Dear friends, we have two very important weeklong awareness raising events between 12 and 18 May 2025, International Nurse’s Week (with International Nurse’s Day (IND) 12 May) and Mental Health Awareness Week.

The theme for #IND20205 is ‘Our Nurses. Our Future. Caring for nurses strengthens economies’ and the theme for #MHAW2025 is ‘Creating Communities That Care’.

Both of these themes for 2025 resonate with me. They both include references to wellbeing and community. I have spent my whole career, in fact my whole life thinking about others and how we all fit together. It’s not always easy to achieve, but when we work together for the greater good and develop our passions, shared vision and purpose, fantastic things can happen. When I started to do this in my younger days, my mind became more open, and I was able to envision all sorts of exciting images and possibilities. I have always grasped the nettle, sometimes (actually, quite often!) doing things the hard way, but overall, the journey has always been as important as the destination. I am happy, full of joy and my cup is fuller when I feel part of something, part of a community that cares.

It feels more poignant than ever that we recognise the vital importance of mental wellbeing for everyone, including those of us who are on the provider side of care, those who receive it and their familes and friends.

As the sayings go, it takes a village to raise a child, and a society is judged on how they treat their most vulnerable.

On a population level, we need be active participants in society to make that society work. The economic power of communities is far reaching. Our mental wellbeing is as important as our physical wellbeing.

We can’t always see an individual’s particular needs of state of being, but by opening ourselves up and listening to hear, we are more likely to be in tune and know what to do to support that person. What we also need are systems which support wellbeing, focusing on prevention and early intervention and which create the conditions for flourishing.

We have been immensely fortunate over the last couple of years to be given the opportunity to open ourselves up as an organisation, be vulnerable and embrace the possibilities around working purposefully with individuals who are experts by experience. I’m not talking about employing nurses or other team members who happen to have lived experience (I hear that quite a lot). I’m talking about proactively recruiting and employing individuals who are experts in their own experiences of, say in-patient mental health settings into leadership positions to co-design, co-produce, co-lead and co-evaluate programmes, to be the voice which is often unheard and un-noticed by policy makers and commissioners of health and care services.

We are building a community at FoNS. We are in the early stages of the most enlightening journey but are together whilst we do it. There’s no going back now. We have opened ourselves up to the elements. We are gathering together our all-weather gear and taking that step forward into the unknown. We are literally paving the way for so many others who have not quite got to where they need to be. We are sharing our journey and will continue to do so. There will always be more to do.

I am thrilled to have Jolie and Wendy on our team. Our Board of Trustees are supporting our journey, and the future is very much as a collective; a collective to support the professional wellbeing of nurses and their teams out in practice.

As Jolie said to me today, ‘the person in the bed is your asset’. Alleluia Sister!

I wish you all an active and stimulating week of action, discussion, planning and hope for the future, where nurses and their teams are collaborating with communities and seldom heard voices. And if you don’t know where to start, let us know and we can start a conversation.

Thanks for listening,

Joanne