Hello everyone. Welcome to the April update of my BAME mental health carer forum. This is one of the 7 carer forums that I run that is specifically aimed at ethnic unpaid carers who care for someone suffering mental distress or mental illness. It is hard for unpaid carers to often get a voice, understand mental health services or even be identified by health and social care. There is a push for ethnic inclusion, but a lot of it is patient centered. So this is one of the reasons why I started a BAME MH carer forum, there are of course more to come.
For this month’s speakers we had the following.
Dr Juliana Onwumere who is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Clinical Psychologist. She is also the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology and Neuroscience Carer Champion
Welcome to my latest unpaid carers blog for May 2021. As you might already know, this website focuses heavily on mental health unpaid carers. What I mean is the focus is on families and friends caring/supporting someone who suffers from mental illness.
I run many peer support groups and forums that bring unpaid carers together. The groups are carer led, but try to work with the mental health and social care services. This helps to give unpaid carers a voice and also a chance to understand the complex mental health, health and social care system.
As we all know service users or lived experienced have a range of avenues to express their voice and I guess that is important because they need to, after all they are using the mental health services and the quality of their lives and wellbeing is often tested. All I ask is that friends, families and those emotionally tied to mental health survivors should not be forgotten.
Unfortunately this needs to not only extend to mental health unpaid carers, but those from ethnic communities. Drill down deeper and you will find different levels of quality amongst ethnic unpaid carers. Usually black unpaid carers tend to struggle as their loved ones fair worse off in regards to mental health services.
Below is just some key factors.
Black men were more likely than their White counterparts to experience a psychotic disorder.
Large numbers of black people more likely than average to use high end mental health services.
Detention rates under the Mental Health Act higher for people in the ‘Black’ or ‘Black British’ group than those in the ‘White’ group.
Even with higher detention rates, the outcomes for black service users are still overwhelmingly poor.
Suicide rates are higher among young men of Black African, Black Caribbean origin, possibly due to other complex factors being :-
Racism
Access to quality services
Opportunities
Mental health stigma
Inequalities
With all the above mentioned, it does not take long to see the impact filter down to black families and unpaid mental carers. The strain is increasing and black unpaid mental health carers tend to just shrug their shoulders and cope with it all, as they have been trying to cope with complex inequalities while pushing back to avoid the outcomes their loved ones experience. It does not take long for a BAME mental health carer to cross that line to BAME mental health survivor….if they survive that long.
As an unpaid carer, I have experienced the hard road many BAME carers have faced and this is why formed and pushed for connections with many other BAME carers, they do not have to be black as other ethnic carers can find solidarity and identitfy unpaid mental health carers face.
There is still stigma, predjudice, discrimination and inequalities in society, a lot of things have changed and some things have improved, but it would be foolish to ignore the impact of race and mental health.
The candle needs to burn at both ends as BAME mental health carers need to come together and share their experience with the mental health, health and social care services on what is working and what needs to work.
If you are a BAME mental health carer, check out my online BAME carer groups below.
Welcome to my Greenwich Mental Health carers forum update for March. This is the 2nd Greenwich MH carers forum for 2021, since this is a fairly new forum aimed at families and carers who are caring for someone with mental illness.
The forum is not a support group, although there are times discussions may dwell on a supportive nature as members switch to talking about their own unpaid caring experiences. The Royal Borough of Greenwich MH carers forum aims to give families and unpaid carers a chance to talk to Mental health, health and social care services about how they can also support carers. The forum is a chance at engagement, involvement and empowerment for unpaid carers who would like to know what is going on with services. There also might be a chance to influence services when the Royol Borough of Greenwich mental health carers network grows in numbers.
Welcome to a brief update of our March mental health carers forum for the borough of Lewisham. The carer’s forum is chaired by unpaid carer Matthew Mckenzie who runs many engagement and peer groups in South London aimed at families and carers who care for someone suffering mental illness or mental distress.
The speakers for the month of March 2021 were
British Institute of human rights. Wendy Dewhirst SLaM new Community manager for Lewisham.
BRITISH INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RIGHTS PRESENTS.
It is clear that unpaid carers have rights, otherwise we would not have the ‘Care Act 2014’, but what is not clear is how unpaid carer rights are linked into human rights. This is why I am linking carers to understand more about human rights.
Welcome to the South West London Carers forum. One of the new carer forums I co-chair along with another member who is on the involvement of South West London & St George NHS Mental Health Trust or SWLSTG for short. The carer forum is a hybrid of the other carer groups I run. What I mean by that is somethings us unpaid carers meet together and chat about how things have been going for us. Then other times we have selected speakers inform, educate and engage with us about mental health services and involvement in health and social care. The SW London carers forum started last year (2020) mainly as networking and peer support.
For the March SW London carers forum. We are continuing to seek more engagement, especially when it comes to carer strategies. The carer forum is easily one of the furthest reaching group, since SWLSTG covers mental health services in 5 boroughs that being Merton, Kingston, Richmond, Sutton and Wandsworth. A good thing about those boroughs is I have good relations with all the carer centers and one of them is contributing to my new book.
Welcome to february’s Southwark & Lambeth MH carers forum update. This forum is aimed at those who care for someone with a mental illness. The forum gives families and carers a chance to understand the complexities of mental health and social care services.
For February, we had the following speakers who were kind enough to have a chance and engage with carers, even if it ended up as a friendly debate. Although the forum represents Lambeth & Southwark carers, membership is open to many carers outside those boroughs, because I feel carers should network, connect and learn from each other.
The following speakers for February were.
Lee Roach who is the SLaM’s Occupational Therapist and carer lead for Lambeth inpatient wards
Rebecca Martland who is a PhD Researcher and Physio engaging with carers on the High intensity treatment exercise
Sam McGavin & Sophia Stevens from Southwark Council developing Southwark’s carers partnership
Annette Davies who is a carer working towards developing stronger networks to carers including a BAME carer group.
Welcome to my latest blog post by unpaid carer Matthew Mckenzie from South London. I thought to do a quick blog and do my bit regarding COVID-19 Vaccines and the importance of getting the vaccine when it is offered to you.
As you probably already know, just by looking at my photo. I am a black person. It was only in 2019 that health services were put under immense pressure due to the impact of the virus. Not just the health services, but social care, the economy….come to think about it practically everything. Up until now many unfortunately people have been taken from us because of this terrible virus. The old and young, black or white and rich or poor. No one is truely safe, especially those who high risk COVID infection jobs or those from poorer backgrounds. Those from BAME groups have a higher risk of catching the infection and are still suffering the worst outcomes. It does not help that the history of health and social care has been at odds with those from a BAME background.
Fast forward to now there has been many changes and developments. We in the UK are lucky to have access to COVID-19 Vaccines and it was not long before I was offered mine. As a carer and a black person, I was still in two minds about getting the jab.
I must admit I am in many whatsapp groups, plus facebook groups and so on. I often received emails warning about the vaccine and how black people were being tested for eradication, or how my hair would fall out (well I don’t have that much left anyway). Most people I came into contact with discussed the importance of having the Vaccine, while others did not want anything to do with it. Looking back on what we all have been through in 2020 certainly made up my mind. I have lost too many people to the virus and when I was offered the vaccine, I took it.
The day of vaccine jab, I felt a little nervous, I was not sure what to expect or if I would get an unfriendly service. I admit it was so easy to book the appointment online and the location of the vaccine centre was very easy to get to.
I was greeted by friendly staff at the GP surgery who asked appropriate questions before I was due for the vaccine. It was not a long wait and every one was friendly. I filled out a form on my health backgroud, which was also very fast and waited for my turn.
I did not see anyone being dragged into a room and given the shot, people could change their mind anytime and to be honest every one was calm and quite. As soon as I was in the nurses treatment area, the jab was so quick that I hardly noticed it. There still some worry about side effects, but its been 2 days now and apart from a sort arm I have had no side effects at all.
I felt that after all the worry, the COVID-19 vaccine is completely safe and we as black people need all the defense we can get from the virus. There is no conspiracy to wipe out the black race or put microchips in them. We won’t be made infertile, because there certainly is no serious data on clinical trials pointing to this.
It still is important to wear a mask, because no vaccine is 100% effective and so it is important to practice social distancing. I urge those from a BAME background to take the vaccine because we have suffered enough not just from the virus but the difficult roles that those from a BAME background have to do be it in the NHS or social care. I certainly urge carers also to take the vaccine because if you are caring for someone vulnerable and you catch the virus then you put the person you care for at greater risk.
We all must do our bit and protect ourselves, our community and our loved ones. The virus does not really care if your black or white, rich or poor. The virus’s job is to infect you and you have to roll that dice to hope it won’t kill you or spread to those you are trying to protect.
Welcome to the January Southwark & Lambeth joint Mental Health carer forum. The forum is aimed at carers who are caring for someone with mental illness, but they want to understand what mental health services are planning and also what carers can get access to.
For the speakers for this forum, were as follows.
Josh Simpkins – Lambeth Carers
David Meyrick – SLaM Southwark inpatient ward carer lead – Triangle of Care
Karen Persaud – Carer rep for the Royal College of Psychiatrists
Welcome to the first update of the first carer forum for January. These carer forums are aimed at those caring for someone with mental illness. The forums provided engagement from mental health services to educate and involve carers regarding services provided.
Carers can also network together and slowly build up empowerment. For the month of January we had Lewisham health commissioner Natalie Sutherland talk about the following.
Her role at the Clinical Commissioning Group
Why the CCGs merged
Their focus on mental health
Pressures on the health system due to corona virus
Initiatives for families and carers.
Also in attendance were carer members from Lewisham and some from other areas interested in mental health services. We also had a few researchers from universities wanted to speak to carers about their research.
Bridge Connections Coaching Consultancy are currently researching working carers and working parents experiences with employers when caring for dependants or loved ones with mental health challenges. My aim is to look at experiences and see where employers can increase wellbeing care, strategies and solutions to support the retainment of employee carers/parents whilst they are expected to show up for work, whether it be short-term or long-term.
It would start off with a questionnaire, then a short interview, to gather input.
From their experience, they feel there is an area where the working person providing care does not get enough individual wellbeing care, to continue to work effectively, this is an area that they are currently looking into.
You can contact Ceylan Thompson on coachingandmentoringlifeskills@gmail.com
