The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have spoken to frontline workers about the importance of counselling and grieving in their first video call of the new year.
Speaking to a team of healthcare workers from the NHS and grief counsellors from Just ‘B’, a service provided by Hospice UK, William said of their work during the coronavirus pandemic that, “This is an unprecedented time we are all facing. I think that really needs to be nailed home right now, that this is like nothing before that anyone has ever seen, particularly this third wave we are going through right now.
“People need to understand how you are normal human beings doing a brilliant job in a very, very difficult time and I hope this service gives people the outlet that they need.
“I fear, like you said, you’re all so busy caring for everyone else that you won’t take enough time to care for yourselves and we won’t see the impacts for quite some time.”
Kensington Palace notes that Just ‘B’ provides “confidential, free to access bereavement and wellbeing support related to anxiety, trauma and the impact of encountering a significant number of deaths, in addition to support for personal bereavement and loss.”
It is one of the charities that William and Kate lent their support to last summer when they granted over £1 million to pandemic-focused organisations.
Just ‘B’s Tony Collins and Caroline Francis spoke to William and Kate about the effects the pandemic was having on frontline workers’ mental health, nothing that many of them are “citing exhaustion and the relentless nature as their reasons for calling.”
Francis said, “A lot of the time, I think they forget to think about themselves and their self-care that they need, and are able to look in on themselves and think ‘gosh, I’m not coping as well as I think I am.’
“But I think there’s something about ringing the call line and being able to express how you’re feeling without worrying about burdening someone you know.”
Kate said, “Never has there been a more important time to have services like this out there, so I am so glad they are being used as well.”
William also spoke of his past as an air ambulance pilot and the stresses it placed on his mental health. He said that he worried about frontline workers and the pressure they’re under and the strain the pandemic is placing on them mentally.
“When you see so much death and so much bereavement it does impact how you see the world,” William said, “about thinking everyone around you is going to die – that is what really worries me about the frontline staff at the moment is that you are so under the cosh at the moment and so pressurised and you’re seeing such high levels of sadness, trauma, death, that it impacts your own life and your own family life because it is always there.”
