In the fire service community, it can be easy to put others’ needs before our own – but looking after your own wellbeing is vital to ensure you stay healthy and happy at work and home.
Many of you may be planning to improve your wellbeing this year and we are here to support you to develop some strategies that might work for you.
As part of that, our Wellness and Behaviour Change Coaches hosted a series of short webinars in January and February 2023, covering a range of topics to promote wellbeing.
We know many operational staff, whether wholetime or on-call, are on different shift patterns, so we recorded the webinars for anyone who registered to watch them back.
You can find them on MyFFC below. Just ensure you’re signed up to MyFFC to view them:
2023 wellness webinar recordings
Scroll further down to see a short description from each.
Managing stress: Understanding how to recognise stress and strategies to help
In this short session, we’ll look at ways of recognising stress in yourself, and explore what happens to your body, mind and overall behaviour during periods of stress. We’ll then provide you with practical strategies to help you manage these periods, while outlining further support that The Fire Fighters Charity can offer you.
Nutrition and health: Practical strategies to improve your diet
In this webinar, we’ll offer some practical strategies to improve your diet. Separating fact from fiction, we’ll provide evidence-based advice on how to achieve a healthier lifestyle, while discussing how to break down barriers which may be preventing you from having a better, more sustainable diet.
Stronger Connections: Using strengths to deepen relationships
In this webinar, we’ll explore how recognising strengths in others can enhance our relationships and, in turn, boost our wellbeing. We’ll look at simple ways we can deepen our relationships with others, using personal strengths to guide how we communicate with them.
Wellbeing and nature: Exploring the health benefits of the outdoors
This webinar will help to provide an understanding around how nature can benefit health and wellbeing – and how to better connect with the great outdoors. It will further explore the term ‘Nature Connectedness’ by presenting the ‘5 Pathways to Nature Connection’ – an evidence-based framework that has been shown to further enhance the human relationship to the natural world with positive health and wellbeing outcomes. Participants will also learn some personal practices to take away and explore for themselves.
Musculoskeletal health: Discover how managing your health and wellbeing can prevent injuries
Through this webinar, participants will learn more about the role of holistic health and wellbeing in helping to prevent musculoskeletal injury. Consideration will be given to potential causes of injury, along with tips to prevent it happening. Emphasis will also be placed on the benefits of physical activity and exercise as a primary prevention of musculoskeletal injury, by recognising its role in building greater physical and psychological resilience.
Menopause awareness: Signs and symptoms of menopause and ways of coping
The menopause, either directly or indirectly, affects all those working in the emergency services and their families, so understanding exactly what it involves can help support this natural life transition. In this brief webinar, we will explore the signs and symptoms of the menopause and the impact this may have on our general physical and psychological health. We will explore ways of coping and guide you through promoting management of your own health choices.
What’s Strong With You? Identifying your personal strengths and how they could boost your wellbeing
In this webinar, we’ll discuss how understanding and using our inherent strengths contributes to us living our best lives. We’ll look at how strengths can motivate us, before helping attendees to identify, connect with and plan to use their own strengths using a simple framework.
Developing Personal Resilience: Tools and strategies to build strength and resilience in day-to-day life
It is essential that we take care of ourselves and our resilience can be an important part of our ‘self-care strategy’. In this webinar, we will explore our understanding of what it means to be resilient and the impact this may have on our individual work and personal lives. We’ll look at what may challenge our own resilience and how our personal beliefs and assumptions can strengthen it. We will also be exploring tools and strategies to help develop and improve our personal and professional resilience in day-to day life.
Positive pathways to wellbeing: Introducing the concept of flourishing to improve wellness
In this webinar, we’ll introduce attendees to the concept of flourishing (considered to be the highest level of wellbeing). Within it we will explain what flourishing is, why it is important in the context of mental health and wellbeing and then introduce a simple model and some suggested activities that can help to intentionally develop and improve our wellbeing over time.
Sleep and Health: Practical tips to get a better night’s sleep
This session will focus on the importance of sleep and look at potential barriers you may face in achieving a restful night. We’ll then aim to offer solutions to help overcome those barriers.
Looking at exactly what happens as we sleep, including the different cycles you go through, we’ll focus on how sleep changes as we age, the factors that may disrupt it, and ways you can work to gain a better quality of sleep – including how to cope with working night shifts.
Relaxation and Mindfulness: Introductive techniques to help you relax and be present in the moment
This session aims to help participants relax more often, while introducing the concept of mindfulness.
We’ll look at the benefits of mindfulness and how to practice it, before introducing a visualisation technique and a couple of short mindfulness practices for you to try out.
Cost of Living: Advice and support on managing your finances
Rising costs of living and managing your finances have made things particularly challenging at the moment and this webinar will aim to offer some guidance through these unprecedented times. It will focus on the importance of looking after your financial health and why it’s good talk, some simple money saving tips and where to find help with the cost of living challenges, help with managing debt – including spotting the signs of financial anxiety – and information on how we can help.
Exercise and Mental Health: Understand the link between our physical and mental health, with strategies to become more active
In this webinar, we’ll look at the role exercise and physical activity can play in becoming the catalyst needed to build resilience when dealing with, and protecting against, mental health symptoms. Everybody is different and it’s important we choose the most effective forms of exercise and physical activity that work for us as individuals. Discover alternative ways of being active that are right for you, without feeling like exercise becomes a chore. This workshop also acknowledges the importance of our physical, mental, and social health in contributing towards overall wellbeing.
Explore our wellbeing hub
We have a number of online health and wellbeing courses available, exclusively for members of the UK fire services community. These five and six-week courses can be taken completely at your own pace, to fit round work and home commitments, and cover a range of different health and wellbeing topics in-depth – with the aim of providing techniques and tools to help you move forward positively.
From a course on gambling addiction, to another on stress at work and ones on either social or general anxiety, there are a number of topics that could prove beneficial for you.
Available through the Charity’s new Wellbeing Hub in MyFFC, there are also five-minute Bitesize sessions and 10-15 minute Find Out More sessions available on everything from stress and anxiety to low mood, menopause, resilience and debt management.
