Welcome back to another of my carer blogs during Carers Week 2024. Lots of carer engagement and awareness events are still taking place as we are midway through Carers Week.

As a Cygnet Carers network ambassador, I was proud to be invited to present on my thoughts for Carers Week and the focus as to why families, friends and carers are important to Cygnet. The event was the “National Carers, Families and Friends Network Event”. This event took place over at Cygnet Churchill on Thursday 13th June 2024.

As I entered the premises the Cygnet staff were friendly and welcoming, I felt relaxed but excited at the same time. Looking at the event agenda, we had some excellent speakers for attendees both professional and families and carers.

David Willmott who is cygnet’s Director of Nursing opened the event. David spoke about Cygnet’s passion to engage with carers, but to get it right we need to consider families and carers as the experts.

With the ideas of cygnet’s Carer lead Laura Sheridan, Cygnet has made lots of progress, but there are still many things to develop.

David spoke how important it is to develop ideas with the audience and introduced who was going to speak.

Matthew McKenzie presents the importance of Carers Week

When David introuced my session to present to the audience, I spoke about the importance of Carers Week 2024. I have been a carer most of my life regarding my two brothers, but things became immensely difficult when my mother became diagnoised with schizophrenia. For many years I cared alone for 3 people and the impact it had on me was horrendous. I still suffer the scars of unpaid caring experience, but with the support of Carers UK and Carers Trust I feel I can cope.

My caring role led to carer activism, a powerful role that helps engage with whole communities and charity organisations. I spoke how busy I was doing Carers Week and even provided a poem or two which you can see below.

Also speaking at the event was Dr Neil Churchill who is NHS England’s Director of People and Communities. Due to the election Dr Neil could not say much, but did speak about his own carer experiences and the importance of the NHS. Dr Neil also mentioned what is currently available for carers under the NHS, but things could change.

Next up to speak was Nisha Cunnane who is Cygnet head of Pharmacy Services. Nisha spent 25 years working in Various phamacy settings, including hospitals and prisons. She is passionate about patient education and empowerment, this includes caregivers as she promotes they have a pivotal role in enhancing the overall well-being of the cared for.

Nisha spoke about Empowering Carers when guiding them through medication management. She spoke about what medication management actually means and their challenges to unpaid caers.

These challenges would be carers being overwhelmed with multiple medical factors and trying to avoid the risk to potential medication errors. Spotting side effects are also very important to caregivers of those with mental illness, but it also helps to tackle communication barriers with healthcare providers.

Nisha also spoke about medication adherence and top tips for carers and families. She answered questions about medication safety and medication side effects and she also pointed out the importance of collaboration and access to information.

We then had a carers story and her focus to engage with other carers. This was Veronica Kamerling and you might have remember her from the series of carer activist interviews I am currently running.

Veronica spoke passionately about caring for her two daughters who both have an eating disorder, verconica also spoke about caring for her brother who was diagnoised with schizophrenia. Due to her lived experience and carer activism, she runs her own organisation “Eating disorders & Carers”. She has been associted with Triangle of Care for many years as Cygnet strives to embed the Triangle of care in their hospitals.

Listening to Veronica drove home the memories and experience of my own caring situation. It reminded me why I try so hard to engage and involve unpaid carers in my network and also Cygnet carer’s network.

Other speakers were Julian De Takats who is a Parent and Carer. He is also a Cygnet Expert by Experience Carer Ambassador and helps provide carer awareness training at many of Cygnet hospital sites. Julian’s talk helped remind why it is so important to involve carers in shaing services.

We also had Juliana Onwumere from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience speaking about their focus on families and carers, especially with the new online course for training carers about Caring for People with Psychosis and Schizophrenia

You can access the course on the link below.

Click here to access Caring for someone with Psychosis and Schizophrenia

Unfortunately I could not stay for the full event as I was required as a judge for Harrow Carer’s Awards for 2024. Harrow carers ran their “Carers Family Fun Day” for Carers Week 2024. That is another blog for another day.

However for the National Carers, Families and Friends Network Conference, I felt Cygnet put a lot of work into presenting why they do an amazing amount of energy to set the standard of involving unpaid carers.