Monthly Archives: July 2022

SW London MH Carer Forum March 2022

Welcome to my March 2022 update of our SW London mental health carers forum. The group is a hybrid group of my other forums. Usually my carer forums focus on engagement and updates, but this one sometimes acts as a peer and network group for those caring for someone with mental illness.

Speakers for March 2022

  • Karen Persaud – SWLSTG – Carers, friends and family involvement coordinator
  • Gary Baker – Carers Support Worker – Richmond Mind
  • Antonia Buamah – Patient peer support – EMHIP– Ethnicity and Mental Health Improvement Project.

Karen from South West London & St George Presents

Karen who sometimes attends and engages with our group updated us on carer developments at the local SW London mental health trust. Karen spoke about the new carers peer support worker Zoe Hannah. The new role will be running for one year and should hopefully continue onwards.

The trust is actually really committed to pushing forward the lived experience workforce as part of their overall service delivery. This is where they have four services user peer support workers in posts. SWLSTG are also currently reviewing the trust’s carers strategy, which is quite outdated.

The new strategy will also be reflecting on the need for the trust to do more around supporting carers through their carers recovery journey, because carers go through a recovery alongside supporting loved ones through their own recovery journey. This means it is trying to balancing out wellbeing needs.

The next update for SWLSTG is there new recovery college course, which is being facilitated by Kingston adults education, college. The course has been adapted for wellbeing techniques for carers, families and friends. The course should be running for 10 weeks. Karen also updated briefly on the friends, families and carers group incase new members of our forum are interested in trust involvement.

Last updates from Karen was on the carer awareness training for staff, especially on induction for staff. This would involve carer communication skills plus carer involvement in the planning and discharge.

Gary Baker – Carers Support Worker – Richmond Mind presents

Gary fed back on how Ricmond Mind works closely with Richmond carers regarding mental health carers. Carers can be self refered or be referred to by another professional. Once they received that referral, Richmond Mind will contact the carer. From there the carer will be given access to support and workshops.

Gary mentioned that quite a few people tend not to like the term carer and tend to prefer being called a client or the person’s relative.

  • Responses from carer members.

Are services at Richmond could be offered in Merton or Kingston? (quite a few members asked about the services)
My question was on engagement from SWLSTG, I wondered if Richmond Mind staff have been invited to meetings. Gary talked at length regarding carer champion meetings.
The next question I asked for engagement from community mental health teams. This is where Gary mentioned that there was not enough.

Antonia presents on the Ethnicity and Mental Health Improvement Project (EMHIP)

Antonia talked about how the Ethnicity and Mental Health Improvement Project (EMHIP) is an attempt to reduce inequalities in access, experience and outcome of mental health care in South West London (Wandsworth & Tooting, Battersea locality). It was developed through the leadership and activism of leaders within the African, African Caribbean, and Asian communities.

The EMHIP advocates for a practical, locally based service improvement programme, co-designed with service users and local Black and Asian communities, based on established evidence, building on existing community led, co-produced projects.

In the UK, people from the Black and Asian community are being denied equal and compassionate mental health care.

  • They more likely to be brought to and kept in without their consent.
  • They are more likely to access mental health services through the police and criminal justice systems.
    find themselves unwell and back again, once released, particularly men
  • be forcibly restrained and given more than the recommended amount of medication.
  • The fence of mental heath for the Black and Asian community has been broken for several generations and the many promises of repair (partial or full) has not materialised to date.
  • We have delved deep, hence, our toolkit EMHIP– Ethnicity and Mental Health Improvement Project.

Antonia pointed out that as a community we’ve recognised that our broken fence must be repaired once and for all and have forged collaborations and partnership with many friends

South West London CCG (CCGs are now replaced to Integrated Care Boards)
South West London and St. George’s Mental Health NHS Trust
Local context of Black and Asian – voluntary, faith and community groups

This can be organized via the non-profit Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network (WCEN)

The Hub offers our guests, visitors and other attendees a communal safe place to sit down, relax and have a conversation in a hospitable environment.

Service/Sessions provided:

¨ Physical Health and Wellbeing checks
¨ Citizen Advice Bureau/Housing First Aid
¨ Pastoral Systemic Therapy
¨ Mental Health and Wellbeing Out-patients type clinics
¨ Explore training or employment opportunities
¨ Promote on-going recovery
¨ Social life wellbeing
¨ Effective “active sign-posting” to the supportive local services or agencies

More information can be found below

Website: http://www.emhip.co.uk

Email: info@emhip.co.uk

This was a brief update for my SW London mental health carers peer group. For the month of July SW London NHS will be engaging our group regarding SW London’s mental health strategy. I for one will hope it will include families and carers.

New online Carers rights course by Matthew McKenzie

Hello Fellow carers. I have now practically finished developing my online course for those caring for someone.

This course can be accessed via the courses section off my website.

The third course is on Carer’s Rights, which is such an important topic to millions of unpaid carers out there.

The online course covers the following with over 4 HOURS of content!!!

  • Your rights as a carer
  • Human rights
  • What things carers usually complain about
  • How to complain as a carer
  • Whose is responsible for carer’s rights
  • Support from employers when caring
  • Carer wellbeing under carer’s rights
  • List of different acts and laws
  • Complaint escalation ladder
  • Carer’s Assessment
  • Tackling confidentiality.

If you are a caring for somebody and do not know what your rights are, then this is the course for you. Only £2!! Or just email me

Watch out for more online courses, which I will be developing very soon.

SW London MH Carer Forum April 2022

Hello fellow unpaid carers. Welcome to a brief update of my South West London mental health carers forum. I am very behind on my updates because I have been busy working on my new poetry book on carer experiences. I am also developing online courses for carers. So if you want a bit of education, try some of my courses out.

Carer Identity

Carer Networking

Going back to my SW London carers forum. This one is for April and the following speaker from Hull University was


Dr David Barrett – Empathy and Nurse Education.

Dr David presents to the SW London carers forum

Dr David Barrett from the Department of Paramedical, Perioperative and Advanced Practice at Hull University wrote a paper on “Effectiveness of empathy education for undergraduate nursing students”.

David started out describing to the group on what is empathy. David felt that we would have our own thoughts on the term and what it means to us and why it’s important. David felt that it’s a tricky one, because there’s lots of people who have lots of different ideas on exactly what it is.

Dr David felt that empathy is about being aware of, and understanding what somebody else is feeling. Plus empathy is being able to demonstrate to them, that understanding as well. This mean’t that empathy awareness is not just not just internalising, but also demonstrating to the person that you understand how they’re feeling. Empathy is using that willingness to respond appropriately to those needs. David mentioned about a term “walking in someone else’s shoes, or it’s someone else’s pain”. David felt it was that as a concept.

There seems to be a problem on just how far you can take it as possible to understand what somebody else needs are? This is because everybody is an individual, we’ve all got our own backgrounds or experiences, our own ways of dealing with things. So whether it’s truly possible to ever understand what somebody else is feeling, He thinks it is a discussion that the group could looking into afterwards.

The reason why empathy is so important is that in an health care setting, it can provide some important benefits for people that nurses and other health care providers care for. There is good research that if somebody is empathetic as a health care provider, then the person they provide care for is likely to have a better experience might see higher levels of service user satisfaction.

If there is a healthcare team is demonstrating empathy, and it can, for example, reduce infection rates, improve what you’re feeling yourself, it can even reduce other complications, e.g. diabetes and other things. So in the end we can see improved physical health outcomes. Dr David stated that most importantly you can also see improvements in mental health and well being. This is where you can see lower rates of depression related distress or anxiety. It is also worth mentioning that improved mental health can also sometimes be seen in the healthcare professionals themselves.

Dr David Barrett started talk about how nurses were trained in Empathy at the course and on the importance of families and carers being involved education from an authentic perspective.

Just to note, I missed a month by Jumping to April, but will add the blog for my SW London carer peer group for March later on.

You can get hold of Dr David’s paper from the link below.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/353763640_Effectiveness_of_empathy_education_for_undergraduate_nursing_students

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum April 2022

Hello fellow carers. A quick update from my past carer forums. This is the April update of my Joint Southwark and Lambeth mental health carers forum.

Speakers for this forum were

Naomi Good – Engagement from Guys & St Thomas NHS FT

Rachel Braverman – Expert by experience at Royal College of Psychiatrists

Just a quick note, I cannot remember if Rachel managed to attend this forum. I think should could not make it and attended my south west London carers group at a later date.

It was however good that Naomi engaged with carers who look after someone with a mental illness. The thing is that patients also use physical health services. So it was important to get stakeholder engagement from Guys & St Thomas hospitals.

Naomi Good Presents to the forum.

I know Naomi very well when she used to work at NSUN, this being the National Service User Network. Naomi did a lot for developing the 4PI involvement standards at mental health NHS trusts. These standards are still very much in use today, although there still needs to be a lot of work done.

Naomi is now the stakeholder engagement at GSTT and is also a carer herself and spoke on the following.

  1. Joint Programme for Carers and Patients in Covid Recovery
  2. Surgical Strategy – delivery workshops and steering group
  3. Apollo Programme – Electronic Health Care Record
  4. Carers Strategy – development

Naomi started by presenting the Joint Program for Carers and Patients.

Basically the programme aims to make sure the views of patients, carers and the public help with future service changes during the pandemic especially those who have been most affected by the pandemic. GSTT want to continue to improve and provide the very best care to patients, especially to those who are:-

Waiting for treatment
Virtual access to care
Struggling with Long COVID

There actually were some workshops back in April and May which Naomi presented on the surgical strategy

The Apollo Programme

The Apollo Programme

Naomi then spoke about how Apollo will be the most ambitious programme of transformation they have undertaken. GSTT will be replacing many of the systems (both digital and paper). GSTT currently use with a single, integrated and comprehensive source of information across Guys and St Thomas’ (including Royal Brompton and Harefield) and
Kings College Hospital Trusts. Epic is a US-based provider of electronic health records (EHR). It is used in some of the best hospitals around the world including the majority of top-ranked US hospitals, and UK trust’s such as Great Ormand Street and Cambridge.

GSTT Carer Strategy

I asked a quick question regarding GSTT’s carer’s strategy in which Naomi responded they do have one. The GSTT carer’s strategy is embedded within each of the different strategies, but there is an effort in refreshing that and making sure it is available across the trust, which is seen as priority area.

GSTT involvement

Naomi talked about how others could have the opportunity to make a huge impact to the care of patients and the experience of carers across Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College London. During the programme to date, the carer’s voice has been integral to shaping how they will support carer’s to access care on their loved ones behalf’s. In future phases of the programme, patients and carers will help GSTT to user test the patient-facing applications, and design their patient communications and training programmes.

• Reimbursement of time spent in workshops and meetings in line with Trust policy
• Reimbursement of travel expenses, childcare costs, and carer costs
• Access to various IT training opportunities
• Foundation Trust Membership (for those 18 years of over).
• Job references

New poems by Matthew McKenzie

Here are two more poems from my upcoming book “The Poetry book of mental health caring”.

The first poem focuses on wellbeing for carers who are caring for someone suffering mental illness. To be fair it does not actually have to be mental illness, but the main point is the person is thrown into becoming a carer.

The next poem is more psychological. The poem called “The Mirror” asks the carer to reflection on their identity, especially when the carer is judgemental about themselves. I certainly was very judgemental about trying to provide unpaid care and at times I still am critical.

June Carer News Updates 2022

The latest edition of my online carer, mental health and ethnic mental health news is out for June.

Click below to view latest carer news by Matthew Mckenzie for June

JUNE 2022 Carer & Mental Health news

For the June edition we have

Carers’ Hub – Supporting carers wellbeing – Video from Carers Hub Lambeth on the Better Mental Health Fund that enabled Carers’ Hub to offer additional wellbeing activities for carers in Lambeth.

Unpaid carers in England need ‘Recovery and Respite’ plan – News update on how Carers UK has welcomed the publication of the report by NHS Digital, but highlights deep concerns about the support thousands of unpaid carers across the country are getting.

Rutland carers asked to share their views on new joint plan – Carers in Rutland are being asked to share their views on a new plan that will guide the support available to them locally.

Carers Trust carers stories – Carers Trust host blogs from unpaid carers are personal views

Detentions under the Mental Health Act (breakdown via ethnicity) – The data measures rates of detention under the Mental Health Act 1983. The data includes people who were detained (or ‘sectioned’) in hospital for assessment or treatment under the act.

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