PCA New Confidential Helpline Services Partnership – 21/05/12

PCA Confidential Helpline Services Extended by New Partnership – 21/05/12 New Partnership Over the last eight years, the PCA Confidential Helpline has successfully helped over eighty members and their families to cope with a range of issues in professional cricket both during their careers and afterwards. Our fast access confidential support service has helped these members to deal with psychological issues including stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, gambling and drug and alcohol problems. This service, provided by Performance Healthcare, has now being extended through an exciting new partnership with LPP Consulting. This has increased our expertise and geographical coverage providing easier access for PCA members to the best face to face psychological support available. Additionally LPP Consulting brings a range of additional benefits including resilience services, coaching and consultancy – which can benefit players, coaches, managers, County Clubs or national level teams. LPP/PHC Partnership Services Performance Healthcare also provides a confidential helpline service to the League Managers’ Association (LMA), Welsh Rugby Players’ Association (WRPA) and the Rugby Football League (RFL) players. LPP Consulting provides a virtually identical confidential counselling service to the members of the Rugby Players Association (RPA). They also provide psychological consultancy and support to Premiership Football teams, Olympic track and field athletes through UK Athletics, the GB Olympic rowing squad, a Super 14s rugby squad in Australia and elite performers in golf and tennis. In addition LPP have been selected to provide the on-call psychiatric cover for all athletes and support staff participating in the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Confidentiality Confidentiality, integrity, excellence and team work are the partnership’s common values. We provide the best experts in psychology and psychiatry to make a meaningful difference to the people we work with. Furthermore we are acutely aware of the stigma surrounding mental health and the potential damage that adverse media coverage brings. LPP/PHC apply rigorous guidelines to confidentiality, avoid publicity and work closely with our clients to ensure that confidential information is protected at all times. New services 1. Resilience Psychological resilience is defined as the ability to perform effectively under pressure and to bounce back quickly after setbacks. It is a key factor in protecting us from the negative consequences of stress. The benefits of psychological resilience are well established: Improved work performance through improved task focus, even under pressure. Enhanced wellbeing: resilience helps people to cope with difficult thoughts & emotions enabling them to break the cycle of excessive worry and negative thinking. This in turn reduces the risk of stress developing into burnout, depression, anxiety or other mental health problems. Better physical & mental health through an understanding of how and when to recover from sport and other demands. Practical results from equipping people with practical techniques they can use to translate resilience into better performance outcomes. We offer workshops focusing on the skills and techniques which help people perform and cope more effectively under pressure. Applicable to managers, coaches, players and administrators, This work teaches people how to work sustainably at an optimal level, deal with pressure and recover from setbacks. This work can be supported by 1 to 1 cognitive behavioural coaching to accelerate learning. We also offer three practical workshops, focusing on building resilience for managers: i. Leading for Resilience. This workshop identifies the core skills leaders need to demonstrate in order to build resilience and reduce the impact of stress on their teams. ii. Conflict Management. Participants are shown how to improve their handling of difficult or tense situations by understanding the psychology behind conflict, conflict avoidance and resolution. iii. Time Management for the 21st Century. This workshop teaches practical skills to help people understand their priorities, increase their focus and get more done, even when juggling priorities and working under intense pressure. 2. Coaching In addition to the individual coaching work for resilience, wider coaching is offered based on cognitive behavioural psychology which has a clear evidence base for effectiveness. Coaching includes: Leadership Coaching Life Coaching 3. Consultancy Consultancy is offered to sporting organisations covering: review of psychological healthcare needs with the use of sport specific measurement tools; review of existing programmes for effectiveness; advice on, design and deliver specific educational programmes; advice on, design and deliver audit as part of any programme to measure effectiveness; advice on the relevance of programmes to national health promotion programmes. Summary The LPP/PHC partnership allows us to further improve the well-respected Confidential Helpline service to the PCA and to introduce a range of additional related services to Cricket. Our goal is to develop into the nations’s leading provider of preventative and treatment psychological services in sport. We look forward to working closely with the PCA to optimise the health and enhance the performance of their members For further information please contact Dr Phil Hopley philip.hopley@lppconsulting.org or David Raines david.raines@performancehealthcare.com.