Hello fellow mental health carers. Have not blogged an update in a while regarding my carer forums. Probably due to being busy publishing my 3rd book on mental health carer poetry. More on that later. I have also been developing online courses aimed at mental health carers. I am now preparing to work on my 6th online course “caring for someone with a mental illness”.

Back to this blog update. This is an update from my monthly ethnic carer forum. A forum for those from ethnic backgrounds caring for someone with mental illness.

Speakers

• Rev Dr Cameron Langlands – Head of Pastoral & Spiritual Care at South London & Maudsley
• Carl Nando – Amenity Care update
• Rubbia Ali – Black families involvement in new elearning.

• Rev Dr Cameron Langlands – Head of Pastoral & Spiritual Care at South London & Maudsley

Did you know I also facilitate the West London NHS trust ethnic carers peer group? We recently had the Head of Pastoral care visit and engage with carers from the black community.

So it was great to have Rev Dr Cameron Langlands attend and engage with our community group. Dr Cameron looks after the chaplaincy service at South London and Maudsley. Dr Cameron takes care of service users who are inpatients and will often see people in community, but only if they are tied into the SLaM services. Dr Cameron would love to engage with more patients, but there are only three chaplains in the full time role. Plus they have four sites to cover, as well as some community settings.

They also have a part time Imam who works with them on a Tuesday. Plus a part time Deacon who works at ladywell unit over in Lewisham on Thursday.

Dr Cameron has been in the NHS now for just over 20 years in chaplaincy, and what they find particularly within mental health chaplaincy is that when people say they want a specific chaplain, often they don’t. Because they’re looking for is someone who is an appreciation as to where the patient is coming from. That would be who has the ability to sit and listen to them, especially on the difficult situation that they’re in. This is where the nursing staff are trained to do that, but unfortunately, they are often incredibly busy. So that allows those within the chaplaincy team to be able to augment the clinical team and do that.

The team are running a training program for transpersonal therapists who are in training. They focus on more spirituality based transpersonal side of things, and have to do 100 hours within psychiatric setting. So most of the work now has a chaplaincy volunteer as well. They can dovetail into the service.
The other thing they do is that they can offer volunteers in the befriending service that run via the volunteer coordinator as well. So they tie in with people in community who have either been discharged from service but still want that link or are being looked after by their GP or their community mental health team.

Dr Cameron has also asked for a befriender in a new service that runs twice a year, the befriender service is now online, the service can also be accessed in person. The course is ran over a 10 week period and it covers all aspects of mental health.

Dr Cameron mentioned that In South London, they have managed to secure funding from the from NHS England, and have started a bereaved suicide service, which is aimed at those who have been bereaved by suicide, or those who have been witnesses to suicide or attempted suicide. In that team, they have got a bereavement manager, two support workers and a couple of counselors, and they are the only service in the UK to have two community champions employed in that service reaching out to people on non faith based basis.

QUESTIONS FROM CARERS

• Can there be a conflict on spiritual conversion regarding a patient’s faith?
• How is spirituality being used as a way to be inclusive and, and bring out these outcomes to be more favorable towards those ethnic communities using those services?
• Is there a spiritual and pastoral policy? Is it inclusive of families and carers?

• Carl Nando updates on AmenityCare update

Next was Carl Nando’s turn to update the carer forum on his project Amenity care, which looks to support carers with a package for the person suffering ill health. Carl talked about how Mental health is one of the key pillars for Amenity Care and its clients.

Carl talked about the struggles he had in the past supporting his parents and the racism they experienced. Carl feels this is an issue for today. Carl mentioned how tough it was to provide that care and how it inspired him to set up his own business that focuses on advocacy and support for those suffering ill health.

Carl thinks it is very important to have more black own mental health businesses tailored to the community, but there are struggles and getting access to business support is difficult. There were lots of questions from carer members on how Carl can raise the awareness of black mental health and at the same time run a business.

• Rubbia Ali presents on Black families involvement in new elearning project

Lastly it was Rubbia’s turn to present to the ethnic carers group. She is a research worker at King’s College London. She spoke about her current study where they just received funding and they are now working on a project tailored to black families. It is called Black families involvement in E-learning. This is being led by two psychologists at King’s College London, by Dr Valentina Cardi and Dr Juliana Onwumere.

The study has two aims. Firstly, to understand the experiences and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the carers of children and young people (6-24 years) from Black minority ethnic communities in the UK. The second aim is to explore with carers of children and young people from Black minority ethnic communities, the type of information they would find helpful to include in an online course that aims to offer carers skills to support children and young people with their mental health and wellbeing. The Be FINE study will employ a mixed methods design, using both online surveys and individual and group-based interviews.

The study has two parts; an online survey and focus groups. To participate, individuals have to be parents or carer of a young person from a Black racial minority and the child has to be aged between 6 – 24 years. We then ask that the participant fills out the online survey, this should take around half an hour. The participant will receive £15 amazon voucher for participating. Following this, the participant will have the chance to also sign up to the focus groups.

This concludes the brief update for April – phew! I am so far behind!!