New paper out on caregiver support in autism
When we hear the word ‘entrepreneur’, we’d first think of a young team of tech startup founders, probably based in Sillicon Valley. Our new paper published in Autism shows that the term goes much beyond that meaning. Caregivers who raise children with autism and other developmental disabilities are entrepreneurs themselves: they fight for the rights of their children, they come up with new ways of accessing support and services, and develop peer support solutions themselves. Read on to know more about Zsofia’s work in Argentina.
Founder visiting Orygen, Australia
AMKA Founder Dr Zsofia Szlamka has the opportunity to visit Orygen, the centre of excellence for youth mental health in Australia in May, 2024. Her hope is to take away knowledge and expertise on mental health service development that can help improve mental health services in Central and Eastern Europe.
Mental health in social entrepreneurship
We took part in an exciting session led by UN Global Compact Network Lebanon on social entrepreneurship. Our module focused on go-to-market strategies for social entrepreneurs and we contributed with a short intervention on workplace mental health.
Visiting Queen Mary University of London
In February 2024 we had the chance to visit the Newham Centre for Mental Health of Queen Mary University of London. We met colleagues like Mariana Willmersdorf Steffen back in Athens in November 2023, at a youth engagement meeting organised by the World Health Organization‘s Athens Office on Quality of Care and Patient Safety. Dr Zsofia Szlamka gave a talk about her PhD studies and current work in youth mental health as an ESRC: Economic and Social Research Council Fellow at Care Policy and Evaluation Centre (CPEC).
Supporting communities from 2024
As we are getting closer to wrapping up 2023, at AMKA we defined our goals with which we continue our mental health work in 2024. We believe that mental health support should be available across cultures and languages. As a remote-first mental health consultancy, we have always used culturally sensitive mental health methodologies. From 2024, we will launch new services supporting communities that are often marginalised: early career professionals, young adults, and caregivers.
AMKA at the This Can Happen Conference
Check out AMKA’s founder, Dr Zsofia Szlamka sharing about the role and career of a counsellor at the This Can Happen Conference in London, bringing together the European community of workplace mental health enthusiasts and practitioners.
AMKA at UNLEASH
We’re thrilled to announce that AMKA Counselling got selected among the top 25 teams that go to the final bootcamp in India as part of the UNLEASH Plus 2022 Accelerator program!
This means that we’ll have a chance to meet peers, get coached by the Mentors, have 1-on-1 check-ins with the Experts and to pitch at the Dragons’ Den.
🎯 For the last 4 months, we focused on one important goal: create a solution that empowers employees by developing a wellbeing-first culture at work.
* We conducted interviews with HR leaders and market research to identify needs that are not covered yet by existing providers
* We developed a solution prototype and reviewed the idea with existing clients, HR leads, Unleash mentors and teams
🎉 We finally have a solution that we’re confident to pilot: The Wellbeing Compass. (more details are coming soon)
We’re grateful to the Unleash team Arielle Berghammer-Ziegler (she/her), Lakshmi Hiranandani (She/Her), Raj Urvish Shah, Lauren Behr, MBA for the great organization and support. We also want to thank our mentors for their encouragement and valuable feedback Yanling Toh, Lee Crockford, Eric B., Anupam Saronwala, Vivek Manoharan, Ph.D..
