Loss, legacy, love and looking back as well as forward

Claire Molloy (top) and
Sara Barnes (bottom)

I’m delighted that Sara Barnes has written a guest blog for this week. After three decades in the NHS, Sara has just retired and is sharing some of the changes, challenges and joys over 32 years of unstinting commitment.

Sara began her career as a mental health nurse, before moving into management and then senior leadership roles in mental health services. She has been with our Trust since its formation and has always led with gentle humility, big-hearted kindness and insightful compassion. She has inspired everyone to be caring and respectful, and for that reason, has always had the great admiration of colleagues. 

Thank you for bringing out the best in us Sara. We wish you a wonderful retirement. Enjoy all of the exciting adventures ahead of you.

Sara Barnes

Retiring from the NHS after 32 years as a nurse and a leader, and losing my mum so close together, has made me think a lot about legacy and reflect on my own journey.

My mum was a child and family social worker and she taught me, through her actions and her words, that it’s ok to make mistakes (especially if you have someone to pick you up and cheer you on), to always do the right thing even if it feels the hardest option, to make the most of what you have, and to fiercely and passionately do what you can to help those without a voice be heard. 

I’m really proud of the imprint she has left on so many children and families lives over her career, as well as of course enriching our own family’s lives with her tenacity, her love and her laughter. I hold firm to these beliefs and can see them in my two daughters as they set off on their own very different careers.

Young Sara and her mum

One of my really strong memories of my adolescence was of my mum taking on the role of animal rescuer in her social work team. I recall many after-school trips to houses where an often sick or neglected dog or cat was placed on my knee in the car for us to take home, restore to health and either keep or rehome. Of course, this would not happen nowadays, but I loved having this small window into her work world and met many inspirational families who through poverty, domestic violence, mental health or physical health needs could no longer care for their pets and had made the brave decision to give them up. 

Little wonder then that I followed mum into a caring profession. 

After wanting to be a vet from the age of two, I realised after dramatically failing my A levels that I really wasn’t very good at science and should probably rethink my choice of career; something that felt devastating at the time but I now realise led me onto a more fulfilling path.

Unsure of what I wanted to do, I was fortunate enough to find a course that combined a degree in psychology with mental health nurse training.  From the outset, what got me up in the mornings was being a nurse, but doing both really enriched my learning and was a wonderful experience. 

During my training I also worked as an agency nurse, mainly in elderly mentally infirm nursing homes, and had my first experiences of seeing incredibly compassionate care, but also very poor quality and harmful care that I vehemently challenged. Sadly I’m not sure there was the regulation and governance in place for my challenges to make a real difference, but the feeling of determination to always champion high quality and safe care remains with me to this day.

Once I qualified I knew I wanted to move back to Manchester, having lived in London during my training, and so I worked at The Priory in Altrincham for a while until I found a role in Stockport CAMHS.

I recall very clearly the first time I stepped into the Stockport CAMHS service to take up my D grade staff nurse role. I knew I had found where I belonged. It felt then (and still does today) a privilege to be able to spend time with young people and their families, to hear their stories of adversity and survival and to provide care and support to help them achieve their goals. I couldn’t believe my luck getting a job as a nurse and spending my days being with young people.

I remained in Stockport CAMHS for many years as both a clinician and a manager and I’m really proud to have been a part of the exciting transformation journey that CAMHS underwent to reach more young people, reduce waiting times, implement care pathways and engage young people and families as partners in their care.

During this time, I met many amazing young people and their families and worked with very committed and compassionate colleagues; as I changed job roles, taking me further from the frontline delivery of services, their experiences and voices stayed with me keeping me grounded and connected to the core purpose of our work.

In 2006, Stockport was the last borough to come into Pennine Care and this allowed all of the different CAMHS teams to come together in a directorate to share experiences and learning, foster creativity and, most importantly, have a strong sense of togetherness and community. It also inspired me to seek a role where I could make a difference through system leadership and, whilst it was a wrench, I left Stockport CAMHS and took on first a CAMHS Trust wide role and then a wider leadership role including additional services and boroughs.  

Over the next few years there were some pivotal points of change both for me personally and for the way mental health services were delivered.  Greater Manchester devolution allowed us an opportunity to do things at scale and feel part of something bigger and better connected across health and social care; but more importantly, it allowed Pennine Care to recognise, celebrate and share the amazing care being delivered, despite the longstanding lack of resources and ever-increasing demands.

This meant we led the way in the development of a number of care pathways across Greater Manchester and made our case to bring in resources to redress the resource gap and achieve our own ambitions for our services.

The Manchester Arena attack in 2017 tested the resilience and connectedness of the system, and I can proudly say everyone came together to do the right thing and the Manchester Resilience Hub was born. It has gone from strength to strength, offering care and support to those affected by this and other traumatic events, including most recently focusing on the impact of covid on health and care professionals.

There are so many people I am grateful to that I can’t do justice to them all in these few words. I do want to thank all the people - both staff and service users - that have inspired, challenged, humbled and touched me over the years with their resilience, courage, hope and can-do attitude in the face of adversity and challenge. 

I also want to thank all the people who believed in me, let me be myself and most importantly believed me when I said they could do anything they wanted to.

The last two years during covid have been the hardest, but also the most inspirational and proud years of my career. I have seen people dig deep and come to work day after day, not knowing what they would face and having the wellbeing of their family and friends constantly on their minds. I’ve seen people adjusting their lives significantly to bring their work into their homes and families, and I’ve had the opportunity to work with lots of different people and see that integrity, respect and compassion form the backbone of Pennine Care.

During this time, I’ve also seen my mum courageously battle Lewy Body dementia and receive compassionate high quality care from those very services that I have been so proud to lead.

I approach retirement with sadness at so many endings, but anticipation and excitement about what will come next, and knowing I have an interesting, fulfilling and varied career to look back on with pride, gratitude and laughter, and have many people and achievements etched in my memory.

I’ve included a photograph of me in what I consider my natural state out in the countryside with my dogs, and I am looking forward to spending more time with my dogs and with my family making more memories.