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