Mum Uses Childhood Trauma Experience to Support Families in Mental Health Care
A mother who endured significant trauma and mental health challenges during her own youth is now channelling those personal experiences into vital support for families of teenagers receiving inpatient mental health care. Jackie Hemmings serves as a family and carer ambassador at the St Aubyn Centre in Colchester, a facility operated by Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust that provides specialised inpatient care for adolescents aged 13 to 18.
Expanding Support Through Lived Experience
The Trust has strategically recruited Family and Carer Ambassadors across its inpatient mental health wards to ensure families receive robust support and maintain a voice in their loved ones' care journeys. These ambassadors form part of a broader recruitment drive that has added 339 additional staff members to inpatient mental health teams, significantly expanding the skills and experiential diversity within these critical services.
This initiative is embedded within the Trust's comprehensive 'Time to Care' programme, which fundamentally reorients staff focus toward delivering more personalised care and therapeutic activities for patients. By creating dedicated ambassador roles, the programme enables clinical teams to concentrate fully on patient treatment while ensuring families receive parallel support.
Bridging Clinical Care and Family Needs
As a family and carer ambassador, Jackie functions as a primary contact point for families and carers navigating the complex mental health care system. Her responsibilities include demystifying hospital processes, helping families understand the care and treatment pathways their children will encounter, and advocating to ensure family perspectives are integrated into care planning.
Jackie collaborates closely with clinical staff providing direct care to young patients and co-facilitates a parent and carer support group alongside therapeutic professionals. "Family and carer ambassadors are not clinically trained," Jackie explains. "We maintain an informal approach, and our life experiences mean we possess deep empathy for what families are enduring. We exist so families feel heard and listened to."
Personal Journey Informing Professional Mission
Jackie's commitment to this work springs directly from her own lived experiences. She faced multiple traumatic events during childhood, including her father's death when she was just ten years old, and spent time within the foster care system. These experiences precipitated several admissions to mental health inpatient care beginning at age eighteen.
"My inpatient journey ultimately proved positive, even though it felt overwhelmingly difficult at the time," reflects Jackie, who now resides in Harwich. "The inpatient process is inherently frightening—I felt profoundly vulnerable. Only through reflection do I recognise how the therapy and dialectical behaviour therapy skills I learned created positive impacts and facilitated personal growth."
She adds: "Whether you're a family member or a patient, you often feel hopeless, convinced improvement is impossible—that you've reached the road's end. I reassure families that while their young person may be unwell now, recovery involves steps backward and forward, but most frequently concludes with a positive narrative. It's crucial they understand they have a future."
From Personal Struggle to Professional Fulfillment
Jackie credits her experiences with shaping her current identity and professional motivation. "Those days felt dark and endless, but I stand as proof that hope exists," she states. "Having spent part of my childhood in social care, I understand firsthand how uncertain and inconsistent the future can appear. Today, I embody living evidence that with appropriate support, resilience, and opportunity, moving beyond such circumstances and thriving is entirely possible."
"I am now a wife, a mother to two wonderful children, and someone who genuinely loves her job—something I never dared dream achievable," Jackie continues. Beyond her ambassador role, she is training to become a first responder in her local town, applying both lived and professional experience to help families and carers feel heard, supported, and less isolated.
Systemic Impact of Lived Experience Teams
Michelle Hill, team lead for family and carer ambassadors and peer workers within the Trust's children and young people's mental health wards, emphasises the programme's significance. "I feel profoundly grateful to work within a team where we all share similar lived experiences," Hill notes. "Every action we take prioritises patients, families, and carers. We employ an empathetic, compassionate approach while validating the difficulties they face."
"For those we support, feeling heard and seen without judgment is foundational," Hill explains. "This fosters positive relationships and empowers them to participate in care-related decision-making. Integrating lived experience teams with multidisciplinary clinical teams creates a dynamic, forward-thinking care approach that benefits everyone involved."
