Category Archives: Carers Southwark MH Forum

April Carer Forum Updates 2023

Welcome back to a quick update of my carer groups and forums. I have resorted to doing a brief update due my current projects raising carer awareness. As of this moment, I am writting fiction carer stories. You can check out my YouTube channel to view those stories. I have around 13 more stories focusing on caring for someone with mental illness, I will then work on stories focusing on caring for someone with cancer and follow that up with a book.

Until then, here are my updates below.

Lewisham Mental Health carer forum

For my Lewisham MH carers forum we had engagement from Mina Hadi who have lived experience of mental health. She is the service user representative for the Patient Carer Race Equality Framework over at East London NHS Foundation Trust.

Mina would have attended my ethnic carer forum, but there was a clash, so we agreed she can present at my Lewisham carer forum. I often say to members of my carer group to network. This is vitally important if carer members are involved in a community project. This is why I try to link up with other groups involved in increasing equity for ethnic minorities using mental health services.

Mina talked about the importance of PCREF and how East London NHS FT is working towards reaching out to marginalised groups. These being diverse ethnic groups, refugees, asylum seekers, the homeless and the LGBTQ community. All are vulnerable to mental illness due to discrimination, stigma and lack of support. Mina talked about what needs to be done and work in progress.

The next speaker was Dr Georgina Charlesworth from University College London.

She is the Associate Professor in Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology.

Her main focus is on dementia where she has wrote a number of papers. Some are shown below

Living alone and risk of dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Befriending carers of people with dementia: randomised controlled trial
Peer support and reminiscence therapy for people with dementia and their family carers: a factorial pragmatic randomised trial.
Examining the Lancet Commission risk factors for dementia using Mendelian randomisation

Dr Georgina was joined by another researcher linked to North East London NHS Foundation Trust. Dr Georgina spoke heavily on the importance of dementia carers. She was impressed that such a carer forum existed and felt that we as a group set an example. Dr Georgina spoke about the problems of stigma and she talked about one of her projects, which was the Carer Supporter Programme within Prof Martin Orrell’s NIHR-funded programme entitled “Support at Home: Interventions to Enhance Life in Dementia”.

The new Alzheimer’s Society service manager for South East London was also due to join us, but were unavailable and I am hoping they will be free next time.

Ethnic mental Health carer forum

This is a forum not bound to a specific area. There should be places for minority ethnic carers to attend, so I often advertise the group to other NHS mental health trusts. The main group members are usually from South London.

The first speaker for this carer group was Abigail Babatunde from Kings College London. She spoke on updates for the project advanced directives black people.

The Advance Statements Project is a research project on getting advance statements – also known as advance choice documents or advance directives – to work for Black African and Caribbean service users who have previously been detained under the Mental Health Act, their carers, and mental health staff.

The goal of the research is to:

Help reduce detention under the Mental Health Act for Black service users,
Support, hear and understand Black service users and their carers/supporters,
Know and further understand the issues surrounding using advance choice documents and why staff members may not follow them,
Reduce coercive care in mental health care, and to better the relationships between Black service users, their carers/supporters and staff/professionals.

There is a follow up event at the Ortus (Maudsley NHS) below.

The next speaker was Denise Mantell from Bromley council. Bromley Council is currently developing its Carers Strategy and would like to hear from as many carers as possible. Since Oxleas mental health services covers Bromley, it was a chance carers could get to be involved. It would help if the carers strategy involve those caring for someone with mental illness.

Talking about Oxleas NHS Foundation trust, we were joined by Japleen Kaur and Marie-france mutti. They spoke about the new Funding scheme – Improving patient and carer experience grants.

If those within Oxleas have an idea that will improve patient or carer experience, they can bid for funding (up to £750) from our charitable funds. The project ideas need to be developed jointly between members of staff and people who use Oxleas services or care for people who use Oxleas services.

Stages

Application form completed and sent to our Involved Network
Applicant informed of bid outcome
Transfer of funding arranged
Activity takes place
Bidder shares photos/feedback on how funds have been used.

Scheme criteria

• The grant should be spent on enhancing the experience of people using our services and their families
• It should be used for activities/items that are not funded by trust services.
• It should benefit at least three service users.
• All bids need to developed joined with people using our services and staff members.

The first application period for the Improve Fund is open now until 31 May 2023.

If you have a query about the fund, please email: oxl-tr.involved@nhs.net.

Joint Southwark and Lambeth Mental Health Carers forum

Here are the update’s for my other carer forum I run in the afternoon for the last friday of the month. I used to run these forums seperately, but due to covering a lot. I have decided to merge them.

We were delighted to be joined by another speaker from University College London. This was Dr Rebecca Lacey who talked about her study on Young Adult carers in the UK.

This was following off from Carers Trust “Young Carers Action Day”, but unfortunately it was too late for Dr Lacey to attend in March.

Staff from Lambeth Carers Hub attended to hear more on her research.

You can read Dr Lacey’s paper on the link below.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/21/14076

The next speaker was Sarah Allen who is the Head of Patient Experience at Guys & St Thomas NHS FT. The hospital trust is currently working on their Carers Strategy. I often to say to all carers that it is very important to engage with hospital service carers strategy.

It is not enough for a carers strategy to exist, but to be used to hold services to account as in “You Say We did” focus.

GSTT want to involve families and carers in all aspects of their services.

They aim to recognise, value, include and respect carers. Plus treat them as expert partners at the heart of decision making for the person they care for.

I also presented the new NHS England hospital discharge toolkit to the group, there was a bit of confusion as some felt the toolkit was for triangle of care.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/london/our-work/carers-and-hospital-discharge/

In the end I pointed that this was for acute hospital services in London.

I am also pushing to engage with GSTT Cancer and Surgery Clinical Group to raise the profile of cancer carers. Once I have built a group of cancer carers, I am hoping for engagement for that hospital trust especially regarding the cancer group. I am also getting support from Kings NHS and eventually will expand to other hospital trusts.

South West London MH carers group

This group is a hybrid as there is a carer-led peer focus for the first part of the group. The next part is finding out about services and how they are supporting carers.

The group is strictly carer-led and co-facilitated by SW London carer Ava. She does the peer group section, while I will focus on speakers and engagement.

We had a great turnout as all 5 carer centre’s help promote the group, but we can out of time for the peer support section. The group seeks engagement from the local mental health trust South West London & St George, but this can be difficult, probably lack of staff maybe? Still we got engagement from Kingston Hospital who have a strong carer focus.

We where joined by Beth Mburu who is one of the Clinical Liaison Practitioners. Kingston Hospital is working on their carers focus and Beth talked about the following

Hosp. Discharge Planning Toolkit (aimed at staff)
Carers’ Needs Assessment Template (augmenting and embedding the Carers’ Agreement)
Carers’ Passport
Triangle of Care – hospital self-assessment tool and lessons learned/embedded
Resource for first time Carers / people who give their time to support a vulnerable person
National resources -already in existence from Carers’ UK – communicate and disseminate to the right people
Live/real-time digital tool aimed at Carers’ drawing together local provision and resources
Safe Transitions of Care – checklist for front-line staff
Hospital checklist / advice and Information

Kingston hospital NHS FT also had a carers event on the 4th of May to engage with carers and let them know about the work they are doing to support carers.

Again I am also focusing on engagement from the hospital’s cancer services to prepare for my cancer carer group. It is important to know who does what and how they focus on cancer carers.

March Carer Forum Updates 2023

Welcome to my March update of most of my carer forums. These forums are for those caring for someone with mental illness. The idea of the groups is to allow unpaid carers a chance to find out about mental health services. The forums also allow researchers from universities and hospitals to update carers on current trends affecting carers and mental illness.

Lewisham Mental Health carers forum

For this carers forum we were delighted to have Bobby Pratap from South London and Maudsley NHS attend. Bobby is the Director of Implementation for the borough of Lewisham. This means in laymen’s terms that a large investment I guessing around 100 million will be focused on changes to mental health services in the borough.

With that kind of investment, it is vital for patient, carer and public engagement. Bobby comes with a wealth of experience straight from NHS England’s as the Deputy head of Mental health.

Bobby presented the challenges that mental health services face in the borough of Lewisham. He also presented some feedback from engagement events under South London & Maudsley. Bobby was certainly tested by the members of the forum who grilled him on NHS trust resources.

I also presented the new NHS London Hospital discharge toolkit. Since the Carers UK 2021 report, it has been widely known that unpaid carers feel uninvolved in hospital discharge. Carers complain that they are invisible to the NHS. So NHS London carer leads have come up with a hospital discharge checklist

The benefits to involving carers in hospital discharge are

Some Benefits

Reduced carer strain and breakdown
Patients less likely to re-admitted.
Caring situation is more sustainable
Better health outcomes for both patient and carer
Reduced overall cost to system

With some Accute hospitals taking the lead, there is hope other hospital will become carer friendly and see unpaid carers as part of the team.

The resource can be downloaded from below via Carers Trust Website

https://carers.org/resources/all-resources/142-carers-and-hospital-discharge-toolkit-for-london-hospitals-and-community-providers

South west London Mental Health carers forum

This forum is facilitated by myself and Ava who is a mental health and carer campaigner. The forum covers the boroughs of Kingston, Merton, Wandsworth, Richmond and Sutton. As a group focusing on mental health carers, we get support from the carer centres and from local Mind and Rethink organisations.

There was no speakers for the group this month, so I presented the hospital discharge carer toolkit. I also covered updates regarding the Triangle of Care.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH carers forum

For this group. Carers had a chance to find out what a Mental Health Solicitor does. We were joined by Burke Niazi Solicitors. The solicitor who represented my late mother had engaged with our group to answer queries, issues and questions. The forum was well attended and even some had attended from my other forums.

We were also joined by Lee Roach who is Lambeth’s carers lead for Maudsley adult services. Lee is also the Head Occupational Therapist for Lambeth Operational Directorate. Lee updated carers from Lambeth on services related to triangle of care. I was also interested in how Southwark carer leads were engaging with carers. It might take a while for them to drop by our group since Guys & St Thomas NHS are due to attend next month to speak about their carer’s strategy.

Lastly the group was joined by Guy Swindle who is the Deputy Director of Lambeth Living Well Network Alliance.

Greenwich Mental Health Carers forum

I only run this group Bi-monthly and Greenwich carers heavily supports the group. We get great support from Oxleas NHS and the Royal Borough of Greenwich often attends when they can. For this group we had engagement from Lisa Moylan who is Oxleas head of Mental Health Legislation.

The main reason I asked for Lisa to engage with the forum is to allow carers to understand what the department does, but also get an idea of how the Law department will deal with the new changes to the Mental Health Act. The MP will also chat with carers about their thoughts about proposed bill.

At the group, I updated members on updates regarding Greenwich Carers Strategy.

Some of the updates were

Raising awareness of caring with local employers
Developing a carers self-assessment app
Research with carers from ethnic communities
Further development of the Mobilise digital platform
Exploring feasibility of a Carers Card

There are plans Greenwich carers partnership board to Engage with local GPs and Engage with hospitals. Talking about hospitals, I also presented the London hospital carers discharge toolkit.

Ethnic Mental Health carers forum

This is the only forum that I run that focuses on carers from ethnic communities. It is also a forum that can actually reach out via several mental health trusts as sometimes we get attendees from SWLSTG, West London Health trust, Kent & Medway and CNWL, but the main focus is what South London & Maudsley or Oxleas are focusing on. The group also engages with speakers from universities and researchers. We also can get updates from the local authority or Healthwatch.

The speaker for March was Natalie Creay who is Founder of Liberating Knowledge, she is also on the advisory board of The Lancet Psychiatry magazine and a trustee of The London Community Foundation.

Yes, she does a lot. Natalie spoke to us regarding health inequalities of Black and Asian people. Her research looked at Closing gaps in patient data for Black and South Asian communities.

Through the focus groups and interviews they conducted with healthcare staff. It was found that

Staff were less confident about describing why data is collected or how it is used
Staff felt that a lack of people in leadership roles who are committed to tackling bullying, institutional racism and health inequalities
Some staff also referred to a concern from Black and South Asian communities about whether they can trust the NHS given past harms
There were innovative ideas proposed such as the NHS being more radical in how it thinks about data ownership and giving more control to people and their communities over their data and the insights generated from them.

It was found that The burden of tackling health inequalities rests on people with lived experience.

There were several recommendations regarding the research, some listed below.

Create the conditions for systemic change to enable the following recommendations to be delivered by accelerating efforts to eradicate racism within the NHS. This should include developing the cultural and racial capability of the workforce.

Consider developing a race equity framework for physical health services that draws on the approach used for the Patient and Carer Race Equality Framework in Mental Health services.

Secure the support and commitment of senior leaders to improve data practices, embed inequalities work and create space for staff to innovate within the NHS.

Actively challenge ‘hard to reach’ narratives that encourage the perception Black, Asian and minoritised communities are disengaged or unwilling to share their patient data.

Equip healthcare workers with the tools to hold meaningful conversations about data: explore more innovative approaches that provide engaging ‘bite-size’ learning material targeted at healthcare workers.

This led on to one of our members Brenda who is a member of the Patient Carer Race Equality Framework to report back how Maudsley is using the framework to increase health equality and reduce racism. We also got updates from the Public Health Training and Development Manager for Lewisham who have been working hard to reduce health inequalities within ethnic communities. This was emulated on projects from Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich Mind Updates.

This concludes most of my carer forums for March.

February carer forum updates 2023

Hello carers, here is another update from most of my carer forums. Usually I try to update on each of the forums, but due to spending time writing books and raising carer awareness, it is not always possible to update each forum page.

Lewisham Mental Health Carer forum update

For my Lewisham group, South London & Maudsley want to engage with the London borough of Lewisham to explain new ideas for mental health services. There will possibly be a revamp of the Ladywell Unit that is based at Lewisham Hospital.

The speakers who looked to engage with carers were Sir Norman Lamb and Bobby Pretap, but unfortunately the meeting had to be cancelled.

The other speaker Angela Brient who is a PhD Researcher in Public Health spoke about the Impact of trauma. Angela spoke about her lived experience, which comes from caring for her husband who sustained a spinal injury whilst on deployment with the Australian Air Force in the Middle East. She was his primary carer for over a year, but ultimately, her husband took his own life.

The carer’s group were grateful for Angela’s insight and we learnt more of the Impact of Trauma course that Dr Julie Langan Martin mentioned to me a while back. Dr Julie is the Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow. We are hoping to hear more updates on the Impact of Trauma course at a later date.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth Carer forum update

For my joint mental health carer forum over in Southwark and Lambeth. Carers were delighted to get engagement from Helen Hayes MP for Dulwich and West Norwood. Carers spoke about their past experiences of providing unpaid care, but the main topic was the progress of the new Mental Health Act. Members of the group are very keen to observe the debate in Parliment.

Other carers were interested to speak to Richard Okolo on how a mental health solicitor could help someone who has been sectioned. Richard could not make the forum, but we hope to hear from him in March.

Ethnic Mental Health Carers forum Update

This carers forum specifically focuses on the experience of ethnic and diverse carers. Our first speaker was a carer on involvement at South London & Maudsley. Currently Maudsley NHS is an anti-racist organisation and seeks to increase health equity. South London & Maudsley NHS is signed up to the Patient Carer Race Equality Framework (PCREF). PCREF exists to eliminate the unacceptable racial disparity in the Access, Experience and Outcomes of Black communities and significantly improve their trust and confidence in our mental health services.

Annette Davis who is the Chair of the PCREF Service Users and Carers Group then gave updates to members. Annette mentioned that PCREF is a UK wide NHS initiative and South London and Maudsley are one of the first Trusts in the country to address institutionalised racism in the NHS. We heard updates on new flyers to advertise to the community on how they can hear updates or get involved in being an activist.

The next speaker Dr Brenda Hayanga spoke about her new research “Ethnic inequalities in multiple long-term health conditions in the United Kingdom: a systematic review and narrative synthesis”. Yes, I know it is a long title, but I do not know many research papers that have short titles.

Still, the importance of this research cannot be underestimated as I had just published my 4th book regarding health inequalities.

Dr Brenda will be speaking at an exciting event in april. The event focuses on Ethnic inequalities in healthcare for people with multiple conditions.

At the event there will be the following speakers

Katherine Merrifield from the Health Foundation
Dr Habib Naqvi who is Chief Executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory
Dr Jayati Das Munshi who is a Clinical Reader in Social and Psychiatric Epidemiology at KCL.
Eve Riley who is based at Macmillan Cancer Support
Jabeer Butt OBE whose work looks into tackling discrimination and disadvantage.
Dr Brenda Hayanga who is a Research Fellow at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London

The final update at the ethnic MH carers group was from Carers UK Melanie Crew. Melanie is the Senior Policy and Research Officer at Carers UK. Melanie talked about the new initiative on Good practice guide on supporting ethnic minority carers. The briefing follows Carers UK’s landmark report examining Black, Asian and minority ethnic carers’ experiences of the pandemic.

You can find out more from the link below.

https://www.carersuk.org/press-releases/carers-uk-releases-good-practice-briefing-for-supporting-black-asian-and-minority-ethnic-carers/

South West London Mental Health Carers group.

Obviously my 3rd biggest group, which covers 5 london boroughs. The group is co-facilitated by Ava who is involved at Kingston Carers Network and SWLSTG. The group is getting lots of support from the 5 carer centres.

We had a visit from Kirsty McLachlan who is based at Richmond Borough Mind. Kirsty is the Carers and Parents in Mind Manager and is very keen to promote the forum in our Carers in Mind monthly newsletter. It is great to see support and promotion about unpaid carers.

Our 2nd speaker was Chloe Smith who is the Healthy Communities Builder from Kingston Voluntary Action. She was joined by BBC MultiAward winning Poet, Michael Groce. They are working on a set of poetry workshops aimed Black, African and Caribbean Communities over in Kingston. There will be guest poets that will come and inspire people’s work throughout the weeks ahead by sharing their own stories and work. I was the guest poet for week 2 (more on that later).

You can watch a promotional video below

The third speaker was Wendy Doyle who is the Head of Patient Experience St Georges university hospital. This is one of the hospitals were I run a carer’s stall. Wendy updated our group on the carer’s focus the hospital is planning. Wendy also updated us on a healthwatch report.

January carer forum updates 2023

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

Virtual Ward survey

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=slTDN7CF9UeyIge0jXdO4_BibUCjlwxKiw29ufBbJcJUNzczUFhSTkVXQVVLTFJRUUpYSDdXSU9GVC4u

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.

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.

Joint Programme for Carers and Patients in Covid Recovery
Surgical Strategy – delivery workshops and steering group
Apollo Programme – Electronic Health Care Record
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

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

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum March 2022

Welcome to a brief update on my joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carers forum. I run this forum online via zoom once a month. It used to run from Maudsley hospital, but had to move it online due to the covid situation. I am guess I am so lazy to move the forum back to the mental health hospital. Will have to see.

Another update is I have started my volunteering at my local accute hospital trust, so I will be having a carer stall for families of patients to visit me. Lewisham & Greenwich trust have been helpful in giving me a spot to engage with families and carers. There will be lots to work towards, but it certainly is a good start.

Going back to my Joint Southwark and Lambeth mental health carers forum. The speakers for March 2022

Claire Parry – Maudsley Psychotherapist on updates at psychotherapy projects at the NHS Trust
Rebecca Davies & David Meyrick – Developments for families & carers in the borough of Southwark
Annette Davies – Carer peer groups and PCREF.
Natalie Marshall – Community peer lead and support for unpaid carers

Claire Parry presents to the group

Clare Parry is a family therapist. She took up the post in June 2021. This being the role of lead family therapist in Soutwark. This includes being a trusted advisor around family therapy and family work across the NHS trust. So part of her role is looking at where services may have family therapy and family work and where they don’t. Her focus is on more of the psychotherapy side rather than kind of carers assessment side. A lot is done to make family members and carers comfortable with the service they provide.

Part of her role over the last year, was working really hard in the psychotherapy services and reduce waiting times. There has been an acknowledgement that waiting times for therapies are far too long. So they have been piloting a project, which means that they are offering other interventions, while individuals, couples or families are on the waiting list for therapy

Clare is very interested in the stories that many carers have to tell, So she wants more carer engagement to events. Claire hopes that psychotherapy can make a different to others who don’t get to talk when someone’s unwell. Clare talked about how some major carer systems have been influcing the NHS trust services, those being the Tree of Life and the Triangle of Care. She also talked about Open Dialogue.

Rebecca and David presents on community transformation project

A lot had been covered by Clare on community transformation, but it was also included at this part of the forum. Rebecca mentioned that a new team, that being a low intensity team has just started. It has just been open for a couple of weeks and the rest of the services will be moving over. There was also more talk about the new mental health hospital build from Lambeth to Southwark.

Rebecca also mentioned that there will be a north and south primary care mental health teams, and the four CMHT’s which will work with most of the service users across them across the borough of Southwark. Rebecca moved on to talk about complex care services, which will include assertive outreach, rehab teams, low intensity team and early intervention team. Plus community mental health teams are going to be merging a lot of the other services.

David who is the maudsley inpatient carer lead for Southwark talked more about Triangle of Care. He admitted things had been slow due to the previous covid-19 epidemic, but with South London & Maudsley working towards their first star in the triangle of care membership, things are picking up. David mentioned how each ward has a carers champion and how they are engaging with families and carers on the wards. David had a strict regime of carers being included in patient notes especially in surguries. Support for patients had to be increased and families & carers are an important factor. David also talked in-depth of the self assessment dashboard which helps to work towards the triangle of care standard.

Next we had a carer who is championed in Southwark for helping to run groups for carers. Her name is Annette and she also run’s her ethnic carers peer group. To be honest, I am a member of her ethnic carers group and is was great to here how she empowers and links other mental health carers. Most if not all carer groups are online due to covid and travel restrictions, but I am sure when things settle down, there might be a room which can host the groups.

Annette also spoke how she was South London and Maudsley’s co-chair for their Patient Carer Race Equality Framework, something I myself have a very close eye on, but not really involved in. To be honest, I usually provide updates regarding race and mental health off my online news site

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum February 2022

Welcome to my latest update for joint Southwark & Lambeth carers forum. I have been unwell with COVID for the past week, but due to my previous vaccinations the affect was not so horrible. If I did not have the previous vaccinations I am sure the COVID would have been 10 times worse. If you are caring for someone vulnerable please get the vaccination as you cannot always avoid catching the virus. It is good to have some form of protection rather than nothing.

Speakers for my February forum were

Southwark Heathwatch
Lambeth Healthwatch
Kieran Quirke the Mental Health lead from Kings College NHS FT

Just a quick reminder, the aim of my carer forums is to allow unpaid carers who care for someone suffering mental ill health, get a chance to network and hear updates on what the services are doing for carers and for those using health & social care services. My carer groups cover half of London.

Megan Isherwood and Gosia Kaczmarczyk from Southwark healthwatch presents

There have been a few changes over at Southwark Healthwatch and it had been a while since they attended the group and engage with unpaid carers. Megan who is the research and projects officer at Southwark Healtwatch gave us a quick introduction on some of their projects. Megan also let my group know how they could get involved with Southwark Healthwatch and their upcoming events.

Megan mentioned that there is a Healthwatch in every area of England, and they were created from the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. Healthwatch are a statutory organisation. Healthwatch are funded by the local authority that being Southwark council, but healthwatch Southwark are very much independent. Healthwatch Southwark hosted by community Southwark and has helped them to work closely with the voluntary community groups in the area of Southwark.

Basically Healthwatch Southwark want everyone who lives in the London Borough of Southwark to be able to access and receive the best possible health and care services appropriate for our diverse community. As a reminder Healthwatch Southwark are the independent champion for the patient voice.

So Healthwatch are here to represent the local community and make sure that services work for those in the borough of Southwark. So this means that they listen to local people about their health and social care needs and experiences. Healthwatch Southwark helps patients and service users voice their views and concerns in order to make services better and more suited to their needs. Healthwatch also have a signposting function. So they can provide advice and information helping people to navigate the very complicated health and social care system. Healthwatch knows that navigating the system can be a real maze, but as an extra form of empowerment they also promote patient involvement in shaping services.

This can mean helping people to get involved in health and social care decision making bodies and processes. Megan continued to talk about how their community engagement can lead to different ways for local people to have their say. Regarding generic experiences this can be both online and in person. Healthwatch also have the power to enter and view services, like GPS, hospitals care homes. Healthwatch can go in and observe them and find out the views of patients and staff.

Healthwatch Southwark connects with local voluntary and community organisations and work collaboratively with them. Healthwatch conducts research, and works on reports and give recommendations to health commissioners (Southwark CCG). Healthwatch also influences boards and committees particular the Southwark Council health and wellbeing board.

Healthwatch feeds into monitoring systems and consultations and they share these concerns with commissioners to make sure your voice is heard and to aid directly into influence change. Megan wanted to finish up her talk focusing on mental health, so she talked about their recent mental health services project. This was a recent report on the mental health services which is published their website site. It came about due to a workshop held in January, where lots of people attended, and there were representatives from South London & Maudsley hospital where they presented their formal response to the report. The report basically identified the key themes and areas that about unmet needs around SLaMs adult mental health community services provision where Healthwatch made recommendations to them on how to address these unmet needs.

The report involves carrying out a survey to find out people’s experiences of the services. Healthwatch focused on issues of access, waiting, suitability, impact and staff. So in the end Healthwatch received 81 responses, which was from service users and carers. The key findings were that the Southwark improving access to psychological therapies, which is IAPTs on if you’re talking therapies, and also the community mental health teams, which were the most used services, followed by crisis services, integrated psychological therapy teams and assessment and liaison services.

Since my carer forum tends to focus on wellbeing, the next section was from Gosia Kaczmarczyk who is Southwark Healthwatch Community Engagement Officer. Gosia did a wellbeing meditation session online for the group to experience. Gosia then went on to talk about the volunteering opportunities at Southwark Healthwatch.

Since Southwark Healthwatch do the enter and view programme. They are going to be working on induction training to train these representatives in the coming months. They will also be recruiting for community engagement.

Healthwatch will also recruit for committee health ambassadors where those interested can even become an advisory board member. Such opportunities can have an impact on how healthwatch do their work and what they are focusing on. It is like a really important part. Volunteers can also help guide healthwatch on their upcoming events.

Anna D’Agostino from Lambeth Healthwatch presents

After the talk and engagement from Healthwatch Southwark, it was now Healthwatch Lambeth’s turn to talk about what they do. Anna who is the Engagement Lead for Mental Health gave the carers an overview of what Healthwatch Lambeth does. Anna also reminder my forum that Healthwatch was established in 2013 as a charity, where each part in England has a HealthWatch. In fact there are around 150 Healthwatch organisation throughout England. Anna mentioned it was established to give the people a stronger voice on how health and social care services are really set up and in some cases challenge the way that they are actually run those services. This is why healthwatch really want to hear people voices.

Healthwatch contacts people, liaise with them and gather their feedback, and then they contact the providers to see how services can be improved.

As with what Healthwatch Southwark does. Healthwatch Lambeth does Enter and View – Where they visit commissioned services, interview service users and staff suggest how the service can improve.
Healthwatch Lambeth also do Information & Signposting – they help people find the information & services they need and signpost them to organisations that can provide support.

Anna wanted to talk about a particular project Healthwatch Lambeth are currently running this is in regards to healthcare during the Pandemic.

Healthwatch Lambeth want to talk to people with mental health needs and their carers
How easy or difficult was it for you to access healthcare?
Did you get the support you needed?
Where you offered an annual health check?
Were you offered Covid-19 testing and/or the vaccine?

Kieran Quirke From Kings NHS trust presents

Kieran gave us a brief update from King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Kieran admitted that since the last time he came to the group, a lot of the projects have been put on hold because the Omicron virius (a varient of the corona virus). It is only in the last couple of weeks, things are starting to get back towards a state normality however one of the first things to mention is that visiting the hospital is now back to to visitors or patients across the majority of sites, which is an improvement.

Kieran mentioned that Kings NHS trust can hopefully start moving forward on some of the John’s campaign stuff, which I stalled during the pandemic where the dementia and delirium team are leading. Kieran mentioned two important things to mention updates where the first was the launch of their butterfly Cafe dementia group, which is due to start on the 8th of March in the afternoon, and they have got a venue for that where it is going to be held at the institute of psychiatry, They have got a room within the lounge area. Where that will be running monthly.

It’s free to attend. There’s no ability to provide transport, unfortunately, but there is wheelchair access and there will be some refreshments.
It is also going to be supported by KINGs NHS volunteers alongside some of their community partners. All they need to do is email in advance to say they’re coming where there is a bit of a chance to plan for numbers that is needed to provide for.

Another update is joint working with Mosaic clubhouse, where they come in and engage with some of their medical patients. This project was unfortunately delayed because of the pandemic. So it has taken a little while to get it back up and running. They are looking to launch in March, although it is a pilot and will initially work with four wards being medical wards. If there is a patient with a mental health concern, that is within the psych liaison threshold, The ward can then refer to Mosaic Clubhouse and Mosaic will send to a member of staff and a service user who will come and visit and spend some time with the patient and talk them about signposting Community Services, and then potentially revisit if need be, it’ll be on the medical wards, so there’ll be probably quite short, brief interventions. But that’s another really positive development.

The last update is that they plan to develop a new carers policy. This is one of those projects, which has been suspended and suspended, but hopefully now they will start to get the wheels rolling underneath it. The final update is for Matthew to get involved in KINGS NHS carers day celebration.

This is my update for my Joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carers forum for February

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum January 2022

Welcome to the first joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carer forum. As usual the forum brings together unpaid carers from both London boroughs and beyond to seek engagement from mental health, health & social care services. There will at times be national speakers or I might talk about carer empowerment or carer awareness from my books.

Speakers for January were

Cristina Clarke – Non Regulated Staff Code of Conduct Project
Lee Roach – Lambeth reflections on carer focus
Alice Glover – SLaM involvement structure breakdown

Cristina Clarke presents

Cristina explained a little bit about her role and work that she is doing to support the nursing Directorate. The project is specifically on unregulated staff code of conduct that they are currently reviewing. Cristina is a nurse by background where she is supporting the Deputy Chief Nurse for the trust to look at the policies and the clinical policies across the Maudsley NHS Foundation trust. Cristina is also working on safer staffing. One of the things that they have done recently, is set up a service user and carer review group looking into such policies. It is true that in the past policies can often be quite dry, quite long, lengthy, and at times don’t always have the voice of people using the services and haven’t always been scrutinized appropriately. So they have had to set up a group where service users and carers get involved, unfortunately they are low on carers, in fact, most of the people in the policy review group are service users, so they really want more voices from carers to help review clinical policy going forwards.

The thing is it’s not only policy regulation, but it’s related to staffing. They have got a code of conduct for the NHS trust, which is for those who aren’t sort of governed by a statutory agency. For example where the nursing workforce are governed by the National Nursing Midwifery Council, or medics are usually members of the GMC. SLaM have recognized that there’s a huge proportion of the workforce, including peer support workers, and psychologists, clinicians that don’t have a code of conduct. Still the Trust has regulation policy but it’s quite old. So they have been reviewing it and wanting to bring it up to date with national guidance. They are looking at aligning the policy with the trust strategy that was reviewed recently. Cristina mentioned that they are really keen to get some feedback from service users and carers, because it effects such a huge part of The workforce who are providing care day in and day out.

Cristina reminded us if anyone was interested in getting involved in policy review they actually have got some focus groups coming up. If they want to just have a read a bit and get some feedback, whether it be in a quite a structured way, or if it’s just informally just having a chance to read and feedback is all that is needed.

Alice Glover presents on involvement at South London & Maudsley

It was now Alice Glover turn to present. She is one of Muadsley’s Patient & public involvement leads. Alice actually attends my forums from time to time, and she wanted to talk about encouraging people to get involved at the NHS trust if the can. Alice and SLaM are really keen to get more carers / family carers to be involved in some of the NHS trust improvement work. Alice mentioned it was quite timely hearing what Christina had just talked about, because that’s a really good example of how people can get involved in helping improve the services. Alice moved to talk a bit about what the involvement register and how it works in terms of opportunities for people to review the policies.

The involvement register is literally a list of people who have experience of the SLaM services, either as a service user, or as a family member or carer, once you’re on this list, you can be paid for your time, if you help Maudsley services with service improvements. So the people that are in the group that Christina talked about are actually members of the involvement register, they may come together and meet once every six weeks. People can be paid for their time during the meetings, but they are also paid for their time if they’re reviewing documents.

Alice mentioned she understands that there maybe challenges around they’re carrying responsibilities but also people may be working. So for carers, it may be really important to have opportunities to comment on documents in their own time when it’s convenient for them. If they are able to get on the involvement, register, then there are differences that people can be paid for their time. And the payment rates are 10 pounds an hour for reading documents outside of meetings, if you’re on a Zoom meeting or a team’s meeting, and you might be using your data, then the payment rate currently is 15 pounds an hour. And you can do up to 30 hours a month. On the involvement register, it’s a very ad hoc, most people don’t do anywhere near 30 hours is completely up to you. Most people would do maybe a couple of hours a week before that.

I produced a list of involvement operations which Alice started talking about at length. Alice mentioned the list is quite a broad list. Each of the departments have collated a list of the sorts of things that people are involved in. Alice mainly covers Lambeth and Southwark. In those boroughs there are advisory groups. This is were there are a group of people with lived experience who meet every month and discuss service improvements.

Alice finished up her talk stating that a staff member or manager might come along to the advisory groups and say what projects they are thinking of doing, it could be thinking of making a change to the inpatient services and they want to know what the group thinks about it. As a carer, or family member, they can bring their own perspective and say, “Well, that might work. But have you thought of this?”

Alice feels that when people are designing services, historically, there have been times when the carers perspective hasn’t been included, and Maudsley NHS are trying to work harder to make sure that does happen. So advisory groups meet every month and basically they are a group of people giving advice around their lived experience.

Lee Roach presents on how Lambeth MH services have been engaging with carers

Lee Roach who has been supporting the forum wanted to run through some of the support that Lambeth MH services have been providing to carers. SLam now have a dedicated carer support service. There is carer support service for psychosis and bipolar. They predominantly have been operating their meetings by phone during the during the pandemic, plus they have a monthly support group where they run over teams a bit like matthew’s carer forums, which are kind of moderately well attended. It seems people have contacted by phone rather than using using online technology for groups. The Lambeth services usually have around 100 contacts a month with carers.

There are other means of carer support in the form of ward carer champions. Lee mentioned that the carer champions are individual staff members who are either based in one of their teams. So either at the ward or in one of the community mental health teams. They have been able to maintain a register of carer champions in all of their community mental health settings. So for the short term, their Lambeth support services the focus within the home treatment teams and all of the wards in the hospital who have got carer champions.

Lee continued stating that the way that they support them is that they have a forum every two months, which they share with Southwark support staff. So Southwark & Lambeth carer champions tend to meet and update. They have also been running these online groups, which have been reconfigured a number of occasions, around dates and times and things. Although online meetings are quite successful with community carer champions from the Lambeth community teams, there are not so successful with the impatient carer champions. So Lee is looking at probably running inpatient face to face groups as soon as possible with the carer champions.

The idea of these meetings is that they can share good practice. So some of the things that weren’t on the wards might not be working as effectively on those mental health teams. Some of the issues might come up against, and also just an opportunity for for those of us dealing with carer’s role in Southwark or Lambeth to kind of update them on changes across the trust new initiatives. These things could be like what will have an impact on carers. As mentioned Lee has been running a Lambeth inpatient family and carers group. These run every two weeks. Where it is a virtual meeting where they use the Microsoft Team’s platform. Lee has to request carer details from the impatient team managers and the carer champions where he gets in contact with carers and then he explains about the meeting, and then invites them along.

Lee also talked about support from matrons at the hospital who come along to the online carer support groups. They are joined by the community pharmacist to answer questions about medication that carers might have. Lee is also involved with Carer’s Lambeth Hub, where he attends a number of different meetings that they run carers collaboration. These groups usually discuss carers strategy where to make sure South London and Maudsley are finding out what’s going on with other carer organizations.

So that we can make sure that our people we’re working with about that, and also that we’re involved in black thrive, Lambeth wide initiatives around carers and Lee attends Matthew’s National triangle of care meetings, this is where South London & Maudsley is working on there triangle of care audit. There are going for their first star.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum November 2021

Here is another brief update from my Joint Southwark & Lambeth Mental Health carer forum. One of the carer forums where those who care for someone suffering mental ill health can network and get engagement, info and support from health & social care services.

My carer forums do not just seek engagement from mental health services, every so often carer members request information from accute services.

Speakers for November were

Verinder Mander – CEO of Southwark Carers – Southwark’s carers strategy
Kieran Quirke – Kings College Hospital Mental health lead
Dr Noreen Dera – Young black male mental health

Continue reading →

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum October 2021

Welcome to my brief update of my joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carer forum for October 2021. As with my other carer forums, this forum runs once a month and provides a platform for health & social care organisations to engage with those who care for someone suffering mental ill health. The primary focus for engagement is obviously South London & Maudsley who heavily support the carer forums, however a fair bit of the time the forum gets engagement from other parties, this could include Kings College NHS trust or Guys & St Thomas who also advertise the carer forum.

Speakers for October were

Dr Siobhan O’Dwyer – Spotlight on Care
Danny McDonagh – Employment & Education Engagement Worker (Mosaic Clubhouse)
Barney Stark – (Mosaic Clubhouse)