LawCare is a charity which was set up in 1997 and at the time was a relatively small charity helping a small number of people in the legal profession with emotional support, information and training to promote good mental health and well-being in the workplace.
Worryingly over the past few years their services have become more and more in demand and the number of people reaching out to them has hit record numbers.
Last year the charity received over 900 calls with 667 people asking for their help and advice. Of those 667, 26% of people were enquiring about stress, 12% about depression and 12% bullying.
The service has seen a 70% rise in the number of calls coming in regarding bullying in the working place, with 66% of those calls claiming they had been bullied by either a manager or supervisor.
I know the world we live in today is a stressful one, competitive, demanding and emotions over take us, but there should never be an excuse for bullying and something needs to be done to stop it. One wonders though, how can the people at the top implement ideas when according to these figures it is the people at the top causing the issues in the first place.
53% of individuals calling the service were either in their first 5 years of qualifying, training or were in pupillages. Calls were even coming in from students.
67% of calls were women, showing equality in the UK still has a long way to go.
In a bid last year to help youngsters access the services better, or those who were too afraid to pick up a phone and speak to someone, the charity launched a web-chat service, along with emails. This worked well with the charity seeing an influx of people needing an array of help coming forward.
The Charity has now teamed up with the Open University to launch a new online course on emotion competency and professional resilience. The Open Learn course called ‘fit for law’ is free and requires a total of 6 hours of study time. https://www.open.edu/openlearncreate/course/view.php?id=3476#
The course is to “Promote psychologically and emotionally healthier ways of working in law.”[1]
Feeling stressed? You can contact LawCare by calling 0800 279 6888 in the UK.
Written By: Victoria-Jayne Scholes
[1] https://www.legalcheek.com/2020/01/mental-health-charity-lawcare-teams-up-with-sheffield-and-open-university-academics-to-launch-stress-busting-course/
Image Credit to Open-Learn
