This poem is number 9 of the new book I am working on regarding the experience of care expressed as poetry.
I am looking at that clock again Tick tock, tick tock The sound is driving me crazy Tick tock, tick tock
His in the ward again, being detained It has been weeks now, and I am going insane All these thoughts rushing through my brain Wondering when if things will ever be the same
I think I will sit down and watch the TV Maybe if I put something on, the time will pass easy My brain hurts and my stomach is queasy Oh when will they ring, so someone can inform me
While the TV is on, its only been 20 minutes Nothings good worth watching and I am hitting my limits The sound of that clock, its making me fidgit Maybe I ll head out and see him on one of my visits
Oh I don’t know. Why am I doing this I rang them ages ago, something is amiss I grit my teeth, have a frown Something needs to turn around No one is calling My heart is falling My patience is gone and I am about to start bawling
Welcome fellow unpaid carers and families. With my involvement in local accute hospital NHS trusts. I have news of a great event that will be of interest. Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust are to launch their Improvement Showcase event for 2022. It will be open to all and be run virtually over Zoom. There will be national speakers presenting and also opportunity to hear about the great local improvements happening around health inequalities, patient co design and more.
Hello everyone. As you can probably tell from my website. I focus on the experience of providing unpaid care, especially regarding those suffering mental ill health. I am in my poetry phase and am to get a large number of poems off my YouTube channel.
My latest poem, which is rather short looks into how mental illness can be catching, perhaps not as bad as what the poor patient is going through, but unpaid carers are not signing and jumping for joy.
You can view my latest poem by playing the video below.
Did you know that I run a monthly online carers newsletter? Although most of my focus is on mental health carers, the newsletter focuses on all unpaid carers. The rest of the carer news focuses on Mental health updates, ethnic mental health news and items relating to NHS and national organisations responsible for health & social care.
mind word cloud gradient blue sky background only
For January update we have the following news items
Welcome back to another blog by former unpaid mental health carer Matthew Mckenzie. I am working on my carer awareness poetry for 2022. Poetry can be great for creativity, expression and even for campaigning.
I have done around 60 poems for the book I am going to release later on this year, the poetry book will contain around 150 poems.
For this particular poem, it is about a recent download of a carers assessment and my attempt at filling it in. At first I am nervous about filling in such forms because it asks such personal and thought provoking questions. After a while, I find the form gets easier to fill in, but I query is it worth filling the form.
This poem called “The Carer’s Assessment” can be views from the video below.
There will be times carer’s can’t be bothered to fill them in because they don’t get anything out from it and its engagement to carers can just be a tick-box exercise.
It’s still advisable to fill in carers assessments since it is a good way to be recorded and identified as a carer.
Welcome to my latest blog about my new book. My name is Matthew Mckenzie a former mental health carer who cared for his mother who suffered from a form of schizophrenia.
I have decided to highlight chapter one of my book “Experiencing mental health caregiving”
The first chapter explores what unpaid mental health carers feel about their identity. Each chapter of my book asks several intriging questions about mental health caring, which of course focuses on unpaid carers e.g. families and friends caring for someone close suffering mental ill health.
Carer Identity
The first question I asked carers on chapter one, which is “Carer Identity” was “What does it mean to be a mental health carer?”
You can see the video of this below below
The reason I asked such a question is that those who suddenly find themselves providing care might find some of the answers useful. Perhaps even NHS professionals or social workers might find the answers important.
I will pick out a few responses that I found highlighted the importance of carer identity.
One carer responded as
“I think that it’s difficult. Often nobody other than the carer can see the disability with the person that you’re caring for. And so, they go unnoticed. Plus with mental health, it fluctuates and dramatically as well.“
Another carer felt
“For me to be a carer of a mental health patient has turned my world upside down completely. This is different when you caring for somebody outside your family, but when it is someone in your family then it is an application of emotional attachment.“
Another carer summed up “My own identity disappeared in the beginning of my caring journey. It also means getting acknowledgement from healthcare professionals that I am an important person in my loved one’s care“
What I thought was interesting is how difficult it was starting out caring for someone suffering mental illness, notice the responses all mentioned how tough it was when they first started out caring. Although certainly take note, I have only shown some of the responses here as others in the book might be different. One thing to note is some carers might find the role gets easier depending on their knowledge of the illness or the support they may get from services, community or other members of their family. This might not be the case for all unpaid carers.
For chapter one I asked around 8 other questions regarding carer identity and if you are interested about mental health carers, you can buy my book on the video link description.
Happy new year to visitors of my mental health carer blog site. As mentioned in my earlier blog posts, I am working on promoting awareness of caring for someone suffering mental ill health.
I created a number of carer poems, quite a few are on this site, but are subject to being edited as I am often fine tuning poems.
I am also adding a couple of my poems on to my YouTube platform and will blog them every so often.
The poem I want to introduce here is titled “On Alert” as it highlights the struggle unpaid carers go through in prompting medication. A lot of carers hate doing such a task, but when the experience the person’s mental health crisis, they want to try avoid the situation again and take resort to being on alert.
Watch my 2 minute poem “On Alert” off my video link below.
Welcome to another blog by former mental health carer Matthew Mckenzie. I run many carer forums and support groups for half of London aimed at those caring for someone suffering mental ill health.
For the video version of this blog, please watch below.
Well before I talk more about that, lets understand what a carer is first. When I say carer, I often mean unpaid carers and of course caring for someone you love and are connected to should be the pinnicle of what makes a caring community, but with caring comes added strain and stress, especially with the pressures on health and social care.
So with those added pressures, it is important unpaid carers know their rights. This is just one of the reasons unpaid carers and those that work with them should pay attention to Carers Rights day 2021.
The whole idea of carer’s rights day is
Making carers aware of their rights
Letting carers know where to get help and support
Raising awareness of the needs of carers
So under the carers rights act 2014.
Carers have the rights to
A choice as to how your personal budget is managed.
A personal budget to meet any ‘eligible needs’
Be helped to develop a carer’s support plan Have an assessment of your own needs as a carer (either jointly with the person you care for or separately)
Have your say if you are no longer prepared to care, or are not prepared to do an element of caring
Have your views taken into consideration by health and social care services when supporting or treating the person you care for
Specific advice and information for carers that you can understand
Of course There is no legal obligation to be a carer as unpaid Carers have the right to choose to provide care.
However it is also important that most people are compelled to care because of experiences with a health & social care system under strain. So if you are an unpaid carer and even if you miss out on carers rights day, then please check out the links below my video.
Welcome back to another blog by unpaid carer Matthew McKenzie. I am slowly breaking into the world of becoming an author and I am pleased to announce my 2nd book on the experience of caring is out.
The title of the book is called : Experiencing mental health caregiving – Unpaid Carers
Obviously due to my previous role caring for my mother, this 2nd book focuses on mental health carers. What I mean by that is getting views, statements and comments from those who look after someone suffering mental ill health. The book is not to be taken as an audit, but a philosophical look at experience of care, I wanted those to be philosophical on their experiences of being a carer and anything mental health related. There will be comments that stated facts or sometimes seem like a pitch, plus some comments might offend some people, but it is very important to just get the voice out there and understand why someone would comment in such a way.
I am known for my networking to carers and this was the nature of this book. I wanted the book to be a link and connection to other unpaid carers, this is so that there is some form of identity for carers and a way to relate to the experience of care. The book is very large with over 300 pages and 33 chapters. The book however was quite challenging to compile experiences, because quite a few comments brought me back to when I was a mental health carer and some things hit hard.
To research the content for my book, I had to approach many mental health trusts and carer centres to promote my project and I thank those that have contributed.
Many thanks to CNWL, West London Health trust, Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust for their lovely newsletter, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and many other mental health trusts allowing me to present about my project.
I also approach universities especially those who taught psychiatry, psychology or those who led on social care courses. I wanted their opinions as well, because if you want nurses, social workers, doctors and psychiatrists to work well with carers, you have to start where they are being taught their profession. I did want to include contacts from large organisations, but it was too difficult, although I do hope they support and promote the book. If anything is going to bring changes to the experience of care, it needs to be the voices of carers being amplified.
Next year, I certainly want to expand on the chapters I wrote in this book especially regarding the views given by those who contributed, however before I undertake my next project. I want to try my hand at poetry.
Welcome back to another Blog post from Matthew Mckenzie, unpaid carer over in South London, author, activist on my projects called a caring mind.
This Blog post supports the national carer charity – Carers Trust – Young Carers action day for March 16th 2021, but why is it so important young carers get such recognition or even an event to highlight their caring role?
Basically, Young Carers Action Day is an annual event led by Carers Trust. It raises awareness and calls for action to increase support for young people with caring responsibilities.
To see the video of this blog see below.
For 2021, Young Carers Action day will be about Protecting Young Carers’ Futures and making sure that all young and young adult carers get the support they need to go after their dreams.
As a young carer myself…all those years ago, I never gave it a second thought what future I could possibly have, I just kept doing what I was doing, providing care and support. Now with the strain on how schools, health and social care services, it is now even more important to raise that awareness for young carers and also get young carers involved to tell their story and give them the chance and confidence to campaign on what they want for the future.
When young carers think about their future, they think about developing their skills, about what they want to do in their career, their dreams and aspirations. Caring for those you love or support is an honorable role, but it should not define our future and should not hold people back.
With support from schools, carer centres and those who can help make change. Young carers are encouraged to campaign, make a statement and help raise awareness about young carers, especially in schools. Not everyone in schools or colleges can identify or are even aware of young people who provide unpaid care. We have young carers helping or spending large amounts of time looking after someone, which could be helping to keep that person clean, cooking food and cleaning, advocating and being there for that person. All this takes time and energy and we should recognize the added strain facing young carers…..it should be about action and keeping that awareness going.
Carers trust a national charity focusing on making a better future for carers young and old have a wealth of resources for those especially young carers wanting to campaign.
These being
Creating a Young Carer Skills Journal
Campaign Packs with logos
Young Carers Action Day posters
and even just to find out more information about Young carers action day.
