Category Archives: Carers Southwark MH Forum

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.

  1. Joint Programme for Carers and Patients in Covid Recovery
  2. Surgical Strategy – delivery workshops and steering group
  3. Apollo Programme – Electronic Health Care Record
  4. 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

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
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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)
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Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum September 2021

Welcome to the September update of my joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carer forum for 2021. This is just a brief update since I have been rather busy at work, but for those who couldn’t always attend the forum, I often try and blog any updates if I can.

The speakers for september are as follows.

Rohati Chapman Executive Director of Programmes and Impact for Carers Trust
Lambeth Carers hub new mental health carers lead.

  • Peer group updates

Usually the carer forum makes time for speaker engagement, but this time we decided to check up on how we are coping through the pandemic in a peer supportive manner. There were updates from the attendees on the pressures of providing care regarding challenging access through health and social care.

Rohati Chapman presents

After the peer group catch up, Rohati entered the zoom meeting and presented on her role as one of the executives at the National carer organisation “Carers Trust”

It was great for Carers Trust to engage with unpaid mental health carers from Southwark and Lambeth. Since Carers UK sometimes attend our carer forums, where they are due to attend for November at my South West London carers forum. Rohati in her new role drive the Carers Trust’s programmes this includes Triangle of care, she also has a big impact for Carer’s Trusts Network Partners as in carer centres and carers.

Rohati mentioned she had been wanting to make it to one of Matthew’s carer forums and she is happy to attend the Southwark & Lambeth forum since it is in her area and rather local. She was happy to take any any questions and also happy to give us a bit of an overview of what Carers Trust are doing. Rohati did mention it is unfortunate that both Southwark carers and Carers Lambeth Hub are not a network partner, nearest carer’s partner actually is Wandsworth carers centre, which on a good note is covered under my SW london carers forum. Rohati menioned the other carers trust partners are Carers Lewisham and Bromley Wells.

Rohati was interested in what support are you getting? as in what is good and what’s not. This is where she will take back info to her colleagues in the network development team.

There was a very long discussion about the challenges of mental health carers, plus what is working and what could be useful. I pointed out that mental health carers tend to lack peer support and advocacy when it comes to mental health services. These type of support can even be a challenge to service users or patients, but we cannot forget that carers and families often need advice if carers are intimiated by processes and procedures from health and social care. Another thing that was raised was referrials to carer peer groups as referring straight to a carer centre does not always cut it. There was talk regarding social prescribers and GP surgeries needing to up their game in identifying carers and referring them to peer groups so that way carers can look after each other. Members of the forum are aware that GPs are under pressure and they are also aware that primary care networks are developing, but too often social prescribers focus on older adults and there needs to be a push to identify mental health carers.

Other suggestions were mental health officers at GP surguries to speak to families and carers and GPs and accute hospitals to link as much as possible to the local mental health trust.

Rohati finished up by mentioning network partners have increased access to funding and with those funds it can help develop support for local unpaid carers.

To find out more about Carers Trust see the link below.

https://carers.org/

Update from Carers Hub Lambeth

A brief update is that Karen Ibrahim is now the mental health support lead at Carers Hub Lambeth, this means that mental health carers continue to have a dedicated carer support from Lambeth. Karen talked more about her role and how the Lambeth mental health carer peer group will help support carers in that borough. As I often attend the carer peer group over at Moasic Clubhouse, I look forward to development of the carer network.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum August 2021

Welcome to a brief update of my Joint Southwark and Lambeth Mental Health carers forum for August 2021. There was no speaker for that month so I presented on the following being:

The Importance of carer involvement

Plus I also presented on Carer empowerment

Funnily enough the turn out for the joint forum was very good and to be honest I couldnt present for a long while due to carers speaking to each other on how things have been developing for them.

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