R's story.

I’m 41, my wife and I own a nice house, and I work as a postman. It’s a really good job, I enjoy the walking, meeting people, being out in the fresh air, with no worries. But three years ago, my life was very different. It had changed in a second, forever.

For 20 years I worked as a steel erector. I loved it, it was my main career. But that’s all in the past now. I enjoyed every aspect of the job: working with the lads, all good people; the work involved all sorts of different jobs; and I got a real adrenaline rush working at heights.

The accident happened three years ago. I was working on the new Anfield away stand. The weather was terrible: pouring rain. It was a Friday, and we were rushing to get the job done. We’d worked through our breaks, and had already got one raker (beam) in. I was in a cherry picker at one end, and my mate was in a picker at the other end. There was a crane between us lifting the beams up to us, and really, the crane should have moved along. But the driver checked that it was safe to remain in place. He said he could get the beam up from where he was, and the beam came up.

I was on the frame, my mate on the other side, but the beam was out of radius by 2 meters, so we couldn’t connect the bolts. I told my mate to jib the steel down, ‘jib it down some more’: that was my last words to him. The beam stayed in position for 5 seconds or so, normally you’d stop there. But then the crane toppled over. I didn’t hear any alarms, it just went over.

The crane crashed over; the steel fell onto the other cherry picker. I thought my mate was dead. The jib of the crane fell onto the steel structure, and bent the beam in half. The jib was 4 feet away from the basket of my cherry picker. The beam landed on the other cherry picker, and it fell with my mate: how did it not kill him?

The crane driver then lowered the beam to allow the crane to go backwards, and I jumped out of the basket, to avoid the beam swinging around loose. It hit my machine as I jumped.

Afterwards there were lots of excuses, but it came out in an investigation that the crane’s computer had been reconfigured, the alarm disabled, and there was too little ballast. They found all this out on the crane’s black box. It was crazy how it could be reconfigured to lie...

After that I couldn’t go back in the air. I went back on site after a week. But on site I was getting panic attacks. My heart would race, my palms would sweat, my ears were burning. I had to leave Anfield, and went to work at the Everton ground. It didn’t pay as well, so we soon had cash problems. I couldn’t pay our rent and bills. I couldn’t sleep, sometimes for 5 or 6 nights in a row. I was getting flashbacks.

After 2 months of this, my wife told me to go to the doctor’s. They diagnosed PTSD, gave me sleeping tablets, prescribed Sertraline, and arranged counselling through the NHS. But it was slow, and I didn’t make any progress.

One of my colleagues put me in touch with Helen Clifford at that point. Straight away she reassured me that she could help me, and got all the information she needed. Helen knew all about the accident, as she was already working for my mate. She knew from day 1 that the insurers accepted liability, so it was all about me: how was I feeling, what did I need?

At that point my relationship was falling apart, I wasn’t doing stuff with the kids, it affected all my family. I’d stopped going to the gym, or doing my boxing, I couldn’t do anything. I’d lost my confidence and had flashbacks. My life had changed but I was trying everything to keep carrying on. I was trying to cope in my own way. The first thing Helen did was get me counselling, paid for by the insurers.

Part of the counselling was to give myself exposure to site working in small chunks: 1-2 hours per week. I’d left Everton and was working in the laydown area at a site near Stanlow for about 6 months. I kept trying, did CBT and MDR treatments, but in the end the Counsellor advised me to stop trying to fix myself, give up site work, and concentrate on my family and everything else.

Helen got me onto employment courses to look at other jobs, and that’s how I became a postman. I love it: it’s great for my mental health, I can think, relax, and walk in the fresh air. I did a trial, and now I’m settled in.

Helen helped me with my CV as well. We were in touch every day, and she got back to me straight away every time. If ever I had a problem, she was there for me, reassuring me, telling me she was going to get help to offset my lost earnings. In the end Helen got me five interim payments, and that took away all the stress.

The case was settled in January 2025. We managed to buy a nice house with the settlement. We’ve got the house we wanted, got money in the bank for the future. I sleep better now, only lose 1 or 2 nights a week. I’m still on Sertraline, it’s still helping, but changing career has been a big help. Life’s completely different now.

I gave up a career of 20 years, but because of Helen, I got a positive outcome. I didn’t know about PTSD, or counselling, or therapy. It was Helen who pointed me in the right direction. She’s helped me get on with my life. I’m still in touch with my old steel erecting mates, but it’s a new life now.