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Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum July 2020

Maudsley_Hospital_Main_BuildingWelcome to the July update of the MH carers forum.

The forum Encourages carers of those with mental health needs to get more engagement from services and to understand how mental health services work. Carers can also query them and compliment what they feel are going well. In attendance were Southwark Carers trustee, Lambeth carers hub mental health carer support. A few carers especially involved ones. The carer inpatient lead for Southwark and also the Carer lead and head of occupational service lead for Lambeth. The forum was also joined by staff and a governor from Guys and St Thomas to speak a bit about their mental health and carer’s strategy. We also had a young person demonstrate a new online application called “kooth”, aimed at young people.

Lee Roach from Lambeth Lambeth Hospital spoke about updates from Lambeth Hospital. He mentioned to the forum about staff who are carer champions over at the hospital. Staff work in a team effort, but not all of them are occupational therapist by background. Lee mentioned the different roles some of the staff do as some of them are running carers groups, some of them were maintaining carrier information boards.

Some events are being planned over at Lambeth hospital for carers. A recent event had a Junior psychiatrist, and occupational therapist and pharmacist talk to carers about questions that they had about medication and about diagnosis for their loved ones. Previously Lee wanted to establish a Carer champion in each of those six teams that were working out of the the Lambeth area. They made a little bit of progress and two or three members of staff were identified as carer champions with others who were keen to be involved.

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They even had a carer champion at community level, but unfortunately COVID-19 hit and services had to be put in lock down and what took place then was that the teams were reorganized and merged to cover services. Service leads were expecting a significant reduction in staff availability. So at the moment they are working to operational crisis levels.

Lee continued to state that for the 21st of August they plan to organize a meeting for carer champions. So they will get members of staff together alongside carers and aim to invite involvement from carers to update them on regarding the COVID period. The event will also share good practice and also to advise the new carer champions about what the expectations are for them.

The Lambeth hospital carer and services lead spoke how important that they make sure that the clinicians are thinking about carers and also to make sure that they are aware of all those people that are involved in that person’s life as much as possible.

It is also important that staff record carer’s details on SLaM’s patient record system so that should anything happen to the patient then the clinicians able to stay in contact with carers. Lee mentioned it is important carers are offered engagement and support plans for their needs, not just the need to services and talk about what some of the needs they might have.

Lee excitedly mentioned the that they are developing some exercise classes for carers. These exercise groups are being organized so that information can get to the clinicians and the carers in Lambeth as quickly as possible. On the 7th of September they are going to organize some events for the community mental health teams in Lambeth to raise the profile of carers and the needs of carers and I’m looking for volunteers and people who are on the involvement register. Lee felt the most effective way of communicating with clinicians about the needs of carers and the importance of involving carers, in the care of their loved ones, is for carers to tell their story and to hear that narrative of the carer’s experience.

The update impressed the chair of Southwark carers who was interested to know more about carer champions. I also raised the idea if Lambeth are looking to employ a Lambeth carers inpatient lead as for what Southwark have. I also wanted to know more about the role of Anna Penn-Carruthers who is a centre lead at Streatham living well centre, she was unable to attend the forum, but will come at a future date. I also wanted to know the situation with COVID-19 affecting Lambeth services.

For some time no carer is allowed on the Lambeth hospital site and that was the same for the Maudsley site as well. So no physical visits allowed. That’s now changed and carers are able to visit. But it needs to be by appointment now they have got rooms allocated on the Lambeth hospital site for the carer’s visits to take place. The thing is COVID-19 has made things much more restrictive. Lee feels the challenges for everyone over this period has been utilizing virtual meeting spaces and in how they are using the software mircrosoft teams. Things are moving back more to where they were before, but they are still very limited in terms of how staff visit people’s homes, organizing meetings and limiting the amount of unnecessary contact.

Kooth application

Next up for the Joint Southwark and Lambeth carer forum was Chanelle from XenZone to speak about Kooth which is an online mental wellbeing community. Kooth gives young people access to a community of peers and a team of experienced counsellors. Kooth is accessible for any young person who lives works or studies in Lambeth from the age of 10 to 26 years old.

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The good thing about Kooth is that it is free mental health support, but obviously not a replacement for the NHS or any mental health services. Kooth also has a link of different services that young people can contact when they’re in a crisis, which would be national services, because Kooth is not a crisis service is also something that people can use alongside with those those resources.

Shanelle showed us a quick video about Kooth, which can be seen from below.

Video of Kooth demonstation

After the video Shanelle explained what it’s like to sign up to kooth via a demonstration. She mentioned that when you sign up to kooth that it is very simple. So as shown in the video, it is an anonymous service. So they don’t ask people for their names or their address or anything that identifies them. Kooth only asks for basic demographic data that’s taken such as their gender, their ethnicity and age. And the reason they ask for their age is that they can make the content appropriate to the age of that young person.

Kooth has many different links where one of them allows a young person to look into the different counselors, as they can see different biographies about them about whatever they’ve chosen to speak about. Kooth is available in the boroughs of Lambeth, Greenwich, Bromely, Bexley and Southwark for the ages of 10 to 25.

Staff from both South London & Maudsley and Guys & St Thomas were interested to developing links to Kooth for referring to it as an additional resource.

Guys and St Thomas Carers Strategy

Next up were staff from Guys and St Thomas regarding their carer and mental health strategies. I feel part of the aim of this forum is to allow carers what services, policies and strategies are being done to aid in supporting their role. We were joined by Jackie Waghorn who is their new Mental Health lead for that trust taking over Caroline Sweeney. We were also joined by Sarah Allen who is the Head of Patient Experience at Guys and St Thomas talking about their carer’s strategy.

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Guys and St Thomas also sent Nikki who is one of the dementia, clinical nurse specialist on dementia and delirium services and they are inpatient based who their main role is to provide care and support to patients and their carers and staff within the inpatient settings. Nikki spoke about how they support patients by ensuring that staff carry out the principles of the St Johns campaign such as ensuring that flexible working, flexible plans are committed. Other things done are getting out carer surveys out to carers so that they can really understand that they have a voice and staff can understand what carers needs are. The staff normally carry out these carer’s surveys when carers come into the wards to visit their loved ones, and then staff can go through the survey with them. Otherwise, they send out carer surveys via posts and staff collect them.

Next to update the forum was Sarah Allen who is Hear fo Patient experience, she came to talk about the NHS trusts carer’s strategy and carer’s policies that are under review. There are 3 priorities so far which the trust will be looking to review.

1. Providing carer’s network days which are for local residents in Lambeth and Southwark, plus GSTT staff who may also be carers. The aim of these network days is to develop carer’s skills further in sort of key areas is what’s known as key skill stations. So sort of little mini sessions on different aspects of caring for someone. So that ranges from things like providing personal care and mouth care, to things like on dementia and delirium.

2. The other priority is they have a carer’s passport at the trust, but it’s not quite as well embedded as they would like. But really the role of that document is to support staff in understanding and recognizing the role of carers and the part they have to play in terms of the care and sort of providing information and understanding on the condition needs and preferences of the patient.

3. The final priority really is around for GSTT staff. This being that some of their staff are carers and is pretty much recognizing that their own staff do you have caring responsibilities as well often in addition to being parents, for example, that may also have young children that may also have a responsibility. They’re looking after an older parent or somebody else within their extended family or Friendship Circle.

The chair of Southwark carers was interested to hear more about Guys & St Thomas’s carers passport. She was also interested in the networking days.

Next we had Jackie Waghorn speak about her role as the the new mental health lead at Thomas’s. Jackie has been in post for six weeks, so is pretty new and still trying to find her feet in the organization.

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She has has come from Croydon, where she was doing a very similar role running health services. Prior to that. she worked in offices and mental health trust for many years, managing crisis and mental health services and working in crisis and mental health services.

Guys and St Thomas Mental Health Strategy

Jackie spoke more about GSTT mental health strategy which was launced on Mental Health Day and the strategy lasts up till October 2022. In developing the strategy, this strategy was devised by her predecessor, Caroline Sweeney. And in devising this strategy, she did consult with a number of different stakeholders, including patients and carers. Jackie was not sure what any of the forum members were involved in that.

What the strategy does and in, in supporting carers is not quite specific, becaue it’s basically divided up into three sections which are patients, people and partnerships. And it really is just thinking about how they can involve carers and how they can support carers in each different section. Jackie is looking to basically develop a group which would oversee policies and things to make sure that mental health is considered in everything that GSTT do. Next we heard from Georgie Smith who has recently recruited into a new role which is Mental Health Improvement lead.

Her role is and the work that I’ll be doing is is carrying out several projects under the name of Lilly Sterner, who was a patient who left a legacy. In those projects she will focus around improving mental health awareness and improving mental health delivery within the trust of guys and St Thomas. Then Paula one of the governors from Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust. She was interested to hear if there was enough support within the community for mental health and also onthe strategies that the trust will be administering?

I was interested in how the trust engages with patients and the public and if there were staff at guys who has a focus on carers. Sarah mentioned that they try quite hard to actually involve patients and carers in sort of the redesign of pathways and redesign of services. This is done via the patient and public engagement team. It was also mentioned that there has been a number of staff trained up to become what’s known as mind and body champions, the Mind Body Program from kings health partnerships, has done a lot of training for keep just staff focused mental health awareness. So they have mental health champions and obviously part of mental health is care awareness. It will be good to see if GSTT can work with the joint Lambeth and Southwark MH carers forum as their new Mental Health lead continues her role, as the forum aims to raise the profile of mental health carers.

Southwark inpatient carers lead update

The last update was from David Meyrick who is the Southwark carers lead for inpatient wards. David reported that all the Southwark Wards are open, were wards that were moved to other boroughs are now back in Southwark. There is other good news that the carer champion roles are becoming more relevant and active. SLaM have also just finished a project on one of the Wards listening in action project. This has been a project to make the ward more family friendly. There has also been an improvement to the waiting area the visiting area.

The waiting room has been redesigned search cordoned off to give a bit more privacy and social distancing plus two families can to visit at once rather than a portable partition so it’s a bit more than welcoming and relaxing area and and also a lot of work on the leaflets and literature produced for carers and help make it more informative and more family friendly from that perspective.

We also had an update from carer peer supporter Annette on how she is co-facilitating carer support groups online and how the peer support role empowers her to support families and carers.

Lewisham BAME MH Carer Forum June 2020

10177241_747738765268892_5890142387668348507_nIt has been a busy month for July and I have been meaning to update on my Lewisham BAME Mental Health carers forum for June. I have to honestly say I have finally gotten around to do this, even though the July BAME forum is tomorrow. Lets first give a quick introduction of this forum.

I can feel it can be difficult for patients to know about what mental health services are in place in a certain area, it can be even more difficult for carer’s to get an idea what is out there, especially if there are forms of mental health stigma. but this move in BAME community, sometimes the BAME community can go through a hard time and that does increase mental health issues as opposed and also problems with services that can be seen that we need to make made aware of and how we can work together.

With these issues it helps to have a forum that allows engagement from services. That’s because services change often, especially health services, mental health services and Local authority services. The forum also allows a chance for carers to get some forms of education to learn from those services.

For the June forum we had my MP Janet Daby attend, along with Josephine Ocloo who is a Researcher, and also ‘Patients for Patient Safety Champion and also on the National Patient Safety Steering Committee for NHS England. We were also joined by Donna Hayward who is SLaM’s Service Director for Lewisham mental health services. We also had Sophie from Healthwatch Lewisham who is the patient experience officer, talked a bit about her role as in to listen to residents on their views about health and social care.

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MP Janet Daby

Janet thanked us for the invite to the forum so that she can update members and hear from BAME carer members. She was happy to see lots of familiar faces on the forum. Plus she felt that the forum was important for carers from the BAME background to be supported through engagement from services.

Janet certainly agreed that there can be stigma in the BAME community when it comes to mental health sometimes there is an embarrassment or shame around stigma or sometimes even people don’t really recognize or or get a sense of how they will and and can be supported. Janet Daby updated the forum to also speak about the Coronavirus where Lewisham has provided any support. Janet mentioned that she recently met with the chairman of SLaM sir Norman lamb and is are going to have more ongoing conversations in futher meetings.

Janet feels there’s so many things that she has spoken to him about and but the main one that I spoke to about was the lack of of professionals in engagement with family members where somebody has a mental health problem. There is an issue regarding the lack of empowerment for family members to be involved with the care and the decisions of their loved ones where they’ve got mental health problems. She feels health professionals should be embracing that relationship, rather than being surprised it exists, and also rather than making decisions without having those conversations with those family members. There needs to be more training on getting health professionals to engage well.

She has lots of concerns around where people live in overcrowded situations or where people live in unsuitable conditions and how that will exacerbate the feelings of them being isolated, just as carers are isolated during the coronvirus infections. With all this problems it is no wonder that mental health issues are incresing. Janet mentioned she was also concerned how young people were coping during this difficult period. She felt hard for those people who are unable grieve for their loved ones when they haven’t been able to attend funerals or do their usual goodbyes.

She feels it is really important that when the government is looking at this and she will do her hardest to increase the voices of the BAME communities being heard. Especially in accessing the right type of therapeutic support. Janet mentioned about the £5000 application funding scheme, which was also advertised off her Twitter account where carer members asked her specific questions.

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After a while, we got several excellent questions from the carer forum. Where one carer member asked about if the government understands the difference between a worker and an unpaid carer. He felt the reason why he had to ask was because he never hears anything from the government to say what they’re going to do for the unpaid carers who are suffering in silence at the moment. Janet did agree more could be done to raise awareness to the government about carer identification.

This is not only a problem with carer identification but also BAME as there has been so many reviews including the McGregory review, the Windrush scandal review and others. Janet queried when will the government get on and work on the recommendations of these reviews. She felt that we do not need people’s sweet words or their facial expressions of concern that they really care about the community, because if they cared about our community, then they will put these recommendations in place. She feels there is a lack of BAME people being at certain reviews and it is so important BAME communities keep telling their stories, but with these recommendations especially from MP David Lammy and others hardly any get passed.

Going back to my Lewisham BAME forum, I am open for patients and service users attend and we got a good question from a service user who does peer support on some of SLaM wards. She feels that patients get a bad deal when it comes to their ward rounds. A good example is there can be so many people at those ward rounds and that there is a misrepresentation of that service user needs. There is a lack of patient advocates to be there as a voice to represent them and not for other people to tell them.

Another carer talked about her mother from a different culture and background and felt that while her mother is in hospital, there is some difficultly visiting her. Some other carer also from a BAME background spoke about the reasons why she feels the BAME community gets so many mental health problems she was also unhappy about the levels of BAME community at the front line contracting COVID-19.

Janet responded to the forums queries and questions and agreeing that the BAME community should not be pigeonholed and stigmatized with labels. Plus the problems of PPE not fitting BAME staff and the problems of poverty, which can lead to lower immunities. She feels BAME communities need more access to education, housing and especially health. She also feels there needs to be prevention of the police racial profiling of our community and that there is also a problem with the rise of the far right in the UK.

One of the service user members of the forum stated that she was at another meeting yesterday and felt that we need to stop thinking as a separate unit. We need to think of us as a big community, and this is some of the things she find as a service user as well, is that there’s that separation of hospital care and community care. She would like to see those two come together as a whole and that the care that you can get to can be continuous and not separated.

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Dr Josephine Ocloo

We next had Josephine Ocloo speak about her research and then Donna Hayward from SLaM give the forum members service updates. Donna felt it would be appropriate to talk more on BAME cultural awareness. Donna mentioned that although SLaM knows that a lot of their patients, carers and staff. She feels like there could be more discussions on what what it’s like to be black, or from a BAME background.

She want people’s experience of mental health to be different, but Doona feels unless we have the conversation about diversity in a very open way, SLaM may be in a position of being defensive and still feels we are not getting it right for our community.

There is a problem in the NHS, that we revise strategies and that we talk about research, where lots of things that the forum raised she recognised. Donna mentioned she recently had a meeting with a commissioner who said that SLaM needed to do a research project. Donna felt that we do not need to do a research project. What SLaM needs is to know what the issues people tell us and how those issues start. We get don’t don’t spend 10 grand doing a research project and spending 10 grand putting something right.

Mental health tends to be thought of as it shouldn’t be. Mental health is across all SLaM’s services and sometimes SLaM don’t always get it right. Donna mentioned that she is one of those people who’s very vocal about that. She feels mental health is in our community across our community and across our services, including our GPS, including social care, including education

This is the update for June’s Lewisham BAME MH Carers forum

Study in the experiences of loneliness and isolation of MH Groups

Researchers at UCL would like to talk to people aged 18 and over to find out about their experiences during the virus outbreak, and more generally, their experiences of feeling lonely or isolated and how they may relate to experiences of mental health problems.

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For more information on this study please visit their site below

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychiatry/research/epidemiology-and-applied-clinical-research-department/loneliness-and-social-isolation-26

Joint Lambeth & Southwark MH Carers Forum update November 2019

Southwark & Lambeth MH Forum 28-11-19Welcome back to a quick update from another Mental Health Carer forum. This one was a joint forum since due to the election candidates had to cover many areas to campaign and it was harder for them to visit each forum.

On Thursday the 28th of November, we had our Joint Southwark and Lambeth MH carer forum, which was held over at Moasic Clubhouse during the morning. The host for the joint forum was Carers Hub Lambeth who do an amazing amount of work for unpaid carers in the borough of Lambeth.

A bit more about Carers Hub Lambeth. Carers’ Hub Lambeth is an independent local charity based in Brixton, They seek to limit the dilemma’s placed on carers by two key ways. One way is by working with carers directly, and the other by influencing the local services and policies that affect them. Hence this is why we built up the Lambeth MH carers forum, which has been running quite a few years now.

We were also jointed by unpaid carers from Southwark Carers and a bit about them.

Southwark Carers try to make it easier for Carers to have a life outside of caring by 3 key areas, this is by Enabling, empowering and enriching the lives of carers in the London Borough of Southwark. Southwark Carers enabling service is a flexible, individual, personalised service offering support on a one-to-one, plus their empowering service provides carers with information and knowledge of their rights and lastly they help in enriching unpaid carers lives by offering leisure activities or by helping them return to training, education or work.

I was very proud that both groups of unpaid carers came together from both boroughs to be heard on issues affecting carers from the two boroughs.

About the forums

Both Southwark and the Lambeth MH carer forums work the same way as the Lewisham and the Lewisham BAME MH carer forums. The forum is not much of a support group (those are a different and complex animal), they are mean’t to empower unpaid carers who are active in connecting with other carers and the community. The way mental health services are run are complex and also a mystery. These services affect unpaid carers regardless of what anyone thinks. Unpaid carers should be empowered to know what is going on and why. Even then, that is not enough. Unpaid carers should be involved and not be a tickbox or an afterthought.

Where it took place

As mentioned, the joint forum took place at Moasic Clubhouse, which supports people who are living with a mental health condition in the London Borough of Lambeth. Mosaic’s approach is built on the internationally-recognised Clubhouse model , which embeds coproduction between staff and members throughout all activities.

On the day Helen Hayes (candidates for Dulwich & West Norwood in the 2019 general election) visited and engaged with both patients, staff and carer groups to here about the good work they do and listen to burning issues or questions. Helen has been a long promoter of both carer forums and she has visited and engaged with both the Southwark and Lambeth MH carer forums several times already. She works tirelessly to represent the community and often checks up on how things are getting along.

Why it is important to have relations to MPs and candidates

I often felt that carers have a really tough time getting mental health services or the local authority to listen to their issue, which is why when unpaid carers get together, they should have a link to government representatives and a lot more. If there are forces that wish to drown out an unpaid carer concerns, then there is always a risk many would seek to avoid or limit the groups activities. Its not that unpaid carers want to moan or complain, its just they wish to be heard and be counted.

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As a bonus on why it is important for unpaid carers to get a voice in government circles. I have included Carers UK Manifesto on the General Election in the Link below and also Carers Trust’s Think Carer 2019 pledge.

Carers UK Manifesto 2019

Carers Trust 2019 Pledge

Discussions and agenda at the joint carer forum

You will have to forgive me as I completely forgot my notebook, so I did not note anything down.

I had built up the forums to help empower unpaid carers, so I was really happy to see another carer chair such an important meeting and I really hope many will talk about how impressed they were with her.

Helen briefed us on how Labour will strive hard to get the unpaid carer’s voice heard. Labour will strive to work on the Mental Health Act 1983 amendments, but she also mentioned that through years of austerity services had struggled, which in turn lead to difficulty in unpaid carers lives.

I mentioned to Helen my role at the Royal College of Nursing due to the amount of pressures placed on student nurses and nursing in general, we really hope the government will seek to support not just patients, but nurses and unpaid carers. The NHS has taken blow after blow due to lack of foresight and lack of investment, although the intention has been good, intention alone is not enough and too often the social care angle has been kicked down the road.

I have also added RCN’s Safe Staffing Saves Lives link below.

Safe Staffing Saves Lives

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Up for discussion was also the impact of the Care Act 2014 as many unpaid carer was left wondering, what difference has it made since more services were drawn into the local authority and grassroots carer charities have been striped of their power, were funding has been cut and staff at carer centers told to do more. From what I have noticed, it has been a complex web of bureaucracy and deceit where heads and directors of social care are not engaging with groups and make decisions without hearing the stories of those affected by those decisions.

Many unpaid Mental Health carers are wondering what bite does the Care Act 2014 have, when very few are aware what it is meant to do, which probably it is aimed to highlight and protect carers rights.

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There have been situations and stories where the Local Authority gang up with mental health services and push the family or carer out of involvement for the cared for. It is like the carer is not a professional in their own right and the law see’s it that way. Nevermind the peer support, services can and often collude with each other to drown out the struggles the carer or ‘cared for’ may have, which is why we as a group look to the politicians to not only represent us at government, but bring us along in the journey.

If things go wrong or nothing gets settled, then we carers are a patient lot, but we must try and try and try again using different methods.

Lambeth Carers Strategy

Up also for debate was the Lambeth Council’s Carer’s Strategy and how things were forming on the councils responsibility to its unpaid carers.  I have always been a firm promoter that local authorities engage with carers on what they are doing for carers.  It is not enough to assume strategies are too hard or complex for unpaid carers to get involved in.    Even if the carers strategy does not amount to much, at least it raises awareness of unpaid carers and is a way to hold the council to account.  There will be an update on Lambeth’s Carer strategy next year, but I am interested on how other council’s strategies are developing or if they are non-existent.

Lambeth Healthwatch

One method was through Healthwatch, which works to ensure local people’s voices count when it comes to shaping and improving local health and social care services. As with Lewisham Healthwatch, the joint forum was joined by Lambeth Healthwatch due to the proposal of the closure of Lambeth hospital.

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The discussions were well thought out and there was alarm among unpaid carers about the distance and proximity of services moving to Southwark. Even when Lambeth has very high rates of mental illness in the borough we feel there has not been the paper trail of consultations and get the feeling that the Lambeth hospital closure is a done deal. Many still understand that the hospital is not fit for purpose, but cannot understand why Southwark is slowly draining access to services away from Lambeth.

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There was a lot more in the discussion, which unfortunately I cannot remember now, but Lambeth Healthwatch will certainly take this back to the council and CCG. We await updates in the new year. We as a forum continue to seek a relationship with the Healthwatches and other parties including the CCGs, we do not want to make life hard for the decision makers, but we do need to be involved, empowered and heard on specific issues and queries.

No matter what government gets in power, we as unpaid carers will strive to get our voices heard due to the nature of our cause and struggles. It is only fair that what we do for the love of our ‘cared for’ and the ‘community’ that we should not be ignored.

Lambeth Mental Health Carers Forum September 2017

coverWelcome to September’s Lambeth Mental Health Carers Forum. The forum was held over at the 336 building based in Lambeth over on Brixton road. The Lambeth Mental Health Carers forum comes together each month to discuss issues facing unpaid carers who care for someone close suffering severe mental health problems.

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Lewisham mental health carers forum July 2017

coverHere is the update for the Lewisham Mental Health Carers forum for July 2017.  This is one of the older mental health carer forums in south London, the carers forum has been running for more than a year.  Of course, When I say “Mental Health Carer”, I mean someone who is caring unpaid for a relative, friend or neighbour suffering from some form of mental illness.

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Avoiding being a Token Carer on involvement

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Welcome to another blog post by mental health carer from South London Matthew Mckenzie.  This blog post is about involvement and spotting the signs of tokenism.  Involvement grants Carers, patient and public to volunteer (paid or unpaid) their time to submit their views.  Usually Carers can attend meetings with mental health staff or attend workshops, perhaps event work on a project.  Most often involvement works out fine, but there will come a time when you as a carer will feel unimportant.

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List of 100 books about mental illness

Open Old BookHello everyone welcome to another one of my new blog posts. As a reminder, this website is there to help raise mental health awareness and also raise awareness of those who care suffering mental ill-health. This time I have decided to do a blog about books delve into the subject of mental illness.

If you wish to see the video about a hundred books about mental illness then click on the video below.

There are many ways to entertain and educate those about mental health. As you may have already known I often make videos about mental illness or about mental health carers. Plus I also do podcasts which also helps raise awareness of carers, and lastly when I get the chance I tend to write a bit about mental health and what mental health carers go through. One day perhaps I would like to write a book about what I have gone through as a carer.

A very famous writer once told me that in order to write one must meet often, so it is a good idea to check and read up on books that help describe how mental ill-health affects people. They will probably come a time when I will look into books that help describe the world of a carer.

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To be honest I am not a heavy reader of books but when a book does interest me then I will skim through it, anyway for those who have watched the video feel free to track down one of the books and perhaps you could do a review of the book.

Lewisham Mental Health & Wellbeing Event 2017

smallerWelcome to another blog post from Matthew Mckenzie a mental health carer in South London.  Hope you are enjoying my site so far, so feel free to check out some of my other creations, that being my YouTube channel, twitter channel, mental health newspaper and audio.

On the 14th of February i attended the Lewisham Mental Health & Wellbeing day 2017 “What Keeps Me Well?”.  Which is a very important topic regarding mental health and wellbeing. The event lasted from 10:00 to 4:30 pm and was held over at Lewisham Town Hall.

The Mental Health & Wellbeing day was held in conjunction with
Lewisham CCG
Lewisham Council
South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
Various community groups and charities (sorry if I have missed any out anyone)

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