Hello fellow unpaid carers. I am doing a quick update of most of my carer forums that I facilitate in London. These groups focus on mental health carers. Basically people who are caring for someone going through mental illness.
LEWISHAM MENTAL HEALTH CARER FORUM UPDATE
Members of the Lewisham group were interested in how the Ladywell Unit was performing for unpaid carers. The Ladywell mental health unit has several wards. The unit is based at Lewisham & Greenwich NHS trust. We were joined by Inpatient carer engagement Eunice Adeshokan who gave us an update. We were also joined by Cath Collins who leads on engaging carers in the community.
The next speaker was Caroline Norrie who is a research fellow at Kings College London. She spoke about research regarding addictions and the gambling industry.
She kindly passed on details on support services
Online gambling: GamStop is a free scheme that can be used to allow gamblers to self-exclude from online gambling websites and apps run by companies licensed in Great Britain. http://www.gamstop.co.uk
Blocking software: A GamBan software licence enables people to block access to online gambling apps and websites. The licence can be obtained for free if it is requested through the National Gambling Helpline.
https://gamban.com
Blocking gambling banking transactions: Some banks offer blocks on gambling transactions, with some having a 48-hour cooling off period before it can be removed which may help to prevent relapse. For information about which banks offer a gambling blocking service go to: https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/public-and-players/page/i-want-to-know-how-to-block-gambling-transactions
It is worth noting that people can no longer use credit cards to pay for gambling.
Betting shops, casinos, arcades and bingo halls:
All gambling premises such as arcades, bingo halls and casinos must be part of a multi-operator self-exclusion scheme (MOSES). This allows a gambler to make a single request (by filling in a form) to self-exclude from all premises offering the same type of gambling, such as betting shops. Once a self-exclusion agreement is made, the gambling company must close the gambler’s account, return money in it, and remove personal details from their databases.
For betting shops see https://self-exclusion.co.uk/ or ring 0800 294 2060
For casinos see https://bettingandgamingcouncil.com/sense-self-exclusion-scheme
For arcades see https://bacta.org.uk/self-exclusion/
For bingo halls see https://www.bingo-association.co.uk/self-exclusionThe National Lottery Healthy Play | The National Lottery (national-lottery.co.uk)
JOINT SOUTHWARK & LAMBETH MH CARERS FORUM
For my Southwark & Lambeth mental health carers forum, we were joined by Toby Lee-Manning who is the Carers Development Lead for St Christopher’s Hospice.
St Christopher’s Hospice exists to promote and provide skilled and compassionate palliative care, but there also should be a focus on unpaid carers who are caring for someone end of life. The difficultly appears when people who are providing unpaid care are not sure what to do.
Luckily St Christopher’s Hospice have developed online courses aimed at carers, this is what Toby presented to our group.
Caring for Carers – online course
https://www.stchristophers.org.uk/timetable/event/caring-for-carers-drop-in-course/
We were also joined by Damian Larkin who is the Digital Health Nurse Lead at South London & Maudsley NHS. Damian spoke about BETH. Basically Beth is a free and secure way for our patients and carers to stay connected with their care team.
If you are interested in BETH – please check out SLaM BETH site
ETHNIC MENTAL HEALTH CARER FORUM
For my ethnic carer forum we were joined by Carers UK. Patrick Knock presented a project where Carers UK is currently working a series of ‘Carers Active Stories’ videos to highlight to unpaid carers the benefits of being physically active from the perspective of a carer giving their firsthand experience.
Here is a video link below
Next was Simon Mayers who is the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead for Maudsley covering the borough of Lewisham. Simon updated the group on how Lewisham is working with the new equality policy. This policy is called “Patient Carer Race Equality Framework”. This framework is aimed at mental health NHS trust across England and it is important carers get a chance to get updates and raise any queries.
We also had Tafadzwa Marapara from Oxleas NHS trust. Oxleas is also adopting PCFREF and it was only fair to hear what they plan on engaging black carers and patients using their services.
Kevlin one of our carer members is heavily involved in PCREF over at the maudsley, so I gave him a chance to update the group. Plus we also had Halima Ali join us to speak about her research project on What are the Occupational experiences of BAME unpaid mental health carers for people with a mental health diagnosis?”
SW LONDON MENTAL HEALTH CARER FORUM
This carer forum is slightly different from my other carer forums. This one covers multiple boroughs as we are developing a strong carers network. This group covers Richmond, Merton, Kingston, Wandsworth and Sutton. We get support from all 5 carer centres.
This group also spends a fair bit of time for carers to update how things have been progressing. We were also joined by Nicole Smith who is a Darzi Fellow in Integrated Medicine. She spoke to the group about Virtual Wards and how they are important regarding the NHS. She is also doing some research.
You can give feedback on her survey at the link below
GREENWICH MENTAL HEALTH CARER FORUM
This forum is slightly different as it is linked the the Greenwich carer peer group I facilitate for the borough. Greenwich Carers centre help me run the group. This forum runs every 2 months.
The forum was filled with a lot of speakers so I was glad that Oxleas work hard to engage with carers.
We were joined by Catherine Seabourne who is Oxleas Head of Nursing. She talked about her role and answered queries from carers. We were hoping to hear developments from Jason McCulloch who Service Manager regarding Greenwich Carers Strategy, Jason was unable to attend.
We were also joined by Ariane Zegarra and Janice Williamson. Janice is the new Carers Network Lead for Oxleas. We were given updates regarding social care.
This was the January update for most of my carer groups.
A Caring Mind 