Welcome to a blog site of former carer Matthew McKenzie from South London. I used to care for my mother who passed away this year. For close to 18 years I have been supporting her and my brothers who both have autism, but for my mother she had a difficult time with mental health. There was only so much I could do and a lot of support depended on health and social care services that were already struggling.
Monthly Archives: June 2020
Lewisham BAME MH Carer Forum May 2020
Welcome to the May update of my Lewisham BAME mental health carers forum. This is one of my 5 carer groups that focuses on the experiences of BAME carers and sometimes BAME groups suffering mental ill health. I usually run this forum from the Lewisham Branch of Bromley, Lewisham & Greenwich MIND. Due to CoronaVirus I have moved the forum online via ZOOM.
As a reminder the forum is not a support group, but a way to connect to health providers in the community. The forums focus is of course on mental health services so our local mental health trust (South London and Maudsley) engages with BAME families and carers at the forum.
Beyond Carers Week 2020
Hello everyone and fellow carers. Just a quick blog post now that Carers Week has ended. For those who do not know about Carers Week, basically it is an awareness event that looks to raise the awareness of unpaid carers throughout the week of June 8th – 14th.
Carers Week is an annual awareness campaign to celebrate and recognise the vital contribution made by the UK’s 6.5 million carers.
My view on how Carers Week 2020 went
I am not sure if many people or blogs mention views on post events. I felt Carers Week 2020 really raised the bar for Carers week 2021 due to the amount of activities, events and awareness drives from people, charities and organisations. I have been involved in quite a few carer awareness events over that week.
Study in the experiences of loneliness and isolation of MH Groups
Researchers at UCL would like to talk to people aged 18 and over to find out about their experiences during the virus outbreak, and more generally, their experiences of feeling lonely or isolated and how they may relate to experiences of mental health problems.
For more information on this study please visit their site below
Southwark MH Carers forum May 2020
Here is May’s update of the Southwark mental health carers forum. This is one of the 4 to 5 carer groups I run each month. All carer forums and support groups are run online via Zoom due to social distancing because of COVID-19. I feel families and carers still need to know what is happening with services especially when health and social care is under strain.
In attendance for the forum we had carers from Southwark and also from Lambeth since the Lambeth carers forum is not running at the moment. We were also joined by trustees of Southwark Carers, plus Southwark Healthwatch were in attendance. We were also joined by Maudsley’s NHS Southwark inpatient carer lead, plus a carer who co-runs their carer groups. The main presentation was from Bernadette Pickerell who is SLaM’s Mental Health Act Team Leader and Senior MHA Co-ordinator.
A Caring Mind 