Welcome to the latest update of the Lewisham BME MH carer/SU forum for august. This is the first time that the forum took place in the evening, so to allow other carer members Who cannot always attends during friday morning.

For the August forum, we hoped to have the Mental Health Act officer attend and give a presentation regarding the Mental Health Act and how south London and Maudsley were going to adapt to the latest changes to the mental Health Act. Unfortunately he could not make it, so we decided to discuss south London and Maudsley carer strategy.

I presented and broke down the 2015 – 2019 NHS Trust Carer strategy. We discussed the following

– What do trust defines as a carer
– Why it is important to understand the trust carers strategy
– What the trust has done so far for carers, laid out in it strategy.
– What the trust promises to do within been the carers strategy.
– The Triangle of care
– Principles of practice
– The trusts carers charter
– Holding the trust to account regarding it’s carers charter.

It was a shame that’s you in the audience knew about the care act 2014, plus not many even you about the trust carers charter. So it was worthwhile spending over 2 hours presenting and explaining the strategy.

There was very good questions and discussions regarding the current carers strategy. I pointed out that if anyone wants to read up more on the carers strategy, They should query the following

– Look for patterns, repeated words.
– Pay attention to what they have done and what they are going to do.
– Dates of things to be done (at back of strategy)
– What is brief? Whats unclear?
– When questioning who is responsible for things within the strategy, have an idea on asking how things would be done.

As long as one is civil and respectful in querying and asking about carer issues and carers strategies, then we can expect transparency and progress. Due to pressures within the NHS, we do not expect everything to be perfect, but it does not hurt to engage and ask questions we are well aware that staff are working very hard to engage with us.

I pointed out that in September there is to be a discussion at the trust regarding the carers strategy and implementing a new carers strategy. Due to organisational changes at the trust, it would be vital that the carers strategy focuses even more on borough based carer engagement and involvement.