Thank you, Bruce. Rosie. Hi.

Hi, hi. I think, I think when we spoke with Bruce earlier, we realised there were quite a number of people online this evening and I think that you and I had a chat beforehand, Rosie, to decide what we would what we would do. And I think we, our aim really is As the slide says introducing Vet life so maybe people out there who know a great deal about vet life, but we're not too sure really who our audience is, what our audience is, and the idea, I think, is that we're going to give an overview and then leave, leave a good amount of time at the end for questions which might stimulate further discussion.

So I think the first thing we were going to look at really was the history and where Vettlife, where vetlife came from, and Vettlife itself has been around for a relatively short length of time, but, but in fact, the charity itself has had various names in the, in the past, and I thought, Rosie, maybe you could take us through, although you're much younger than I am, but you could maybe take us through a little bit of the history line as to where vet life sort of came about. Sure, yeah, I'd be happy to. So, a lot of people, have heard of the Veterinary Benevolent Fund, and some people think that that's a different thing to that life, but it's actually a part of that life's history.

And Vet Life has a very long history. It goes back at least as far as 1919, and in some ways it goes back even further to 1865. The Veterinary Benevolent Fund, in the form that we most recently knew it, started.

Originally in 1919, when vets were coming back from the First World War with injuries or with psychological issues, that meant that they were unable to work and were in poverty because of their health. So that was the reason that the Victoria Veterinary Benevolent Fund was originally started. And over the years since, the Veterinary Benevolent Fund broadened its scope and broadened the availability of its services, .

And gradually became and incorporated other services too. So in 1992, Help Line was launched. It was originally called Vet Helpline.

But then it incorporated with the Veterinary Benevolent Fund, and together in 2015, they became a part of VET Life. So there's a long history to the Veterinary Benevolent Fund and to Helpline as well, which is a relatively mature helpline at 27 years old. Yeah, and I think I don't know how you feel, Rosie, but I think that certainly when I joined the board of trustees, we were known as the Veterinary Benevolent Fund, and it somehow didn't, didn't really, the name didn't really fit in with, with modern thinking, and it almost had a Dickensian type of feel to it, you know, sort of cap in hand and that type of thing.

And, you know, I was very pleased when it relaunched under a new name, VetLife, and I think that the way I look at The name VetLife is that our raison dre really is to support, to support vets and the veterinary profession, and the community and to give, give those people their life back, whatever, whatever might be impinging or impacting on their life. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And I think, I think that sort of this is the, you know, across the bottom of the screen here, really, you alluded to the fact that the vet life is a, is an umbrella and it covers the various aspects of, of, of, of how we support the, the veterinary community. That's the veterinary helpline, which I know you're going to speak about in, in more depth. Financial support, health support, and, and I always think the entree really is either to, is either through helpline or, or the website and the website tends to get left out a little bit, but it has a very, very important role to play within Vettlife itself.

But I thought maybe Rosie, would you start, you know, just working our way across there and maybe starting to talk about, that life in terms of helpline, because I know that you you you you are the guru as far as helpline is concerned. Absolutely. So we'll be chatting more about helpline a bit later on.

The helpline is one of is a very busy service within BetLife, and it's the single point of contact, for all of the different services that Vetife offers. So what that means in practise is a bit of jargon is just that if you want help from Betlife or if you think that VetLife might be able to help you or help somebody you care about, give helpline a call. It's very friendly volunteers who, will talk to you and will support you, and they will be able to guide you as to which of the vet life services is most available, is most suitable for the issue that you need support with.

So sometimes, the support that somebody needs will be helpline. We are, I'll go on to talk more about the support that helpline particularly offers, but sometimes the support that somebody needs will be more practical than what helpline offers. And in those cases, we can refer on to the other parts of that life.

OK, I think, as I say, you, you, you're going to talk more about helpline in in in the very near future, aren't you, Rosie? Yeah, and I think we have a little bit of a, of a question coming up as to how, how busy helpline is, is that right? Yeah, absolutely.

You've got a small quiz later on. Very small, one question. Yeah, I think, I think it's that is that our next slide, the actual the quiz.

Yeah. So absolutely not a problem. So we've got a bit of a quiz for everybody, which I believe is going to be an interactive poll for you all.

So folks, quite simply, the question is, on average, how many contacts does Helpline receive daily? 3 or fewer, between 4 and 67 or over. Simply just click on the right answer that or the answer that you feel is right.

And we'll just give you about a minute or so to answer that. It is anonymous, so don't feel Afraid to give us your opinion. Just give us a click.

Tell us what you think and it's real good feedback because it allows both Jeff and Rosie to know the feeling and the ideas of the people who are listening to them. So give us a click. We're getting there shortly.

There's still a few of you sitting on the fence. Come on guys. Hop off the fence.

Don't want you getting splinters. And let's have a click and it is anonymous as I say, so don't be scared. Right, yeah, I think, I think so.

Right, another 5 seconds and then we'll end that poll. OK, and then let's share those results. Can you guys see those OK?

Yeah, can do. Gosh, everyone's very good. So, so most people have gone with 7 or over.

We've got 70% and we've got almost 30% between 4 and 6 and just a few on 3 or fewer. So if this poll had been done 5 years ago, the people who answered A would be correct. So 5 years ago, Helpline received fewer than one call per day.

We received about 312. Well, we did receive 312 contacts in 2014. But in the last year, so in 2018, all of the people who answered C would be correct.

We, we received between 7 and 8 contacts on average per day, during 2018. So our, our level of demand and the need for our service has really increased, which is It poses a challenge for us. And I think one of the things that's really important for us in when we talk about the numbers of contacts that we get is that we are really, really glad that people are contacting and we don't ever want people to feel that, oh, they're really busy and they don't have time.

We absolutely do have time to talk to people and we have a lot of capacity. To take calls and to support people. We've got a lot of volunteers providing the service, but I think the fact that the numbers are increasing, raises some important questions for the profession about how we continue to support people and other support that people might require to.

And it's something I, I would like to come back to later on, Rosie, if I, if I forget to please remind me about when we, when we're looking at. At the future of VELife, and we had a session with the trustees called Mind Mind the Gap. In other words, was there going to be a gap between what we would want to offer and what we could offer, and that came down to, you know, the usual thing like finances and and people, and we were just looking at the, at the graph that you alluded to in terms of how busy helpline was and and It gets quite scary if you actually draw a straight line across that histogram, doesn't it, in terms of where we might be in.

Next year or 2 or 3 years' time. Absolutely. So it represents a 9-fold, almost 9-fold increase over 5 years, which is important because it raises a lot of questions for us, making sure that we can still give the best service to people who contact us.

Yeah, I think, I think Rosie, I know you've got some, some slides later on on on on helpline calls and things, but maybe at that stage you you would, would talk about why you think we've seen that major increase increase has been. Yeah, absolutely. I think.

Yeah, I think so. Thanks, Jeff. OK.

So there's a number of different services that VetLife offers, as Jeff mentioned already, we have VetLife helpline, which I'm gonna go on to talk in a little bit more detail about in a moment. We also have that life health support and that life financial support. And Jeff, I know you wanted to say a few things about the membership of that life which is mentioned on this slide.

Yeah, I, I think, I think, I think we're all a bit on those of us very much connected with, with VELife, or a bit uncomfortable about, you know, the the the the the word member because we don't distinguish between members can come along to an AGM and they can vote, but as far as the Services are concerned, the helpline, health support, financial support. We don't, we don't discriminate one little bit between a member and a non-member. Our services, vetlife is available to the veterinary veterinary community.

And I think that we, we, before very long, we will, I might get shot tomorrow at the board meeting, but I think before, before very long, we, we will come up with a different name rather than the member because it does suggest that there's a different level of service between a member and a, and a non-member. At the bottom sort of bullet point here is that you do not need to be a member, although we would encourage people to become members because we certainly would would enjoy your financial support. But I will talk more about that a little bit later on.

Thanks. I think the thing that's really important for me as someone who's sort of learned a lot about that over the last 10 years that I've been involved is that just what you said, you don't have to be a member to use our services. So even if you've never been a member of that life, .

The services are available to you just because you are part of the veterinary community and we care about you. And there's different levels, different types of services are available to different people, which we'll talk more about why that is later on. But there is something that that life offer that will be available to you and the helpline is available to everybody.

Yeah. And I'm I'm sure you'll cover it later, but Rosie, but you don't, you don't distinguish, you don't ask. It's it's, I think Bruce used the word anonymous earlier on when he talked about the polling and certainly helpline is It is very, very, I don't, I don't know if you can have degrees of anonymous, but very anonymous in terms that we, we don't check anybody's identity or their roll out there, do we?

That's right. We spent a lot of time on Helpline actually trying to make the service as anonymous as possible. So if someone wants to phone up and call themselves RoboCop and use a SIM card that's, you know, non-identifiable, all of those things are fine.

We actively encourage people to make up a name if they want to. So when people call, we ask them if there's a name they'd like to give. It doesn't have to be your own name.

We definitely aren't after trying to find out who people are. The only time we need people's real names and real details is if people are using our professional health services. And the reason for that is just because it's like a GP service and it's a medical service, you do have to be using a real identity.

But certainly from a helpline point of view, that's not stored or kept in any way. Our email service is also almost uniquely anonymous in that we actually encrypt people's email addresses. So that's the reason that we don't have an actual email address for our email service that you need to go onto a website to log on to use it because we encrypt your email address.

So we make no effort to find it, we make no effort to see it, and we don't know who you are. And we've done that very deliberately because one of the things we learned. In the past is that An obstacle to people calling was worrying, well, what if, you know, this has an impact on my career?

I've got some stuff I want to talk about. And I'm not sure how people will respond. I don't want people around me to know.

I want to feel I've got somewhere safe where there's going to be no consequence, about me talking about things. And so that's what we work very hard to create. And we have a really high level of confidentiality, in our services.

OK. This, this looks like a very busy chart, but it's just an organisational chart or on organogram of, of how central, what I would call central, that life is, is run and looked after. And in fact, there's a board meeting of the trustees tomorrow, board meetings tend to be held in in London.

One of the things is you, you cannot be a trustee unless you're a member, but membership is open to any currently any veterinaries, any veterinary surgeon can become a member and then can stand for election and if successful, can be, can be elected. I think we're very, we're very lucky, obviously the people out there may recognise certain individuals on here. I think we're very, very lucky that the people who you see here represented on this organogram.

Bring with them a huge, huge amount of expertise and experience and right across the veterinary profession in terms of practise, industry, etc. I think the one thing that they give in addition to Their expertise is their is their time because you'll find that all of these people here will be on the various committees and across the bottom here are the 4 of the 4 people who are remunerated within within VettLife, and they do a they do a fantastic job. I'm very, I'm very It, it sounds, I don't mean to sound patronising.

I'm very, very proud of the people who we, we, we've had in the past and who we currently have within VetLife. They, they give a huge, they give a huge, huge amount. And that that I think we, you were saying, Bruce, that this this will be available.

Afterwards, this, this webinar and therefore people can go back to that slide and have a little look at those individuals and and look at them on the on the website. Our external partners, we, we don't pretend to do everything in hand and Rosie, you were, you were a trustee for for a number of years and You're now helpline helpline manager and I know you're hugely committed to, to sort of the well-being of our profession and hugely committed to that life. And maybe you could, you could talk about these two other external partners as well, because I know that they are quite involved, Moneypenny in particular involved with with helpline and then march on on stress really if people then get channelled towards you know, the health support.

Absolutely. So, . Little bit of kind of jog on here, but just to explain the different parts of vet life and the way that we're supported.

So we run a professionally delivered mental health service that's available to veterinary surgeons and to veterinary nurses and to students in some cases. And that service is vet life Health support, and that is one of the services that is Slightly restricted in its availability because it is only available to veterinary surgeons and to veterinary nurses and to some students. So, whereas the Vet Life helpline is available to the entire practise team and we really encourage the entire practise team and other people working in other roles in the veterinary industry to use helpline.

That life health support is the professional service and that's slightly more restricted in its availability. That's delivered by a mental health company and that's made up of psychiatrists and occupational mental health nurses, and that's called March on Stress. So that Life Health support and March on Stress are for the purposes of this, the same service.

And the reason we subcontract that is so that it can be delivered by a professional team, who are audited and are, . And it's very like using a sort of an NHS service, except the level of availability is very different. So all of the standards are exactly as you would expect.

I'm from consultant psychiatrists and from occupational mental health nurses, but it's just the availability is through us and it's a service that we pay for and we provide for the profession. Moneypenny, it's just a service that we use within helpline to make sure that our phone line is always available, and we're very grateful for support of the Mind Matters Initiative project in helping us with this part of our helpline service. So the Mind Matters initiative project very kindly gave up some funding.

To helpet Life deliver a 24 hour live answering service. So when I started as a helpline volunteer back in 2007, 2008, what used to happen would be people would call and answer phone and have to leave a message. And what we found on the answer phone when people called was that we would get some messages that were kind of heartbreaking to hear as a volunteer because you would hear somebody want to speak, not say anything, sound a bit worried, maybe to leave a message.

And then hang up. And as a volunteer that was just awful because you really wanted to talk to the person and they hadn't felt able to leave a message. And so what we wanted was an ability to have somebody live answer our calls, even if we were on the phone at the time.

And pass them on to the volunteer on duty, and that's what Moneypenny do for us. So they're not after finding out who you are, either other than a name and a phone number, sometimes if the volunteer on duty is busy, so the volunteer on duty can call you back, and all of that will be deleted afterwards and we're very strict about that happening. So, Moneypenny are a service that put people through to helpline, but you won't know necessarily that you're talking to them because they answer the phone, it's that Life helpline, and they'll just say to you, the volunteer isn't available right at this moment, but our pledge is that we will always call people back within an hour if that does happen.

Thanks Rosie. I think, I think our next slide actually gives that gives that number doesn't it, the helpline number, and also, as you were talking about here, the, the link for email. And I think, I think that must be one of the main reasons why we're getting a lot more calls apart from maybe the changing nature of our profession is that I know if I was having to leave a message versus Being able to, you know, compose an email which I could come back to and go back to and leave and then go back to it.

We are making it a lot easier, which is quite right for people to contact us, aren't we and and and and to get that help. Absolutely. And I know that there are some people who've used both services.

There's some people who say, I would never feel able to phone, but I do feel able to email. There's some people who prefer the phone and so our goal very much is to is to be available in whatever way people want to contact us. And we try and support, we try and respect the type of contact that people make as well.

So if you email us, we don't just say, please call us. We, we try and, support people by whatever method they've contacted us. And one of the things we think about as helpline is whether we should be providing other other contact methods as well.

And we're not able to do that just at the moment because of how much our calls have increased. Our focus is very much on Maintaining, providing the quality of service that we currently do provide. But it is something we think about in the future about whether That life does want to think about providing other contact methods too.

Yeah, and I think that's something which when, when we, when we have our strategy meetings at at with amongst the trustees, that's something we're, we're always looking at is to try to future proof and what, what do people want because it's the most important thing to us. We, I think I'll stick my neck out and say we, we will always endeavour to find the resources and the money to help people, and I think we've been very, very good at getting the message out there. We will continue to, to push the fact that we are there for, for the veterinary community.

And this is, again, this is quite a busy slide, Rosie. I'm not too sure what you want to pick up on here. .

So yeah, I mean, I'm very proud to be part of a helpline that's 27 years old and has been providing support to the veterinary community for 27 years. I say the veterinary community, and what I mean by that is helpline is available to everybody. If you are working in some role that is in some way connected to veterinary work, then helpline is available to you.

. A lot of people think that Helpline is just for vets. That's not the case and it hasn't been the case. Certainly in the 10 years that I've been involved.

So if you take away one thing to your colleagues tonight, tell them that that Life helpline is available to everybody, in the veterinary community. The helpline support is provided and is provided by trained volunteers. And I think that's really important too, because one of the strengths of what Helpline does is it's Support that's provided by trained peers.

And so it's slightly different to other helplines, for example, helplines like Samaritans that also provide listening services. Because what we want to provide is somebody who has an understanding of the veterinary community, what it's like, the kinds of pressures that there are, who'll know what you mean if you talk about a procedure, or who know what you mean if you talk about an acronym that's sort of related to our industry. They'll just have that level of knowledge.

So they may not have been in the situation that you've been in, but that doesn't matter. They're there to support you and to try and understand what's going on for you. We provide a lot of support and training and supervision for those volunteers, and they're really, really cool, crucial part of what we do.

We have our volunteers very much represent the veterinary community, so, I'll talk more about those in a moment. The key things to say about the service that we provide are that it is completely confidential. So you can tell us anything and we will not tell anybody.

The only exceptions to that are if you mention an act of terrorism under the law, we have to report that. If you identify a child or vulnerable adult who is at risk, we have to report those as well. But that's only if you identify that.

So you can talk about, you know, something that you're worried about that, . It's very, very personal and you really don't want anybody to know, and it's a very, very safe place to do that. It's also non-judgmental.

We're not there to make judgments. We're there to listen, try and understand what it's like for you and to support you. We're available 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

We reply to emails within 24 hours. Sometimes we're quicker. But sometimes it will take up to 24 hours.

And as I said with the phone, if you can't get through to somebody straight away, we will call you back within an hour. So it might be a case of Leaving a phone number and we will call you back, but that phone number will be destroyed after we have made that call. Could I chip in there, Rosie and ask you, because I, I think I've heard you before saying that you regard it really as a, as a listening and signposting because you may, you may signpost people to other organisations, mightn't you?

And, and as I know that. I know that as vets when we work with vets, wearing a different hat, we're, we're, we always want to solve the problem, don't we? And I guess that that is something which I guess you go through in training with particularly, I know it's not just veterinary surgeons, but is to, is to try and stick to listening and supporting as opposed to solving problems.

That's right. So one of the things that's really cool about the way that we work is that our goal is to be to provide human contact. So it's about humanity, it's about compassion, it's about empathy.

It's about not being judgmental. And so the main Focus of what we do on Helpline is listening and understanding what it's like for somebody. And sometimes through the process of doing that, people explore options that they are aware of for themselves.

They get to talk through what their worries are about different things, any obstacles that are there for them, and they find a course of action that feels right to them and, you know, we will support them. In doing that. Sometimes people aren't sure where to go next.

They're not sure of what's available. We know often in a crisis it can just feel really overwhelming and you, you're not sure which is the best service to go to. And so in those cases, helpline is does have signposting cities available.

And what we mean by signposting again, it's a little bit of helpline jargon is that we have a list of resources that's available to volunteers for different areas that they can point people to organisations that we're aware of that might be able to provide support. So for example, one of our common signposts would be to legal helplines that are available through different veterinary organisations. That's quite a common signpost.

Another common one might be to indemnity providers or to Citizen Advice or ACAS, . We do also provide referrals, as I said earlier, we are the single point of contact. So if you want to access the VettLife Health support service or the Vet Life Financial support service, you can actually call 24 hours a day on the helpline number and we'll be able to make those referrals for you.

And that's again really important to us that, you know, whatever time of day it is, people are worried about something, they can call us and somebody will be there to support them and help them, so you're never on your own. Thanks Rosie. I think last year was the 2018 was the busiest year ever, which is sort of shown in this graph, and I don't know, maybe you've got some figures for, for January as to how this year is shaping up, but I wouldn't mind betting that this year will actually exceed though that 2,775 figure.

Yeah, absolutely. So the figures for January this year, do show that the level of contacts has been maintained, if not slightly exceeded. So we are expecting the growth to continue or at least sustain from the pattern that we're getting.

So this is really, it's a big consideration for us in terms of how we provide our service, in that our calls have increased significantly, almost ninefold over the last 5 years. In the 5 years before that, they were fairly constant. Now this has been partly something we were expecting Because we have tried really hard to let people know about our services.

And we're really grateful to people in the veterinary community who've helped us with that and a lot of different organisations have helped. And a lot of different individuals have helped with that as well, whether it's doing fun runs and telling people about vet life, Whether it's talking about personal experiences they've had and saying how that life helped. There's lots of different ways that lots of different people have supported us in letting others know about our services and we'll talk more about that later.

So that's one of the reasons why the contacts have increased. Other reasons, are partly because we started our email service in 2014, and you'll notice on that graph that now about 70% of our contacts are made by email. And when I say a contact, that isn't necessarily an individual person, and that represents an email or a phone call that we have responded to.

So it might be that one person makes several phone calls over a period of crisis or emails a number of times over a period of crisis. And we're there for as long as it takes, and that's really important to us. The reason we don't present it as individual callers is because we don't attempt to link different phone calls together.

So if you call and speak to a volunteer on one day, we're not going to be trying to link that to whether you called yesterday. It's just the services available for you when you need it. I think I think just looking at that graph also Rosie, is if you look at the emails between 2017 and 2018, it's almost a 100% increase compared with say a 33.3% increase or thereabouts in, in the, in the phone calls.

So certainly email would seem to be have overtaken and proving to be a very popular way of contacting that life. That's right, absolutely. Yeah.

And I know that the, that the, the, sorry, this was a, this was just again the busiest time in terms of, and I think that you have, you help us as well. I think 260 something people now. That's right.

Yeah, so we have 68 volunteers currently providing the Vettlife helpline service. And again, you'll notice the numbers have increased. This has been very deliberate, and we have done this in order to try and make sure that we can meet the demand and the number of calls that we have, because what we want is for volunteers, to feel really supported and to feel that they have the resources and the training available and also to be able to take breaks from their volunteering duties when they need to, and that's really important to us.

It's called to the sort of ethos of our organisation and so we've increased our volunteer numbers. Our volunteers, as I said earlier, are all people from the veterinary community, a really fantastic diversity of people, which is really important to us. I think it's To ensure that we reflect the professions that we support.

So our volunteers are vets, they are veterinary nurses, and there are other people working in veterinary practises, and the people, other people with, good knowledge of the veterinary profession. And we'll talk later on if anyone listening's interested in volunteering for Vett life, that's very much something that's available. We don't require people to have previous counselling or listening experience, and because what we provide is very much peer support, and we provide all of the training that people need to do that.

The core qualities that we look for in volunteers are people who have a real care for the profession, who want to help other people who are compassionate and who are interested in listening. And those are the qualities that we look for. And I think you were saying, Rosie, when you joined Vet Life helpline, you were, you might have had one call a day and now it's 7., nearly 8 calls a day and you've you've actually changed the rota, haven't you, to accommodate that, whereas, whereas people used to spend a 24 hour sort of On on call.

Now they've got the option of doing 12 hours or 2 hours back to back. That's right, Jeff. So potentially those 7 to 8 contacts are now split between 4 people because we'll have 2 people potentially providing email during an email support during any one day and 2 people potentially providing phone support during any one day.

And if our Contacts continue to increase, we will need to increase the number of volunteers available to, to meet that because what we don't want is for volunteers to have more calls than they're able to deal with. And what we don't want is for callers to have to wait or to be speaking to somebody who hasn't, who is tired, because we all know what it's like to work when we're tired. And it's really important that volunteers are able to be there for callers, in the moment of need.

And that's something that's really, really, we think about a lot. And I know, I, I, I know that you as helpline manager are there to support other members of helpline, aren't you? Because often people will need to, if they've been listening to a particular, particular person who might, might be.

Very, very upset that, that help, that helpline volunteer is not immune to be, to be being upset by that caller and therefore you're there to offer support to that person as well within helpline. So we provide a lot of support to help them volunteers, and this is a question we quite often get asked when people are applying to be volunteers and the types of support we offer there's always someone available to escalate concerns to always 24 hours a day, so you never have to make difficult decisions about calls on your own. There's always backup available if it gets very busy.

That's really important too. There's also professional supervision, so we have group reflective practise sessions. We have professional supervision through our health support service.

So from a caller point of view, no information will ever go outside that life, but the person you're speaking to will be having support and professional supervision. We also provide ongoing training every year for volunteers and we provide initial training for new volunteers, and we provide them with a mentor for their 1st 6 months. So there's a lot of different types of support that we provide for volunteers and, and we think that's really important.

. The people who are within our services are supported as well. Yeah, I think, I think if we, if one can recall a previous slide where we had the various areas under the umbrella helpline, we've, we've looked at. Thanks Rosie and, and health support is another area which I know you're quite involved with simply because a lot of people get referred from helpline through to health support.

And as we said, helpline is available to Anybody within the veterinary community, but I think you alluded to the fact that health support is only available to veterinary surgeons, veterinary nurses, and, and, and a certain area within the student population as well. So I'm wondering if you could talk us through What, what, where we, where we stand as far as health support is concerned. Absolutely, yes.

So that Life Health support is the professional mental health service and that I I spoke about earlier. So it's provided by professionals. Referral to this is through that Life helpline.

So if you call helpline and you're experiencing mental health problems and you don't have the right support in place, that life health support might be for you. You don't have to have a mental health diagnosis to access better life health support. You can call and speak to somebody just if you're concerned about your mental health, that's absolutely fine.

So it's provided, as I said, by a group called March on Stress, who, a group of occupational mental health nurses and psychiatrists. It's a multidisciplinary team, which has a main point of contact through us. Our goal is to provide a full assessment for people referred to the service within 5 days of the referral being made.

So if you are referred through helpline, you will usually receive a phone call or an email from that Life Health support within a couple of days to arrange an appointment, and that appointment will be within 5 days. And that's really important to us because we know one of the things we know about the veterinary community is that people can struggle to ask for help, and unfortunately, sometimes they ask for help once things are already really difficult. So it's important for us that that access is fast.

. The types of support that are offered after assessment depends on the plan that's agreed with you at the assessment. So it might be that you receive ongoing support from Metlife Health support, and that's provided to a number of people. It might be that they do some advocacy with you with your local GP that would only ever be done with your permission unless you were immediately at risk of serious harm.

Or it might be in certain cases that other support is provided through that life. So there's a number of different options and it's not really possible to speculate until you've had an assessment, about what your needs are, but that support should be tailored to what you need based on the assessment that you've had. And it's all very much up to you what happens next, you remain in control, and that's really important to us.

The health support service also provides the professional supervision to help them volunteers. Thanks Rosie. And I think that the next area was the financial support.

And I think if we'd been giving not the webinars for around in 1919, but if we were giving a talk about the Veterinary benevolent Fund. I would like to, if I wasn't around then, but I think that a lot of, a lot of what VBF did then was financial support, and I think that the two areas probably crossed over some time ago in terms of our main area, of involvement in terms of manpower is in, is in mental health support, but We still, we still provide a certain amount of financial support and, and that sort of breaks down into emergency assistance where somebody might need help with, with something in a hurry, and it can take the form of regular monthly grants there afterwards. Here we, here we will require the name of the individual because As trust as trustees and as a, as a charity, we need to, we are responsible for looking after the monies that we have and therefore we need to be Prudent, I suppose, and careful but generous in terms of who we, who we help and how we help them.

And I think you, you alluded to it earlier on, Rosie, the, the CAB, the Citizens Advice Bureau, and we've developed a very good relationship with the Manchester branch of the CAB. And so we, we would help people, when we get involved in terms of a regular monthly grants, we would always regard, finding out more about that individual's personal set of circumstances. And again, we would like to give them their Their their life back if it's a question of falling on hard times, but we, we, we will do some examination in terms of their financial situation and we would, we would regard ourselves probably as the fourth line of defence after the individual themselves, their family, the state, and it's surprising, how, how much help there is out there and whether we whether we will, we will certainly we will guide people towards the CAB.

And then if, if all of those, sort of fail, then we would step in as, as vet life. So we will give one-off gifts as well. It might be something as, as simple as helping somebody with a new carpet or a new fridge, or, it might be a question of paying their Royal College fees to get them back into work again.

And jumping down the, the bullet points on here, we'll also help and we're very grateful to, to people who will actually offer some free or subsidised CPD. So again, trying to give that person's professional life back. And we do actually have 4, bungalows belonging to, to that life, which we can either use as a, as a source of income, or, first call on those would be somebody who required accommodation, and you can see the The figures there in terms of these are 2018 figures as to how much we actually gave in in direct financial support to, to individuals.

What I, what I'd like to do, and I think this is where, where I'm putting my trustee hat on is when we tend, we, we obviously we look on a regular basis, exec looks at the Finance the situation on a monthly basis, but the board comes together on a quarterly basis to keep an eye on income and expenditure. And if we move on to the next slide, I think it will show us where our expenditure goes to, our total expenditure in 2018 was. Just short of 738,000 and you can see there where health support and financial support are roughly the same.

Helpline, I think costs come in there, Rosie, in terms of Moneypenny and, well, that's that's subsidised, that's sort of paid for by Mind Matters, but in terms of Expenses and training will, will use up a fair amount of that. Yeah, absolutely. So training of volunteers and support volunteers in providing the service, makes up, the bulk of, of helpline.

Also, the costs of, of providing initial training for new volunteers is quite significant. And that's why we have a really rigorous selection process. So we only bring people to training who we're really hopeful will be able to become volunteers.

Yeah, and, and I think whether it's something or it should be said is that not everybody who comes forward is, it's sometimes they find it's not for them, isn't that right, that the that that that volunteering for some reason doesn't suit that individual? Absolutely. So we have quite an involved selection process, which involves individual interviews.

It then involves Of coming along to a training day where there's an element of selection as well. And that's really important to us because our first priority is always, our callers, and we need to make sure that people who are volunteering on our helpline are in the right place at that time. And sometimes what will happen is, it's just not the right time for that person, that life and career and other things just mean that, they'll be brilliant for help everyone here one day, but it's just not the right moment for them.

And sometimes it's more of a fit issue because the type of listening that we do is quite specific. And sometimes, people who are very, very focused on problem solving for people find it quite difficult to step back and sit with somebody and empathetically listen for a long period of time without wanting to jump in and fix things. And so some Sometimes it's just a fit issue, not a comment on whether someone can listen or not, but just the type of listening we do isn't right for them.

And I think if we, if we have a look, that's our expenditure, and it's quite scary when you actually look at our income, if you keep in mind that figure of 738,000. It's our income last year. In fact, we budgeted for a bit of a deficit last year, but we were, we were sort of by prudent administration.

We were lucky to come in just slightly ahead. So our income and our income comes primarily from our investment income. Health support donations and general donations.

You can see the subscriptions, which is what our membership, our membership is that it's not a huge amount in the whole big scheme of things. Legacies we don't tend to budget for because we never, we never know what's going to come in, from a financial point of view in terms of legacies. But when we, when we move and look towards the future, the income and the expenditure does become a little bit scary.

So Looking ahead at the, at the future, part of the role of, of the, of the trustees and been involved with BetLife is to feed, feed back into the board, where they think things are going and, and with Rosie's area, she would have fed back in where she thinks helpline is going to go in terms of numbers and then the expenditure. And this is where I think it gets a little bit, a little bit, little bit scary, but I think the thing, the things that come across our, our bow, if you like, in terms of the, of the future, looking to this current year and and beyond, if we move on to the next slide, Rosie, I think that we've got on there is that. As we were as we were alluding to, we, we believe that the demand for all vet life services, I can't, I can't see it staying static, and I think the only way really is going to, is going to, is going to increase.

I don't know whether you want to pick up the, the next line on there, which, which was we, you know, additional helpline volunteers, but sorry, sorry, I'm moving back one Rose, he just said they want to pick up the next bullet point on there. Yeah, sorry, is that you, you, you anticipate, you will need more than the 68 you've currently got? Yeah, absolutely.

So, as I mentioned earlier, at the moment, there's potentially for people covering any 24 hour period that would involve 8 calls. Sometimes it's more calls than that, like any kind of family related work, some days you have a busy day. And what we want to make sure is that there's always enough people available so that people never have to wait more than 1 hour for us to get back to them and so that people never have to wait more than 24 hours for us to get back to an email.

And so if our demand continues to increase, then we will need to keep increasing our volunteer numbers, which is a significant cost to that life to recruit and train and adequately support those volunteers. They're incredibly generous. I give some of our volunteers have been volunteering with us for more than 20 years.

They're an absolutely incredible group of people, and without those volunteers. Helpline wouldn't exist. It absolutely is made up of the people who volunteer for it, but supporting them and training them, is absolutely crucial.

So it's, it's a potential big cost for us in the future. And I think moving down to the next bullet 0.11 area which we're going to have a drive on this year is to actually increase the number of, of area representatives.

And unlike, unlike helpline, where people can work from home, area representatives the name, as the name suggests, does involve going to actually see, beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries, geographically. And I think at the moment we've got around about 21 area representatives that we could really do with, with, you know, maybe. 30 or 40 area representatives, picking up the safeguarding requirements because one of our, terms of reference is that whenever we go and visit somebody in their own home or elsewhere, particularly in their own home, it should be by two representatives from, from VetLife as opposed to one.

And so if there's anybody listening out there who, who would like to, become an area representative, we particularly would want to hear from, from them. And moving moving down to the last two points is that looking over the last 3 years are necessary expenditure to enable us to do what we want to do and should be doing, we've seen that grow tremendously and this is where, moving on to the next slide, I think, Rosie, we our forecast is a little bit scary. As I said, this was, this was a slide that was produced.

Towards the end of last year and always since 2007, when the, when this graph starts from, you can see that our income has always, that's the green line has always been above the amber or yellow line, but we predicted that because of the amount of calls on our services that those two lines would cross over. So One of the emphasis for this year in the future will be, will be our, our fundraising. In other words, that we, I think we've been Particularly successfully getting the word out there as to what that life can do.

And now we just need to make sure that we are prudent in terms of being able to be financially secure and as I said before, minding, minding that gap. So that, that will be the emphasis. So the last thing I think we wanted to say, Rosie, was how, how we've talked a lot about how vet life helps the veterinary community and I think now it's really how, how you can help or how those people out there who are listening could actually help vet life and I think again, this is probably linked to the point of view of making sure that people understand what we do and I think I've been in a lot of, well, I have been in a lot of practises, a lot of veterinary schools, and you will see our information, our posters, our leaflets near the dangerous drug cupboard or wherever.

But, and I'm sure you probably also the same, Rosie, in your, in your, in your work, you'll see our information out there. Yeah, that's right. So, I mean, if everybody listening could do one thing for me tonight is check whether your practise controlled drugs cupboard has a helpline sticker on the inside of the door.

And if it doesn't, order some from us and stick one on there if you've got permission to do that. There is evidence that having stickers, that have a helpline number at places where people may They go and they're in a really, really bad place themselves and can reduce incidents of harm to people and when people are at risk. So that's one thing that we produce that we give out for free.

We also produce posters and leaflets for practises. And you're welcome to do other things with the stickers as well. I know lots of people put them up in the toilets and other places, so please stick them as many places as you want.

And we provide chocolate, don't we? In terms in terms of our chocolates and our and our visit and our our contact details. So Another way of supporting us really is in terms of we talked about volunteering, we'll talk about that more later is to donate, in other words, become a become a member or I mentioned legacies earlier on, so remembering us in your, in your will would be a very good thing that you could do.

I know that a lot of practises, and you alluded to it earlier on, Rosie. We'll do, we'll do cycling or running or pentathlons or whatever, in terms of donating it and a lot of practises will make us their, their chosen charity and we're we're very, very grateful to those practises who who do that. And the fundraising is, is something with running, trekking, cycling, baking, whatever you do.

I, I know that you do a lot of, fundraising yourself, don't you, Rosie, and, in terms of, running. Yeah, and I think it's such an encouragement to the people who support the people who call us to know that the rest of the profession is behind us and they want us to keep doing what we're doing and that they're encouraging us along in whatever way they're doing that. And there's some amazing things that people do to support that life.

So we're really grateful for that. There's also lots of opportunities in volunteering in that life, so we need more helpline volunteers at the moment, as well as more financial support area representatives that you mentioned, Jeff. So if people are interested, you can get in touch with us via our website.

There's an information, email address on the info at vetlife.org.uk.

And you can just email and say you're interested in volunteering, the type of thing you might be interested in doing, and we can send you some application forms for that. . And I think, I think this one covers that helpline and air representatives.

I'll just say a little bit about trustees. It's always nice to have new blood on the board and becoming a trustee is open to Any member, any member is free to put themselves forward, and we have had situations where people have become a member or want to join and become a trustee, and they're not a member and they've joined, become a member and then some, you know, usually somebody within the board will help them in terms of their nomination. I think last year we had an election because there were more people and there were places, but I can certainly remember previous years when There have been fewer, there have been fewer people and places and so, you know, it is available to anybody to put themselves forward to become, to become a trustee.

And I think our, our, our penultimate slide, Rosie, is really, well, what can people get back from volunteering and you already mentioned. Training and I think that's, you know, you, you run training twice a year and that's extremely useful for people. I would say not only those who want to join Vettlife, but that training is also very good for other walks of life or for people who are in practise as well.

Yeah, so we hope that the Vet Life helpline training equips people with some transferable skills, and we hope that it does, and certainly that's the feedback that we get. I think one of the The loveliest things for me personally, because I started with that life as a helpline volunteer, is just the people that you meet, and the privilege of people trusting you with stuff that is incredibly difficult, incredibly personal, that they may never have spoken to somebody about before. And that trust.

And that is, is a privilege. And you feel that every single time that you answer a call, there's a lot of support available, and you can meet lots of interesting people. The group of volunteers are absolutely fantastic group of people to know in the profession.

And there's lots of different things you can do once you are a volunteer. So we have volunteers involved in our training, we have volunteers involved in helping with selection, lots of different things that you can get involved with. And ultimately it's the opportunity to do something about a problem that I know a lot of people in our industry care about, which is how to help other people who are struggling.

We all know that there are times that working in this industry can be difficult for lots of different reasons, whether it's personal reasons, whether it's work-related reasons. And I think sometimes if you just think about the scale of the problem, it can feel a bit overwhelming and volunteering gives you an opportunity. Even if you can't change everything, you can change something for somebody.

And so that can I think can give people a real sense of meaning that yeah, I'm doing something useful here. And I, I think that I've often heard people say it's an opportunity to put something back into the profession that they've Taken out of for X number of years and I think that don't go backwards, but I think that new challenge is there's always, whatever your role is in with that life, you'll find that there will be challenges, and I think the people's ability to rise to those challenges, it doesn't ever ceases to amaze me. You, you know, Rosie, when you and I spoke about this and we said how long did we think our talk would last?

And we said around about 30, 35 minutes. I think we, you were, you were more correct than I was in terms of how long you thought we would be talking for. So I think that's our last slide, isn't it?

And maybe handing handing back to to Bruce? Yeah, Jeff, thanks very much. There's no need to apologise.

I have had goosebumps most of the way through this presentation. The work that you guys are doing is, is absolutely amazing. It really is and it deserves help and support from from all of us.

One of the questions that popped up in fact was from Alistair. Suggested, can the RCVS not consider a compulsory vet life premium to be added to the RCVS membership fee? I think that's brilliant.

Couple of we have, we have tried that and we we keep, we keep on trying it and we will try in the future. But yes, it's a, it's a great idea. I don't know if if if the Royal College is listening, but we can always say that somebody else suggested it rather than the the trustees.

Thank you. Thanks, yeah, the Royal a lot of support to that life my matters project, which we're very, glad to be on the task force for, and they provide quite significant funding to us through that. But it's always great to hear that members of the profession want to support us individually because Ultimately, that's how we're going to keep the service running is if people who are able to support us do so.

And you know I think the inertia of doing something bigger than than the will to help. So if there is something where you go yeah there's an extra 10 quid a month. CVS fees or 20 quid or whatever it is.

I don't see that many people would actually have a problem with that and it would be going to a really good cause. And I know the RCBS is really, really big on, on the support of these sorts of projects and mine matters. They are and and as Rosie said, they do support us in so many ways as well.

So we're very grateful. Yeah. Couple of other questions, may seem like a strange one, but I think it's brilliant.

Colette wanted to know, do the VET Life helpline volunteers use their own names? Ah, so that's an interesting one. They use their first name, but they don't have to if they don't want to.

So if you've always fancied being called, banana man, you could be, but we encourage people to use just a a normal first name. So if you called up and I still volunteer on the helpline, if you called up, I would use my name as Rosie, but I wouldn't use my full name. And the only reason we don't use our full names is just because ultimately it's not about us, and we all provide the same level of service.

So we're all trained in the same way. We're all supported in the same way, and whichever volunteer you speak to, they're there for you. So yeah, they can do, but they don't have to.

Excellent. We've had a couple of questions and folks, we haven't got time to go through all of them, so I'm going to put all these into one group. Basically, George and a couple of other people want to know, do you take third party referrals?

In other words, George was saying that he knows somebody that's in desperate trouble. They're probably never gonna call on their own, but you know, can he call up and give their details and would you be proactive and take it from there to help them? Yeah, so one of the things that's really important to us about the services that we provide is that when somebody's unwell, that they can stay in control of what happens to them.

And the reason that we do that is feedback from lots of people who've experienced mental health crisis, which is staying in control, even if it's just a one thing is important because when you're unwell, it can feel like nothing's in control. So we do get a lot of calls from third parties who are concerned about people. And what we do in those cases is we support the person who's calling with what it's like to support that person.

We'll talk to them about the services that are available and we'll explore with them how we can support in the best. Possible way that other person to get in touch with us. So, that may be, you know, making sure they've got the details available to them, but it would be a very, very, very rare circumstance where we contacted somebody and we wouldn't contact somebody out of the blue.

The only times we have done a third party referral would be, for example, if somebody needs financial support and has been very seriously injured in an accident and is unable or doesn't have capacity to make contact themselves in those cases we will reach out. But when somebody is able to make that choice, we just encourage them to make it and we will be there for them when they're ready to. I think our link linked with that Rosie also where we will support a third party will be.

Where there's been an issue with an individual in a practise and that has affected the practise, so we will support the other members of that practise, won't we, in terms of, you know, sort of being there for those people who are affected. Absolutely. So providing support to practises after potentially traumatic events like traumatic bereavement is something that was very important to us.

We also provide support to family members of surgeons through the Financial support service, but in terms of third parties, like, would we, if you call up and say, please, will you call my friend Jeff, then we would say, you know, please encourage your friend Jeff to call us because we'll be there for them when, you know, they're able to call. Jeff, is it? Yes.

Well, you know, some of the, the things as you said earlier, of course, you know, all the anonymity and everything else except if it becomes a life-threatening situation. And one of the comments that's come through has been about VettLife supporting a contact or a person who was on the edge of the bridge wanting to, to cast off andet Life helped them and talked them down and supported them. So that's absolutely fabulous.

Goodness, yeah, and it just shows what a privilege it is that people trust us in those situations because ultimately that's what we're there for, that whatever kind of situation someone's facing, whether they're in crisis and they're, you know, at a point like that, or whether they've had a bad day and they just want to talk to somebody, that's what we're there, we're there for all of those different situations. So whatever it is, give us a call. Yeah.

Last question quickly because we're running out of time here. It's an anonymous question, so, fits in with the theme of tonight. The person says, what are the bungalows and are they empty if not occupied?

Are they around the country or in one place? Do you get help when you are in them? They, oh, that's a lot of questions, isn't it?

They are, they are all together in one part of the country. They are linked, they are two sets of semi-detached bungalows. They're a mixture of armho, arms houses, and ordinary bungalows, and if they're not occupied by somebody who needs, who's the beneficiary, then they are rented out commercially to provide.

An income. And what was the what were the other questions, Bruce, that were linked to that? Do we have somebody in the bungalow, can they get they're in?

Yes, if, if it's somebody who's a beneficiary, yes, they can, they can apply for help and they may be they may be getting help with sort of financial support. It depends on who who's occupying them at the time. Excellent.

There's lots of questions coming through about stickers and business cards and all that sort of thing. Folks, Dawn has popped the the website address into your chat box as well as the telephone number for all the questions about stationary stickers, business cards, etc. Etc.

I would urge you to hop onto the website, drop them an email and I'm sure that as Rosie has said within 24 hours you will get a reply back. Could I just put a marker? That we have a, we have a please do contact the website, but we have a trustee meeting tomorrow and Joe, who's our administration manager, will be at that meeting.

So it may be 48 hours, Bruce. Give her, give her an extra day. Fair enough.

I'm sure when it comes to stickers and other paraphernalia like that, an extra 24 hours is not going to be a biggie. Hope not. Good.

Thank you. Jeff and Rosie, it has been an absolute privilege to listen to you tonight and, and thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I'm sure from from everybody who's listening for the effort and the time and the the the significance that you add to to our vet lives. Thank you so much for your time tonight as well.