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Researchers at Kings College London are recruiting UK participants aged 18+ for a 35 – 40 min online survey to better understand resilience and distress during COVID-19 pandemic.
Welcome to a quick update from the Southwark Mental Health carers forum. I know I have not been blogging for around a month, but I have recently suffered a bereavement. It has taken a fair bit of energy to do much, but I am quite proud to be able to continue to run the forums even though I have to take time and look after myself.
Given the time I will eventually write more about the current situation, but for now I want to at least update carer members. On the February update of the MH carers forum for Southwark, we are able to get support and engaged with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Guys and St Thomas NHS Trust and South London & Maudsley. For February King’s college hospital Mental Health Lead kindly attended the forum to speak to carers about Kings Mental Health strategy, which is still going through development.
Thanks for dropping by my carers blog post. This site raises awareness of unpaid carers and mental health. As of this blog post I am caring for someone close and just coping the best I can, while keeping a close eye on events. As of the title, this blog post is about the Corona virus and its implication to carers like myself and those in the community.
If you have been following my tweets on twitter, I have been posting that carers need to take care of themselves. Sometimes I have done a blog post about carer wellbeing and sometimes I will do a video blog or podcast.
Welcome to the February update of the Lewisham BAME Mental Health carers forum. The forum is aimed at black Afo-Caribbean, Asian and other minorities carers in the borough of Lewisham, however I am happy for other carers in surrounding boroughs to attend. The forum is run from Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich Mind centre under the arm of Community Wellbeing.
The forum is more educational and allows carers to discuss with mental health service providers any queries about services. A high majority of the BAME community use mental health services and some of the issues are specific regarding race, culture and even language. The issues are complex and deep, but discussions, forming relationships, education and working together is the way forward.
Here is the update from the Lambeth Mental Health carers forum. The forum is run over at Brixton 336 building hosted by Lambeth Carers Hub.
Carers’ Hub Lambeth is an independent local charity based in Brixton. They offer advice, information, emotional support, signposting, peer support groups and events to unpaid carers of Lambeth. I often attend their MH carers support groups. Without Lambeth carers hub, many carers in the borough would feel isolated, abandoned and having to cope through a crisis.
Hello fellow reader. Welcome to the February edition of the Lewisham Mental Health carers forum. Each of the 4 MH carer forums I run focus on mental health service engagement for MH carers. The forums also seek engagement, updates and involvement from other parties, but usually mental health services come first.
For the Lewisham forum with thanks to SLaM’s public and patient engagement lead for Lewisham & Croydon, we were delighted to have in attendance SLaM’s Lewisham Quality Improvement clinical Nurse.
Did you know that there are around 7 million carers in the UK? Give or take many more hidden carers? Did you also know that around 1 in 5 carers leave their job to care and many more carers provide care for so long it is harder to get back into employment. Carers across the UK save over £150 billion for the economy and even if it was not about the costs, then it is certainly about valuing what carers do.
Often when I hear from unpaid carers, they tell me how difficult it is to develop skills for the future. Just the look off a carer’s face shows me and that their confidence is gone.
By the Way, I have done a Vlog on this. You can view the video below.
It is not like they want to just leave the person they are caring for in order to work again, but there is a nagging feeling that carers are being forgotten in education and being unable to attempt a future for themselves.
It is understandable that many carers worry about what will happen when they become a former carers. They worry that they have given so much time and dedication to that special person, that they have neglected developing skills for themselves.
I would like to mention it is not like no one is trying to help, there are often activities, advice and skill sessions from carer centers. I would like to praise those giving much of their time and energy to help carers find those skills and confidence to access work, but the pressure is still there.
Carers want to find skills for work that relates to their values. Carers want to be welcomed into a job market that understands the attributes of dedication, serving others, being there and a willingness to continue learning.
It just so happens that Carers UK (A leading national charity giving carers a voice) have been looking into how carers can develop confidence and skills that ca help with employment.
Carers UK understands the stigma faced by many carers who feel they are locked out of education and looked down upon because they are not doing what every other person is doing….that 9 to 5 job.
The situation is that carers work all sorts of hours and carers would love a chance to develop more skills, but unpaid carers need the tools to help them access such skills.
A couple of days ago I tested an online application that teaches carers about developing learning skills, which can give more confidence to many carers seeking a way to make a future for themselves.
The online application is simple and easy to use. It does not take a moment to register and then you are on your way. The online application is called ‘Learning for Living‘ and I really hope carers understand the importance that there is life after caring, or even during caring.
If there is anything I can take from the application is its flexibility as you can come back to the application any time and it does not have to be done in one sitting. The application is well thought out and delves deep into the virtues of caring and relates caring into developing skills.
You should be able to access the ‘Learning for living’ application below.
https://www.learning4living.org/
Some carers do not even think they have skills due to their caring role, but all that needs to happen are tools that explain to carers that they already can developed skills and it just needs to be awakened.
There is no escape, carers have to engage with technology and the UK seeks to develop its technology infrastructure more. Us carers cannot be left behind and using such applications is certainly the future.
As a working carer, I was invited to Carers UK HQ and submit my views of the application The discussion raised several interesting aspects among carers and representatives and it was excellent to see Minister for Care Caroline Dinenage attend, debate and listen to carers views. I admired her compassion and determination to support the developments for unpaid carers.
We all agreed carers have something to offer and even more to gain, even though carers have been giving so much all their lives.
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‘Learning for living’ gives carers that chance, we cannot sit back and hope opportunity comes our way, us carers need to take the chance and develop the confidence, understand our value and challenge the future.
Us carers have given so much to society, something that should be valued and treasured, it is about time we get to live for ourselves, its not selfish is it?
![AG550_0224.CR2.p[8082]](https://caringmindblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ag550_0224.cr2_.p8082.jpg?w=449&h=300)
Thank you for Carers who attended and Carers UK working hard to not only get carers that voice, but also the skills and a future.
Good luck on your caring journey.
Welcome to the January update of the Lewisham BAME Mental Health Carer forum. This is one of the 4 carer forums I use to help engagement between unpaid carers and mental health or even health services. I feel if patients and their families are at the heart of health services, then there should be some form of engagement, involvement and influence. The forum is run from one of the Bromley, Lewisham and Greenwich MIND offices with support from Community wellbeing.
Welcome to the first Lewisham Mental Health carer forum of the year. Before I do a brief update of how the forum went, I must say thank you to Carers Lewisham for hosting the forum for almost 6 years. As a carer I often mention to fellow carers that we must support our carer centres. Without carer centers then it is harder to keep the profile of carers at local and community level. Carers need that safe space, access to activities and a place for support. I am aware that so many carer centers are struggling due to lack funds, staff and resources, but my respect for the ones that keep fighting for carers will continue.
Welcome to my first forum update for the new year. The first forum is the Lambeth Mental Health carer forum, which took place over at Brixton 336 on the 23rd of January 2020. The Lambeth carers forum exists to give unpaid carers a chance to know what Health and Social services are doing for them and also what those services have planned.
Lambeth has some of the highest rates of mental health problems in the country and perhaps even further, it is important carers come together and ask why this is the case and what are the authorities doing about it. As you might already know, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust cover the mental health services in Lambeth and also in Lewisham, Croydon and Southwark, so he forum seeks to engage with the Mental Health Trust over the coming year.
More importantly, there are other NHS trusts serving the community in Lambeth and we had the opportunity to have Guy’s and St Thomas NHS trust Mental Health lead engage with the forum, more on this later.
The January forum was very well attended and word is spreading about the importance of the Lambeth MH carers forum, with the help of Lambeth Carers hub, unfortunately the forum took place at the same time of the SLaM carers committee, so some members had to send apologies.
At the start of the forum, we took time to go through the minutes of the last forum which was held over at Moasic Clubhouse. The forum was attended by Helen Hayes Labour candidate for Dulwich and West Norwood and also Lambeth Healthwatch who are seeking consultation from Carers on the future of Lambeth Hospital. There was a lot of discussion from the updates from the last forum.
Next we had a presentation from Caroline Sweeney who is the Mental Health Lead for Guys & St Thomas NHS Trust. You might not already know, but Acute NHS Trusts tend to develop, renew or plan mental health strategies, however both Kings NHS trust, SLaM NHS Trust and Guys & St Thomas NHS trust are working on their Carer’s Strategies as well. If you are a carer or are lucky enough to attend a carers forum, certainly inquire if your hospital trust is working on either or both policies and strategies, especially carer engagement/involvement policies.
For the Lambeth MH carer forum, Caroline updated us on G&STT Mental Health strategy. The strategy was not developed in isolation as the trust held six workshops in the past via the hospital and its community sites.
Their external workshop had a range of stakeholders including Service Users and carers, London Ambulance service other MH Trusts, CCG’s, Black Thrive, Oasis and Papyrus (youth suicide prevention), Lambeth Alliance and more.
Their Strategy contained many important sections being
Developments and Good Practice.
Linking to National Drivers.
Objectives of the Strategy.
Overview on Patients, People and Partnerships.
There were more, but due to limited time, we could only cover a few areas off the presentation.
GSTT Developments and Good Practice
The plans and targets for GSTT are
Linking to National Drivers
Other drivers
GSTT also have internal drivers mentioned in their MH Strategy.
GSTT Mental Health Strategy Vision and Objectives
A MH Strategy would not be much without its Vision and Objectives.
There were other things discussed in regards to GSTT MH Strategy, that due to time I have not mentioned in this blog post.
GSTT and carers
The rest of the forum was discussing on the rota for chairing the meeting and future attendees for the Lambeth MH carers forum. Many hope for the Helen can update the forum regarding carers later on in the year and for other MPs to engage with the group. Other members want engagement from Lambeth leads who run social services.
This concludes the update from the Lambeth MH Carers forum for January.
A Caring Mind 