Once a week, Alison Ansell, a director of adult social care for Essex county council, heads out of her office to spend an hour on the beach walking her dog. It’s a time for her to switch off and breathe in the sea air before returning to her desk to face the remaining challenges of the day.
The “wellbeing hour”, first adopted by Essex county council during the Covid pandemic, is a weekly 60 minutes that staff in its adult social care teams can use as they like to boost their wellbeing. Some join exercise classes or community choirs, while others add the time to a lunch break. “We don’t ask people what they do or when they take the hour, but we like to share photos of what we’ve been up to,” says Ansell, 49, who joined the authority 26 years ago as a newly qualified social worker and is now responsible for adult social care in mid Essex.
