Welcome to another carers blog from carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I blog and promote awareness campaigns, events and updates for unpaid carers. Just so you know, an unpaid carer is someone caring for a person who suffers from a serious mental or physical health need. An unpaid carer is not a care worker, so carers need their own specific support needs.
This leads on to an event I attended as one of the Cygnet carer network ambassodor. The event was another of the carers, families and friends network event. Cygnet try very hard to reach out to unpaid carers whose loved ones are using their services. It is a great way to network with staff and other carers. Carers go through many struggles and one of them is caring in isolation. So what I often tell carers is that they should network with other carers. This can help build up a support structure where carers can become peer supporters. Of course there are boundaries as carers do not often have the time to check in with other carers, but we still have to value the importance of a carer support network.
Cygnet Sheffield
Cygnet Hospital Sheffield offers a low secure service for women and CAMHS services for male and female adolescents over three distinct wards. When I mention CAMHS I am talking about Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
We cannot ignore that children and young people can also develop serious mental health problems and the outcome can be devastating for carers, friends and families.
Carers need all the information and support they can get. So it helps to have these events. The event took place on Carers Rights day, which is held on the 23rd of November each year. Please check out my earlier blog post on Carers Rights day to find out more.
Also presenting at the Sheffield Carers Network event were
- Ali Curtis – CAMHS Service Lead for Cygnet Sheffield and CAMHS Lead Nurse for Cygnet
- Dr Seb Thompson – Head of Psychology at Cygnet Sheffield and CAMHS Lead Psychologist for Cygnet
- Lesley Mellor – Parent & Carer
- Julian de Takats – Parent & Carer
- Kate Mercer – Family Advocate, Black Belt Advocacy
Ali Curtis started off the event. Ali who is a qualified learning disability nurse started her career nursing within medium and low secure forensic services before progressing to management within locked rehabilitation and children’s community services.
She her presentation and introduction to the event on what the service provides for those who use Sheffield hospital services. Ali presentated on aspects of the Triangle of Care, which is a scheme to improve mental health services for unpaid carers.
Sheffield hospital has done an amazing amount of work to develop and improve carer engagement and support. This was done in co-production with unpaid carers. This includes
- Developing a Carers Welcome Pack
- Carer awareness training
- Carers contributions and videos and podcasts
- Communication Care Plans, including information sharing agreement
- Family Forums and so much more.
The above was developed to connect to the triangle of care 6 standards.
Dr Seb also contributed to the presentation on how the triangle of care made improvements to severals. If we include the families and carers in our mental health services then the quality of the services improve.
We then had Lesley Mellor talk about her caring role and feeding back what she heard from Dr Seb and Ali Curtis.
Lesley is the chair of Dorset Parent Carer Council. She is also the founder and administrator of West Dorset Coping with Chaos Plat Scheme for children with disabilities / additional needs. Lesley is a parent of 2 sons with disabilities. Lesley gave a passionate and indepth talk about the importance of parent carers.
Next up to speak was myself where I wanted to get views from those in attendance regarding carer awareness. I read out one of the poems out of my carer poetry book focusing on the desperate need for carer identity. I also talked about the importance of Carers Rights day and how we can use the day to highlight carers rights.
Up next to present during Lunch time was Kate Mercer. She runs a training organization called Black Belt Advocacy that offers support and formal qualifications to independent advocates including a National Advocacy Conference each year.
Kate spoke about the importance of advocacy for carers and the impact advocacy has in their lives. With support of the Care Act and mental health laws, there has been an increase in carer rights, but this is no good if services are unaware of these rights and they must be practiced and promoted to carers.
Last to speak was the 3rd member of the Cygnet Carers Network Julian de Takats. Julian is also a parent carer and used his lived experience to present the importance of including carers.
Overall the event increased carer awareness for those in attendance. I will continue to urge carers attend such events so they get a chance to network, ask questions and learn about how Cygnet services are developing to include carers.
A Caring Mind 