Working life: Joanne McNamara, HSE community health worker
Joanne McNamara is a HSE community health worker in Cork North.
I am not a morning person, but my three-year-old Hannah, who tends to migrate from her bed to ours, shakes me out of my slumber. Strong coffee also helps. Pre-school drop off is 9am. On mornings off, I squeeze in a short run, which helps keep me ticking over.
Exercise is great for positive mental attitude. I promote and use the national HSE positive mental health campaign #LittleThings in my work to highlight the basic things we can all do to support positive mental health in ourselves and in others.
I attend a meeting with the co-ordinator of the Cork Folklore Project to review the recent launch of a joint project that I led on called ‘Memories of the Orthopaedic’. It’s an oral history project with audio-clips of one-to-one interviews with former patients and staff with a connection to St Mary’s Orthopaedic.
These memories fed into a piece of research called The Ministry of Healing, by Dr Tomás Mac Conmara, coordinator of the Cork Folklore Project. It’s available through the HSE community work department at the Old Library Building on St Mary’s Road or Cork Folklore Project Outreach Hub in the North Cathedral Visitor Centre.
I set up for a Pilates sessions which I am organising for staff on St Mary’s Health Campus as part of local health and wellbeing at work. Staff attend during lunch breaks. The Healthy Ireland Implementation plan COMPASS, recently launched by Cork Kerry Community Healthcare, has the improvement of staff health and wellbeing as a priority action.
Lunch is usually a sandwich or salad/ tuna with oatcakes.
I am a safeTALK and ASIST trainer as part of my job; safeTALK and ASIST are suicide prevention and awareness training run through the national office for suicide prevention. Today I’m in UCC with youth and community work students delivering safeTALK. As a graduate of the course myself, it’s great to be invited back. The community work department has a great working relationship with the suicide resource office and our work regularly overlaps.
Currently we are working on progressing the Connecting for Life Cork/Kerry Implementation Plan as part of Ireland’s national strategy to reduce suicide 2015-2020.
I pick up Hannah from preschool. It’s the best part of my day and I get to enjoy her stories all the way home.
