Meet the SWEDA Team! Kat is one of our Bristol Therapeutic Support Workers and she brings her knowledge about working with people in the perinatal period to help inform the team about the intersections between pregnancy, birth and eating disorders. Here she shares her story about what inspired her to start working with SWEDA.

Why did you decide to join the SWEDA team?

 “Having completed my counselling diploma and having previously worked in perinatal counselling, getting involved with SWEDA fitted with everything I wanted to do. The Therapeutic Support Worker role appealed because it was quite varied: therapy is part of it, but there’s other parts of the role as well such as going out into the community and raising awareness."

The SWEDA Bristol team at their HQ in the Penny Brohn UK Centre 

Why did you want to support people affected by eating disorders?

"I’m someone who has previous experience of an eating disorder, so it’s a subject that is close to my heart. I know that supporting people in the early stages of a disorder is so important, and there’s so much you can do at that stage to stop it escalating, and it’s a core value for SWEDA to support people early on."

Kat at her desk after the weekly team meeting

How does this experience inform your current work at SWEDA?

"Of course everyone is different, but I hope my experience gives me some deeper knowledge and understanding of what it’s like to go through an eating disorder, and also what it’s like to come out the other side. It gives me a strong belief that recovery and life beyond eating disorders really is possible and that runs through all of my work with SWEDA."

Kat also helped us produce a resource about 'Eating Disorders & Becoming a Parent' which you can find here.

Photos by Alice Florrie