Posted on: 31 March 2021
By Vivienne Cohen, Team Manager, West End Primary Care Network (CMHT)
Just after Christmas in 1998, Abdul Mohamed, then 26, arrived as a refugee seeking safe harbour in the UK, escaping a brutal civil war in his home country of Somalia. He soon found a new home in CNWL and has grown up in the trust – and has thrived ever since.
1999 saw him start work as a Bank healthcare assistant and he became a Gordon Hospital stalwart soon after that. He was quickly nabbed to work in the newly formed Home Treatment Team for four years before being head-hunted to work with Refugees and Asylum Seekers in what is now known as the Woodfield Trauma Service (WTS).
In 2014 – 2016, he took unpaid leave from the trust and took up an elected post as the Governor of Gardafui in Somalia.
While there he facilitated the building of a regional bank and oversaw the re-opening of a maternity hospital, together with partner agency Save the Children. He also undertook an awareness campaign on TB.
Throughout his career, he has had an interest in sharing his hard-earned knowledge and experience as a refugee and member of London’s Somali community. To that end he’s undertaken many opportunities to teach – something he hopes to develop when he qualifies as an RMN after completing the Apprenticeship Student Nurse programme.
He delivered teaching on ‘Khat awareness’ with the Trust in 2013 and raised awareness to undergraduate psychology trainees on the UK Refugee system in UK their legal and practical needs.
He has delivered training on PTSD at Oxford University with Dr Kerry Young – and more recently he had very moving feedback from a day of teaching on Trauma for PTSD at the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology at University College London, alongside colleague Sam Akbar, Principle Clinical Psychologist at WTS.
Sam describes Abdul: “He is an example of someone who is truly driven to do the right thing, yet never judges others. When I teach with him, and he tells his story or talks about his work, no one looks at their phone, no one doodles on their notepad - everyone is totally and utterly fixed by not just what he says but how he says it. We are lucky to have him in this Trust”.
Kerry Young, Consultant Clinical Psychologist agrees: “Everyone who meets Abdul, whether it is a service user or a colleague, is very taken with him and I have often wondered what that is. Is it because he is funny? Is it because he is modest? Is it because he is helpful and thoughtful? Lots of people are all of these things, so it can't be that.
“In the end, I decided that it is because people can see that he is a genuinely good person, a genuinely moral person who is motivated by doing what is right for others; pure and simple. But he does it in a self- effacing and humorous way, so he never makes others feel shallow or selfish in comparison.
“Service users can see that they can trust him with their secrets and he will only do what is best for them. Colleagues can see this too. Obviously, being a refugee himself and having achieved so much, he is also a living bit of hope for our service users; if Abdul can do it, maybe they can too”.