Welcome to September’s Lambeth Mental Health Carers Forum. The forum was held over at the 336 building based in Lambeth over on Brixton road. The Lambeth Mental Health Carers forum comes together each month to discuss issues facing unpaid carers who care for someone close suffering severe mental health problems.

To watch the video version, please click on the video below

With a rota of carer’s charing the meeting. On the agenda for september was the introduction of Lambeth Healthwatch and their continued engagement to the MH carers forum.

We also had the carers lead from Place of Safety based over at South London and maudsley’s southwark site.

Next was discussions on Promotions and spreading the word about the forum.

Anna Jones the mental health engagement officer for Lambeth healthwatch discussed with carers at the forum the Theme where there could be a lack of support for carers and lack of information provision.

Carers raised the problem of lack of funding, meaning services aren’t consistent & aren’t suitable. This has a major effect on the carer.

Throughout all the four mental health carer forums I am involved with, I see each MH carer forum working with Healthwatch to feedback themes from a group of concerned carers.

Next up was Giovanni from SLaM Centralised Place of Safety. She explained section 136 process and her role in the new place of safety. Police bring patients to PoS on section 136, patient can stay for up to 72 hours & are usually discharged in 24 hours. Only exception is section 135 where MH professional can refer patient from their home.

Discussions did focused on A&E not being suitable for patients in crisis.

It was noted that the senior manager of Lambeth Carers hub also attended the forum with the Mental health lead taking the minutes as he usually does each month.

Lastly we felt that increasing forum to 2 hours could be suggested. we also seek to engage with new carers or carers who cannot attend was raised (facetime skype).

This concludes the update from September’s Lambeth MH carers forum.