Dear All, 

Here's my week 2 LiA update. 

Quite a few of the things that were on the agenda for this week were out of my comfort zone, but I'm really proud of myself for giving it a go because they have been the highlight of my LiA so far. 

Shadowing the Independent Mental Health Advocate at a psychiatric hospital was an amazing experience. It gave me lots to think about. For example, how do we personalise the law? What are all the factors that affect how someone experiences laws? Who and what are we currently designing laws for? I also really enjoyed seeing advocacy in action and seeing the patients being treated as humans with mental health conditions, rather than as mental health conditions. 

I made a lot of headway on my LiA projects and am getting ready to present them this week. My goal for presenting my ideas is to make sure that I am responsive and solution-focused. 

I also feel like I made lots of headway on my goals for the week: being more confident and continuing to create opportunities to make a difference to the organisation and the community. This week I spoke up more in meetings and put my ideas and questions forward - the encouragement of the charity staff really helped - and I kept asking 'what can I do to help?' and 'could I help with this?', which were simple ways of making sure the charity benefitted from me as much I am from them. 

One thing I would like to work on this week is project-management: I don't want to overdo it or focus on one or two at the expense of the others. 

Other than that, what I will be doing this week is pretty up in the air at the moment. 

Best wishes, 

Cornelia