Tag Archives: cygnet

Cygnet awarded Triangle of care – Xmas Event

Welcome to another blog post from carer activist Matthew McKenzie. This blog post updates carers and other organisations who wish to know more about triangle of care. As a Cygnet network ambassodor, I have becoming involved in helping to shape carer and family engagement at Cygnet.

It has been over a year since Cygnet launched their Carers Strategy over at Cygnet Churchill. It is not December 2023 and we have come a very long way. Through carer network engagement events around the country and updates of policies to support and inform families and carers.

During 2023, several of Cygnet hospital sites have implemented the Triangle of Care scheme on their wards. For those who do not know about Triangle of Care, it is an Accreditation hosted by national charity Carers Trust.

The Triangle of Care promotes six principles to improve engagement towards families and carers of those using mental health services:

  1. Carers and the essential role they play are identified at first contact or as soon as possible thereafter.
  2. Staff are ‘carer aware’ and trained in carer engagement strategies.
  3. Policy and practice protocols regarding confidentiality and sharing information, are in place.
  4. Defined post(s) responsible for carers are in place.
  5. A carer introduction to the service and staff is available, with a relevant range of information across the care pathway.
  6. A range of carer support services are available.

Through a peer review, Cygnet were delighted to be awarded the Triangle of Care badge for the sites the successfully completed the triangle of care stage 1.

So for the 1st of December 2023, Cygnet hosted a christmas celebration party for all those involved. Carer ambassadors, cygnet staff and some others were in attendance.

We also welcomed others who are also looking forward to being part of the Cygnet Carers Network and also to promote mental wellbeing.

Four Cygnet sites have all been awarded the triangle of care badge to show they have made improvements and passed stage 1 Triangle of care. The sites were Cygnet Hospital Sheffield, Cygnet Appletree, Cygnet Fountains and Cygnet Hospital Hexham.

At the Christmas event we had the following congratulatory speeches from David Wilmott, Director of Nursing at Cygnet Health Care. We also had inspirational speeches from Vicky McNally, Director of Partnership & Engagement and Laura Sheridan who is the Group Service Improvement Manager.

Several awards were handed out and a special thanks to carer Karan Ibrahim who helped shared stories and supported carer engagement.

Throughout the event, attendees shared ideas and suggestions on the way forward for Cygnet via their Carers Wish list. This gives a chance for others to help shape the vision for carer engagement at Cygnet.

Congratulations to all 4 Cygnet sites, which can now set an example to other Cygnet sites to make a differance through the implementation of Triangle of care. Here is to 2024.

Carers, Families and Friends Network Event Sheffield

Welcome to another carers blog from carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I blog and promote awareness campaigns, events and updates for unpaid carers. Just so you know, an unpaid carer is someone caring for a person who suffers from a serious mental or physical health need. An unpaid carer is not a care worker, so carers need their own specific support needs.

This leads on to an event I attended as one of the Cygnet carer network ambassodor. The event was another of the carers, families and friends network event. Cygnet try very hard to reach out to unpaid carers whose loved ones are using their services. It is a great way to network with staff and other carers. Carers go through many struggles and one of them is caring in isolation. So what I often tell carers is that they should network with other carers. This can help build up a support structure where carers can become peer supporters. Of course there are boundaries as carers do not often have the time to check in with other carers, but we still have to value the importance of a carer support network.

Cygnet Sheffield

Cygnet Hospital Sheffield offers a low secure service for women and CAMHS services for male and female adolescents over three distinct wards. When I mention CAMHS I am talking about Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

We cannot ignore that children and young people can also develop serious mental health problems and the outcome can be devastating for carers, friends and families.

Carers need all the information and support they can get. So it helps to have these events. The event took place on Carers Rights day, which is held on the 23rd of November each year. Please check out my earlier blog post on Carers Rights day to find out more.

Carers Rights Day 2023 blog

Also presenting at the Sheffield Carers Network event were

  • Ali Curtis – CAMHS Service Lead for Cygnet Sheffield and CAMHS Lead Nurse for Cygnet
  • Dr Seb Thompson – Head of Psychology at Cygnet Sheffield and CAMHS Lead Psychologist for Cygnet
  • Lesley Mellor – Parent & Carer
  • Julian de Takats – Parent & Carer
  • Kate Mercer – Family Advocate, Black Belt Advocacy

Ali Curtis started off the event. Ali who is a qualified learning disability nurse started her career nursing within medium and low secure forensic services before progressing to management within locked rehabilitation and children’s community services.

She her presentation and introduction to the event on what the service provides for those who use Sheffield hospital services. Ali presentated on aspects of the Triangle of Care, which is a scheme to improve mental health services for unpaid carers.

Sheffield hospital has done an amazing amount of work to develop and improve carer engagement and support. This was done in co-production with unpaid carers. This includes

  • Developing a Carers Welcome Pack
  • Carer awareness training
  • Carers contributions and videos and podcasts
  • Communication Care Plans, including information sharing agreement
  • Family Forums and so much more.

The above was developed to connect to the triangle of care 6 standards.

Dr Seb also contributed to the presentation on how the triangle of care made improvements to severals. If we include the families and carers in our mental health services then the quality of the services improve.

We then had Lesley Mellor talk about her caring role and feeding back what she heard from Dr Seb and Ali Curtis.

Lesley is the chair of Dorset Parent Carer Council. She is also the founder and administrator of West Dorset Coping with Chaos Plat Scheme for children with disabilities / additional needs. Lesley is a parent of 2 sons with disabilities. Lesley gave a passionate and indepth talk about the importance of parent carers.

Next up to speak was myself where I wanted to get views from those in attendance regarding carer awareness. I read out one of the poems out of my carer poetry book focusing on the desperate need for carer identity. I also talked about the importance of Carers Rights day and how we can use the day to highlight carers rights.

Up next to present during Lunch time was Kate Mercer. She runs a training organization called Black Belt Advocacy that offers support and formal qualifications to independent advocates including a National Advocacy Conference each year.

Kate spoke about the importance of advocacy for carers and the impact advocacy has in their lives. With support of the Care Act and mental health laws, there has been an increase in carer rights, but this is no good if services are unaware of these rights and they must be practiced and promoted to carers.

Last to speak was the 3rd member of the Cygnet Carers Network Julian de Takats. Julian is also a parent carer and used his lived experience to present the importance of including carers.

Overall the event increased carer awareness for those in attendance. I will continue to urge carers attend such events so they get a chance to network, ask questions and learn about how Cygnet services are developing to include carers.

Happy 35th anniversary Cygnet – The journey continues

It has been an incredible time since I have become involved as one of the carer network ambassodor to cygnet. Since the triangle of care was launched many years ago, several organisations have taken up the chance to reach and engage with families and carers. I have watched closely the work NHS organisations have done to make a difference and improve people’s lives.

One thing I have noted is that most organisations work very hard to implement a practice of identifying carers, but from what I have seen and been involved with at Cygnet, they have done so much to make the triangle of care a success. Ever since I have been involved at Cygnet, they have reworked many policies to be in line with the Triangle of care vision.

There have been several carer network events at many of Cygnet’s hospitals including Sites in Harrow, Bury Hospital, Maidstone Hospital, Cygnet Hospital over in Bierley, Churchhill on Lambeth site, Tauton and many more sites. From each carer network event I learn more from those who attend and I can see how Cygnet works so hard to improve people’s lives.

With the guidence and support of Laura Sheridan who is Cygnet’s lead for Triangle of care. She has brought together carers to promote the importance of networking in a peer environment. We all contributed to the development of Cygnet’s carers strategy. With the highest level of co-production there was also a development and successful launch of Cygnet’s Carers charter, amendments to Cygnets Social care Admission policy and involvement on the Carer, Family & Friend survey.

With the guidence and support of Laura Sheridan who is Cygnet’s lead for Triangle of care. She has brought together carers to promote the importance of networking in a peer environment. We all contributed to the development of Cygnet’s carers strategy. With the highest level of co-production there was also a development and successful launch of Cygnet’s Carers charter, amendments to Cygnets Social care Admission policy and involvement on the Carer, Family & Friend survey.

There have been numerous promotions and platforms to promote the networks voice as members helped in developing online courses via the Cygnet Masterclass carer course. I have also been given the chance to share my lived carer experience through filming.

The carer network has worked so hard to develop links to families and carers who use Cygnet services. We strive to make a difference in people’s lives and with the support of the network, carers can feel counted.

I wish Cygnet a happy 35th Anniversary and I look forward to joining Cygnet on it’s Journey into improving lives.

Empowering my carer experience to help in training

As you might already know from my previous blogs. I am now a carer ambassador for Cygnet group. Cygnet is a leading provider of mental health, autism and learning disability services. As a carer I often use my knowledge and experience to provide insight and training over the years.

Some professionals might frown as to why service users and carers might wish to help train staff, but the voice of lived experience should not be ignored. There are many reasons why professionals should include users of services in training staff.

We should note that carers also use services as they seek carer support groups, information about services and sometimes counselling.

  1. We use their services, although professionals are experts for a reason, they spend years training for their profession. They know far more about their field than I would acknowledge, but there is a big difference. Professionals provide a service and we use that service, if those services second guess what we require then this leaves room for errors. To make matters challenging, services do change from time to time and it is so important carers and service users feedback on their experiences.
  2. We all need to work together. In the time of ever deminishing resources, it is a waste of time that patient, professional and carer battle each other to be heard. In the long run, we all wish for health and wellbeing for all of us. Working together means learning from each other.
  3. Professionals can and will make mistakes, so include the voice of lived experience can show professionals are willing to learn from mistakes. These mistakes can come from second guessing what users might require, being pressured in their role or just not paying attention.

There are many more reasons why lived experience should be empowered to help train professionals. So when Cygnet group offered a chance to film my thoughts about carer experience, I jumped at the chance.

The film will be used as an online resource to all staff as I gave my views on the importance of unpaid carers, lived experience and carer advocacy.

I value an organisation that helps provide the voice of patient and care voices.

Those voices help shape how services can be provided and this should be the future of healthcare were we work as a team.

Regional Carer event – Cygnet Hospital Bierley

Welcome to another blog post from Carer activist Matthew McKenzie. I do many roles to connect with unpaid carers and I am now a Expert by Experience Carer Ambassador for Cygnet. I want to keep carers at the heart of healthcare services and one of the best ways to do this is speak at conferences.

Cygnet Health Care is taking on the challenge of and striving to make sure mental health carers get the best support possible. Cygnet are running “Regional Carer Network events”.

This recent Carer Network Event took place at one of Cygnet’s sites. That being Cygnet Hospital Bierley.

Before the event, Cygnet’s Group Service Improvement Manager Lauran Sheridan provided support to make sure Carer Ambassador’s were looked after. It was thanks to Laura that we were given a voice and place to reach out to carers who often feel they are forgotten.

We had a lovely stay at Premier Inn and the food was lovely. It was important to get a good nights rest to feel refreshed and ready to engage with staff at Cygnet and unpaid carers.

Just before the event, I took the time to explore the wonderful City of Bradford and event went walking along some rocks to watch the sunset.

AT THE EVENT

As usual, the first thing I look for when I enter a hospital is to examine what is displayed for unpaid carers. I was glad to see a Carer’s board and advertisements for carer events and initiatives e.g.

  • Events Calendar,
  • Awareness of Carers Week 2023,
  • who is the Carer’s Lead
  • Triangle of Care
  • Family & Carer strategy
    …..and lots more..

I opened the event with a focus on why I think carer networks are so important. I often write books on why carers need to connect and also why services should provide the empowerment and platform for carers to connect. If we connect, we can listen and try to understand the complex world of unpaid carers.

The speakers for the Regional Carer Network event were as follows.

Kate Mercer who is a Family Advocate from Black Belt Advocacy. Kate spoke about carer’s rights. She has worked on national projects with NICE, CSIP, NDTi and NHS England, most recently looking into the quality and availability of advocacy within in-patient settings for people with a learning disability and autistic people.

We also had Christian Young who is the General Counsel at Cygnet Health Care. Christian qualified as a lawyer in 1998, he then joined NHS England as Deputy Head of Legal Services before moving on to Cygnet.

Next to present was Philip Winterbottom who is Head of Safeguarding at Cygnet Health Care. Philip did an excellent presentation on the importance of safeguarding at health services. It is important we all know our duties to provide the best care of those who use our services.

We also was joined by Jo-Ann McAuliffe who is Deputy Director of Nursing. Jo spoke about the importance of recognising carers and how Cygnet can work with unpaid carers.

Lesley Mellor who is the other Expert by Experience Carer Ambassador for Cygnet spoke about her experience of providing care. Lesley is the is the chair of Dorset Parent Carer Council.

During the event, attendees were certainly looked after. We had a lovely lunch and I actually took some of the food home with me.

Cygnet also provided carers we lots of information, where Laura and Jo promoted Cygnet’s new Carers Strategy with more carer information to take home after the event.

All in all I enjoyed the regional carer network event and have connected to a few carers. The network will take time to develop, but we can all learn from each other. As the core of the Triangle of Care, we need to balance the connection so carers are not shut out.

Thanks for reading. More blogs to come for Carers Week 2023