Welcome back and here is the update for the Lambeth MH carers forum for August 2017. This Mental Health Carers is for those who care ‘unpaid’ for someone suffering from a mental illness. This is the third forum, which I co-chaired with a fellow carer member.

To see the video version click below.

On the agenda for discussion the following.

Personal Budgets (Financial breakdown in care plans)

The Involvement of Healthwatch lambeth who will listen to carers concerns and suggestions. We want to work closely with them and also learn from each other.

Other involvement would be the Black Thrive inititive, which is gaining a lot of group in the area of Lambeth, since many BME suffering from neglect and injustice especially if suffering mental health.

The next involvement groups are the Living Well Network and Certitude Solidarity in a Crisis

Next up for discussion was carer’s assessment as the carer reps of the carer centres plan to meet with SLaM regarding updates on how carer assessments are being done. We also want more engagement and transparency.

We also discussed further Promotion of the forum be it online or physical as in the poster and Business cards. I have always felt that if you have a card, other carers can easily network with the forum as it grows from strength to strength. We were hoping to have a guest speaker, but they could not make it for August and we hope to see them in September.