psychiatry, Simon Wessely, Regius Professor of Psychiatry.

‘The psychological needs of healthcare staff as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak’, published by the British Psychological Society, 31 March 2020.