Hi, my name is Stacey, and I am a Registered Mental Health & Adult Nurse, Mother, Nanny, and avid football fan! I currently live in the Shropshire Countryside with my husband and youngest son, but I also have two older children who fled the nest a long time ago!
Throughout my time at school the idea of becoming a nurse had never crossed my mind, I always wanted to be a Policewoman, but when I left school in 1994, my path took a completely different direction, and I went into Dental Nursing.
Despite this I always had an interest in the mind, crime and human behaviour, so following the birth of my eldest son and involvement with a Community Mental Health Team due to struggles with postnatal depression, I thought ‘I could do that’ and that thought directed my path for the following 23 years until today.
Following the birth of my daughter in 1999 I commenced my Diploma in Mental Health Nursing at the University of Wolverhampton which I successfully completed in September 2022. My interest in crime and the mind continued, being reinforced by a placement within a prison setting during my nurse training, so my 1st job as a registered mental health nurse was as a D Grade mental health nurse in a Young Offenders Institute in the West Midlands, the same prison I had spent my placement at.
I can remember my ‘blue dress’ hanging in the staff room toilets waiting for my NMC pin to come through, the day it did I quickly changed into that uniform and have never looked back.
During my time as a Mental Health Nurse, I have worked across a number of Prison environments, providing mental and physical health support for males, females, and children. This exposed me to a diverse, unique environment and gave me the privilege of being able to support some of the most socially, psychologically and physically deprived people in society with a range of complex needs and vulnerabilities and to be able to see that the support I could give made a difference to a person’s life is what I am most proud of in my career.
As well as being a Mental Health Nurse, due to the exposure to a high physical health need in the prison population, I decided I wanted to return to university to study Adult Nursing. I did this in 2001 and successfully gained my additional qualification in 2013. Following this I spent a brief period on a Gastroenterology ward, securing the knowledge I gained whilst at university a second time, whilst caring for some of the sickest people I have met. Being able to provide physical health care, compassion, and care at this challenging time in someone’s life was an honour. Despite the enjoyment I found on this ward, I felt that I needed to return to my background of Mental Health.
To do this I took on the role of Mental Health & Learning Disability Team Leader in a newly mobilising prison in North Wales, the largest in the UK. I was able to use my experience to develop and mobilise this service successfully over the 3 years I spent there. This role gave me a range of Valuable experience that I can use successfully in the role I am in today, which is the role of Health & Justice Service Lead in a Criminal Justice Service in the Midlands. This has taken me back to the reason I started nursing, to provide care, support and a specialist service to those people who need it.
Joining Jane Lewis is giving me the opportunity to return to the first hand clinical care of a person, it gives me the ability to work in a variety of different settings, in turn giving me the opportunity for additional experience and to build my knowledge base further. It also provides flexibility to be able to have a healthy work-life balance, which is particularly needed when you have a 15-year-old son who is going through GCSE’s and planning his future.
The added benefits of working for Jane Lewis are the weekly pay, supportive management and governance structure and the training offered during the onboarding period (I’m not just saying this because I am a geek who loves study and training)!
Moving forward, I hope to continue working with Jane Lewis, widening my experience further in a range of settings.
