Welcome to the latest update from the lambeth mental health carers forum. The Lambeth mental health carers forum seeks to engage and involve carers who provide care and support to those with mental health needs. When I say mental health carers I am talking about those who are unpaid, I am not talking about care workers.

The Lambeth mental health carers forum has been going for a while now, so we are beginning to find dedicated members who attend the forum each month. The speaker for the month of September was Dennis O’Rouke from Lambeth CCG. It is important that carers have a special interest in organisations especially commissioners who fund the health services. For the funding of Health Services certainly does affect those who use those health services, if funding does not go to a particular service then this could lead to an impact on the service user and carer.

There are of course many other reasons why carer and service user should try to engage with commissioning, plus commissioners should also seek to involve and engage with families and carers and also the community.

Members of the forum are very grateful for the presentation Dennis brought along. Denis spoke about ” How support for people with mental health needs in Lambeth is changing”.

Dennis spoke about the following subjects:-

1. What we want to achieve in Lambeth
2. What is the living Well network Alliance?
3. Building on what is working well
4. What has been achieved so far
5. The living Well centre approach.
6. How will the integrated front door work
7. How well do focused support work
8. Approach to the crisis changing
9. How do carers want to be involved?

Also included in the presentation was a breakdown of how many millions was spent on Hospital, GP surgeries, mental health services and projects in the community.

There was plenty of informed and interesting questions coming from the forum, the members who attended sadly picked up a bit of knowledge from Lambeth CCG. I encourage members to try and attend some of the events Lambeth CCG and the network alliance hold every now and then.

At the September carers forum, we discussed and brainstormed how to tackle a situation regarding mental health staff being kept in service.

I also updated the forum with the other forms I’m involved in in the boroughs of Lewisham and Southwark. I also updated the Lambeth forum on the BME mental health carers forum I hold over in Lewisham.

Parts of the forum we discussed south London and Maudsley’s carer strategy. We also look forward to form in Links with the new Lambeth advisory group which has been set up by our local mental health trust.