So far yet so close

At our March Awayday for Trustees and key volunteers, Lanette Gayle shared her experiences of working as a WLAC therapist during the pandemic.

Lanette works with adults, young people, children and families. She works with an integrative approach which combines humanistic and psychodynamic therapy. These are both insight therapies which means they can be used to help increase clients’ awareness of their motives and defences.

Lanette has worked in education as a therapist and inclusion manager for many years. At WLAC she works on a 1:1 basis with children and parents and is also one of the co-facilitators for our Mighty Me (primary), Shining Stars (secondary) and Cool Moves (transition from primary to secondary) programmes that we run in local schools.

Lanette spoke of the fear, death, pain, isolation and loneliness that many of her clients had experienced during the pandemic. She highlighted the particularly acute fears of illness and death for some of her clients given the higher incidence of COVID, severe illness and death rates amongst ethnic minority communities.

Lanette talked about the practical and personal challenges that she had faced and how she had overcome these. During the pandemic she relocated to Jamaica, 4,675 miles away, initially for three months but in the end for a year. However, she continued to be available for her clients. In fact, she explained that the calmer environment, space and support that she received in Jamaica put her in a stronger position to support her clients. She said that on reflection, the ‘Jamaican dimension held me’.

During the pandemic, Lanette worked with all her clients over the telephone. She said that the time difference was actually helpful because she was able to work during her day but be more available for her London based clients in their evenings which seemed to suit them better, particularly given the disruption to their routines. Asked whether she felt that her clients felt a sense of abandonment, she said that some clients were curious about her move whilst others seemed to forget that she was somewhere different. Lanette observed that whilst the pandemic had been incredibly difficult for most families, it had created space for some of her clients to make positive transformational decisions of their own. She suggested that this might be a form of transference; by making a significant change herself, perhaps she had shown some of her clients that such changes are possible.

WLAC expects to continue to offer a hybrid of in-person and telephone/video support.

We will continue to be led by our clients.