Alison Walton made the local news recently. Alison (our young people’s project worker) participated in an Expert Patient programme in Derwentside and found it so good she wants to train to deliver the programme and share the benefits with others. This 6 week course of 3hr sessions is designed to run alongside medical treatments and some of the benefits can include a reduction in symptoms, less pain, greater self confidence and a better quality of life.

The Primary Care Trust who have already run several courses tell us “It is a fantastic scheme because it is all about people helping other people with similar illnesses and conditions and sharing experiences and difficulties to improve their health for themselves”. Alison found the programme extremely positive and says “ The most important thing is the confidence the course has given me - I would never have dreamed of training to lead a course like this before - now I want to share the techniques with other people”.

The expert patient programme is open to people living with long term medical conditions including arthritis, asthma, back pain, diabetes, heart conditions, ME & MS. We hope that Alison, when trained, will be able to deliver the programmes working with the PCT’s to run courses specifically for people with ME. If it proves as popular as we hope it will, we will train more people to deliver the programme. (We are in the process of applying for Joy Lynn to do the training)

As soon as we are in a position to timetable the courses we will let you know. However if you would like to express an interest and put your name forward now, please contact the office on 0191 3892222.
NB: The Department of Health took an interest in Alison’s press coverage and made a link from the paper to their own site as an indicator of good practice. - She's now a national star!