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Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum February 2022

Welcome to my latest update for joint Southwark & Lambeth carers forum. I have been unwell with COVID for the past week, but due to my previous vaccinations the affect was not so horrible. If I did not have the previous vaccinations I am sure the COVID would have been 10 times worse. If you are caring for someone vulnerable please get the vaccination as you cannot always avoid catching the virus. It is good to have some form of protection rather than nothing.

Speakers for my February forum were

  • Southwark Heathwatch
  • Lambeth Healthwatch
  • Kieran Quirke the Mental Health lead from Kings College NHS FT

Just a quick reminder, the aim of my carer forums is to allow unpaid carers who care for someone suffering mental ill health, get a chance to network and hear updates on what the services are doing for carers and for those using health & social care services. My carer groups cover half of London.

  • Megan Isherwood and Gosia Kaczmarczyk from Southwark healthwatch presents

There have been a few changes over at Southwark Healthwatch and it had been a while since they attended the group and engage with unpaid carers. Megan who is the research and projects officer at Southwark Healtwatch gave us a quick introduction on some of their projects. Megan also let my group know how they could get involved with Southwark Healthwatch and their upcoming events.

Megan mentioned that there is a Healthwatch in every area of England, and they were created from the Health and Social Care Act of 2012. Healthwatch are a statutory organisation. Healthwatch are funded by the local authority that being Southwark council, but healthwatch Southwark are very much independent. Healthwatch Southwark hosted by community Southwark and has helped them to work closely with the voluntary community groups in the area of Southwark.

Basically Healthwatch Southwark want everyone who lives in the London Borough of Southwark to be able to access and receive the best possible health and care services appropriate for our diverse community. As a reminder Healthwatch Southwark are the independent champion for the patient voice.

So Healthwatch are here to represent the local community and make sure that services work for those in the borough of Southwark. So this means that they listen to local people about their health and social care needs and experiences. Healthwatch Southwark helps patients and service users voice their views and concerns in order to make services better and more suited to their needs. Healthwatch also have a signposting function. So they can provide advice and information helping people to navigate the very complicated health and social care system. Healthwatch knows that navigating the system can be a real maze, but as an extra form of empowerment they also promote patient involvement in shaping services.

This can mean helping people to get involved in health and social care decision making bodies and processes. Megan continued to talk about how their community engagement can lead to different ways for local people to have their say. Regarding generic experiences this can be both online and in person. Healthwatch also have the power to enter and view services, like GPS, hospitals care homes. Healthwatch can go in and observe them and find out the views of patients and staff.

Healthwatch Southwark connects with local voluntary and community organisations and work collaboratively with them. Healthwatch conducts research, and works on reports and give recommendations to health commissioners (Southwark CCG). Healthwatch also influences boards and committees particular the Southwark Council health and wellbeing board.

Healthwatch feeds into monitoring systems and consultations and they share these concerns with commissioners to make sure your voice is heard and to aid directly into influence change. Megan wanted to finish up her talk focusing on mental health, so she talked about their recent mental health services project. This was a recent report on the mental health services which is published their website site. It came about due to a workshop held in January, where lots of people attended, and there were representatives from South London & Maudsley hospital where they presented their formal response to the report. The report basically identified the key themes and areas that about unmet needs around SLaMs adult mental health community services provision where Healthwatch made recommendations to them on how to address these unmet needs.

The report involves carrying out a survey to find out people’s experiences of the services. Healthwatch focused on issues of access, waiting, suitability, impact and staff. So in the end Healthwatch received 81 responses, which was from service users and carers. The key findings were that the Southwark improving access to psychological therapies, which is IAPTs on if you’re talking therapies, and also the community mental health teams, which were the most used services, followed by crisis services, integrated psychological therapy teams and assessment and liaison services.

Since my carer forum tends to focus on wellbeing, the next section was from Gosia Kaczmarczyk who is Southwark Healthwatch Community Engagement Officer. Gosia did a wellbeing meditation session online for the group to experience. Gosia then went on to talk about the volunteering opportunities at Southwark Healthwatch.

Since Southwark Healthwatch do the enter and view programme. They are going to be working on induction training to train these representatives in the coming months. They will also be recruiting for community engagement.

Healthwatch will also recruit for committee health ambassadors where those interested can even become an advisory board member. Such opportunities can have an impact on how healthwatch do their work and what they are focusing on. It is like a really important part. Volunteers can also help guide healthwatch on their upcoming events.

Anna D’Agostino from Lambeth Healthwatch presents

After the talk and engagement from Healthwatch Southwark, it was now Healthwatch Lambeth’s turn to talk about what they do. Anna who is the Engagement Lead for Mental Health gave the carers an overview of what Healthwatch Lambeth does. Anna also reminder my forum that Healthwatch was established in 2013 as a charity, where each part in England has a HealthWatch. In fact there are around 150 Healthwatch organisation throughout England. Anna mentioned it was established to give the people a stronger voice on how health and social care services are really set up and in some cases challenge the way that they are actually run those services. This is why healthwatch really want to hear people voices.

Healthwatch contacts people, liaise with them and gather their feedback, and then they contact the providers to see how services can be improved.

As with what Healthwatch Southwark does. Healthwatch Lambeth does Enter and View – Where they visit commissioned services, interview service users and staff suggest how the service can improve.
Healthwatch Lambeth also do Information & Signposting – they help people find the information & services they need and signpost them to organisations that can provide support.

Anna wanted to talk about a particular project Healthwatch Lambeth are currently running this is in regards to healthcare during the Pandemic.

Healthwatch Lambeth want to talk to people with mental health needs and their carers
How easy or difficult was it for you to access healthcare?
Did you get the support you needed?
Where you offered an annual health check?
Were you offered Covid-19 testing and/or the vaccine?

Kieran Quirke From Kings NHS trust presents

Kieran gave us a brief update from King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Kieran admitted that since the last time he came to the group, a lot of the projects have been put on hold because the Omicron virius (a varient of the corona virus). It is only in the last couple of weeks, things are starting to get back towards a state normality however one of the first things to mention is that visiting the hospital is now back to to visitors or patients across the majority of sites, which is an improvement.

Kieran mentioned that Kings NHS trust can hopefully start moving forward on some of the John’s campaign stuff, which I stalled during the pandemic where the dementia and delirium team are leading. Kieran mentioned two important things to mention updates where the first was the launch of their butterfly Cafe dementia group, which is due to start on the 8th of March in the afternoon, and they have got a venue for that where it is going to be held at the institute of psychiatry, They have got a room within the lounge area. Where that will be running monthly.

It’s free to attend. There’s no ability to provide transport, unfortunately, but there is wheelchair access and there will be some refreshments.
It is also going to be supported by KINGs NHS volunteers alongside some of their community partners. All they need to do is email in advance to say they’re coming where there is a bit of a chance to plan for numbers that is needed to provide for.

Another update is joint working with Mosaic clubhouse, where they come in and engage with some of their medical patients. This project was unfortunately delayed because of the pandemic. So it has taken a little while to get it back up and running. They are looking to launch in March, although it is a pilot and will initially work with four wards being medical wards. If there is a patient with a mental health concern, that is within the psych liaison threshold, The ward can then refer to Mosaic Clubhouse and Mosaic will send to a member of staff and a service user who will come and visit and spend some time with the patient and talk them about signposting Community Services, and then potentially revisit if need be, it’ll be on the medical wards, so there’ll be probably quite short, brief interventions. But that’s another really positive development.

The last update is that they plan to develop a new carers policy. This is one of those projects, which has been suspended and suspended, but hopefully now they will start to get the wheels rolling underneath it. The final update is for Matthew to get involved in KINGS NHS carers day celebration.

This is my update for my Joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carers forum for February

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum January 2022

Welcome to the first joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carer forum. As usual the forum brings together unpaid carers from both London boroughs and beyond to seek engagement from mental health, health & social care services. There will at times be national speakers or I might talk about carer empowerment or carer awareness from my books.

Speakers for January were

Cristina Clarke – Non Regulated Staff Code of Conduct Project
Lee Roach – Lambeth reflections on carer focus
Alice Glover – SLaM involvement structure breakdown

Cristina Clarke presents

Cristina explained a little bit about her role and work that she is doing to support the nursing Directorate. The project is specifically on unregulated staff code of conduct that they are currently reviewing. Cristina is a nurse by background where she is supporting the Deputy Chief Nurse for the trust to look at the policies and the clinical policies across the Maudsley NHS Foundation trust. Cristina is also working on safer staffing. One of the things that they have done recently, is set up a service user and carer review group looking into such policies. It is true that in the past policies can often be quite dry, quite long, lengthy, and at times don’t always have the voice of people using the services and haven’t always been scrutinized appropriately. So they have had to set up a group where service users and carers get involved, unfortunately they are low on carers, in fact, most of the people in the policy review group are service users, so they really want more voices from carers to help review clinical policy going forwards.

The thing is it’s not only policy regulation, but it’s related to staffing. They have got a code of conduct for the NHS trust, which is for those who aren’t sort of governed by a statutory agency. For example where the nursing workforce are governed by the National Nursing Midwifery Council, or medics are usually members of the GMC. SLaM have recognized that there’s a huge proportion of the workforce, including peer support workers, and psychologists, clinicians that don’t have a code of conduct. Still the Trust has regulation policy but it’s quite old. So they have been reviewing it and wanting to bring it up to date with national guidance. They are looking at aligning the policy with the trust strategy that was reviewed recently. Cristina mentioned that they are really keen to get some feedback from service users and carers, because it effects such a huge part of The workforce who are providing care day in and day out.

Cristina reminded us if anyone was interested in getting involved in policy review they actually have got some focus groups coming up. If they want to just have a read a bit and get some feedback, whether it be in a quite a structured way, or if it’s just informally just having a chance to read and feedback is all that is needed.

Alice Glover presents on involvement at South London & Maudsley

It was now Alice Glover turn to present. She is one of Muadsley’s Patient & public involvement leads. Alice actually attends my forums from time to time, and she wanted to talk about encouraging people to get involved at the NHS trust if the can. Alice and SLaM are really keen to get more carers / family carers to be involved in some of the NHS trust improvement work. Alice mentioned it was quite timely hearing what Christina had just talked about, because that’s a really good example of how people can get involved in helping improve the services. Alice moved to talk a bit about what the involvement register and how it works in terms of opportunities for people to review the policies.

The involvement register is literally a list of people who have experience of the SLaM services, either as a service user, or as a family member or carer, once you’re on this list, you can be paid for your time, if you help Maudsley services with service improvements. So the people that are in the group that Christina talked about are actually members of the involvement register, they may come together and meet once every six weeks. People can be paid for their time during the meetings, but they are also paid for their time if they’re reviewing documents.

Alice mentioned she understands that there maybe challenges around they’re carrying responsibilities but also people may be working. So for carers, it may be really important to have opportunities to comment on documents in their own time when it’s convenient for them. If they are able to get on the involvement, register, then there are differences that people can be paid for their time. And the payment rates are 10 pounds an hour for reading documents outside of meetings, if you’re on a Zoom meeting or a team’s meeting, and you might be using your data, then the payment rate currently is 15 pounds an hour. And you can do up to 30 hours a month. On the involvement register, it’s a very ad hoc, most people don’t do anywhere near 30 hours is completely up to you. Most people would do maybe a couple of hours a week before that.

I produced a list of involvement operations which Alice started talking about at length. Alice mentioned the list is quite a broad list. Each of the departments have collated a list of the sorts of things that people are involved in. Alice mainly covers Lambeth and Southwark. In those boroughs there are advisory groups. This is were there are a group of people with lived experience who meet every month and discuss service improvements.

Alice finished up her talk stating that a staff member or manager might come along to the advisory groups and say what projects they are thinking of doing, it could be thinking of making a change to the inpatient services and they want to know what the group thinks about it. As a carer, or family member, they can bring their own perspective and say, “Well, that might work. But have you thought of this?”

Alice feels that when people are designing services, historically, there have been times when the carers perspective hasn’t been included, and Maudsley NHS are trying to work harder to make sure that does happen. So advisory groups meet every month and basically they are a group of people giving advice around their lived experience.

Lee Roach presents on how Lambeth MH services have been engaging with carers

Lee Roach who has been supporting the forum wanted to run through some of the support that Lambeth MH services have been providing to carers. SLam now have a dedicated carer support service. There is carer support service for psychosis and bipolar. They predominantly have been operating their meetings by phone during the during the pandemic, plus they have a monthly support group where they run over teams a bit like matthew’s carer forums, which are kind of moderately well attended. It seems people have contacted by phone rather than using using online technology for groups. The Lambeth services usually have around 100 contacts a month with carers.

There are other means of carer support in the form of ward carer champions. Lee mentioned that the carer champions are individual staff members who are either based in one of their teams. So either at the ward or in one of the community mental health teams. They have been able to maintain a register of carer champions in all of their community mental health settings. So for the short term, their Lambeth support services the focus within the home treatment teams and all of the wards in the hospital who have got carer champions.

Lee continued stating that the way that they support them is that they have a forum every two months, which they share with Southwark support staff. So Southwark & Lambeth carer champions tend to meet and update. They have also been running these online groups, which have been reconfigured a number of occasions, around dates and times and things. Although online meetings are quite successful with community carer champions from the Lambeth community teams, there are not so successful with the impatient carer champions. So Lee is looking at probably running inpatient face to face groups as soon as possible with the carer champions.

The idea of these meetings is that they can share good practice. So some of the things that weren’t on the wards might not be working as effectively on those mental health teams. Some of the issues might come up against, and also just an opportunity for for those of us dealing with carer’s role in Southwark or Lambeth to kind of update them on changes across the trust new initiatives. These things could be like what will have an impact on carers. As mentioned Lee has been running a Lambeth inpatient family and carers group. These run every two weeks. Where it is a virtual meeting where they use the Microsoft Team’s platform. Lee has to request carer details from the impatient team managers and the carer champions where he gets in contact with carers and then he explains about the meeting, and then invites them along.

Lee also talked about support from matrons at the hospital who come along to the online carer support groups. They are joined by the community pharmacist to answer questions about medication that carers might have. Lee is also involved with Carer’s Lambeth Hub, where he attends a number of different meetings that they run carers collaboration. These groups usually discuss carers strategy where to make sure South London and Maudsley are finding out what’s going on with other carer organizations.

So that we can make sure that our people we’re working with about that, and also that we’re involved in black thrive, Lambeth wide initiatives around carers and Lee attends Matthew’s National triangle of care meetings, this is where South London & Maudsley is working on there triangle of care audit. There are going for their first star.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum August 2021

Welcome to a brief update of my Joint Southwark and Lambeth Mental Health carers forum for August 2021. There was no speaker for that month so I presented on the following being:

The Importance of carer involvement

Plus I also presented on Carer empowerment

Funnily enough the turn out for the joint forum was very good and to be honest I couldnt present for a long while due to carers speaking to each other on how things have been developing for them.

Continue reading →

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum July 2021

Welcome to the July update of my Joint Southwark & Lambeth Carers forum. The forum is focused on unpaid carers who care for someone suffering mental ill health.

Speakers for the July forum were

Carol Ellis: Promoting her son’s book regarding surviving suicide

MP Helen Hayes – Speaking about carer updates for the boroughs

Dr Natasha Tyler – An associate Researcher from University of Manchester

DR NATASHA PRESENTS ON HER RESEARCH.

Dr Natasha started off by saying that as a researcher from the University of Manchester at the patient safety Translational Research Center. She has been working with Matthew probably for about three or four years now. He’s been involved in quite a bit more research and she was just going to give a little bit of an overview about involving carers in quality and safety research. Dr Natasha wanted to speak a little bit about involving carers in quality and safety research.

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Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum June 2021

Welcome to June 2021 Joint Southwark & Lambeth mental health carer forum update. Below is a list of speakers for the carer forum.

  • Faith Smith – Unpaid carer on her 136 project
  • David Meyrick – Southwark inpatient carer lead updates on carer support.
  • Alice glover – SL&M Patient & carers involvement
  • Emily Holzhausen – Director of Policy and Public Affairs for Carers UK
  • Elinor Bradley – on gathering carer experiences for Royal College of Psychiatrist

Just a quick note that the Southwark & Lambeth carer’s forum runs once a month and seeks to help empower families and carers who are caring for someone suffering mental ill health. The idea is for families and carers to know what is going on and also to hold to account, while getting educated about unpaid carers, health and social care.

  • Faith Smith presentS ON 136 PROJECT

Faith who is one of the carers involved at SL&M (South London & Maudsley) involvement register, basically involvement scheme for patients and carers. Faith is also a member of several of my carer groups. Faith mentioned she is a carer advocate and is working on a new project that she would like to introduce to us this afternoon. The project is around the section 136 of the Mental Health Act. Section 136 of the Mental Health Act is actually a section that gives the police the power to remove a person from a public place when they appear to be suffering from a mental disorder to a place of safety.

The place of safety could be to a hospital or to police station. We all know that those those kinds of interactions do not always go well and the outcomes are not always what we would like. So she has been asked to set up and share what is going to be called a Pan London, section 136 carers board. The aim of the group is to establish a solution which a focus group of experts by experience, which would be a group of carers and service users experts by experience.

The idea is that the group focuses on coproduction, a safe environment, holistic approach, which would then in turn lead to better outcomes.

  • David Meyrick SL&M Southwark Inpatient carers lead.

Next to speak was David Meyrick who works hard to promote carer inclusion on inpatient wards. David wanted to speak about the carer champion roles and how that works on SL&M inpatient settings.

So across the trust, every team should have carer champion either either one or two, on the wards, and so that we have two champions for each team. The idea is that the kind of champion will lead on the work that team does for me and carers, but not in a way that they get left with all the work for carer support within that team.

What we want to do is encourage staff to create an environment where the whole team has carers on a focus for evidence business the same way that we approach safeguarding, for instance, safeguarding is ever in business.

What you want to do as carer champion is to be more trained, be more aware and have more case knowledge and skills around carers, but use that to support their colleagues so that we get a consistent level of support for carers. So currently we have two carer champions, each team has currently, in the inpatient setting, that can be a little bit of a challenge, because it’s a high turnover staff. David has been busy with carer welcome packs to give to families and carers on the wards and continuing with his carer support groups.

  • Alice Glover SL&M public and patient involvement

Alice wanted to talk a little bit about involvement. She wanted to be a little flexible on the issue of involvement because she not sure what members wanted to know regarding involvement and co-production. Alice was happy for anyone to put in questions in the Zoom chat or even interrupt her presentation.
Alice gave a quick overview of the involvement side of things. Alice covers Lambeth and Southwark, but for Croydon and Lewisham that is covered by Jane Lyons and other boroughs and directorates. Alice feels the whole thing about involvement is about how we’re improving and developing our mental health services, and how we’re improving people’s experience by people who use our services and people who care for them. The important thing is that as a mental health trust, we are listening to people’s experiences and those experiences are influencing changes within those services.

So there’s lots of ways that people are involved in terms of sharing their experiences from filling in satisfaction questionnaires, with specific questionnaires for carers. She knows David has done some really good work to encourage carers to fill in satisfaction questionnaires on the wards so that we can start to understand how carers are experiencing our services. Where it is not just about how their loved ones are experiencing things, but actually how carers also experience services.

As a mental health trust we look at complaints, and look at incidents and even compliments. So there are many ways of how we try and understand how carers are experiencing SL&M services, but also on behalf of their loved ones. Alice continued to explain other forms of involvement including the involvement register, which is basically a list of people who have been through a process and it is for people with lived experience of using our services, or as a family member or carer.

She is aware that there is at least 5 people at the forum who are on SL&M’s involvement, which they may want to say something about their experiences of being on the involvement register. Alice just wanted to say, they are always encouraging more carers to join our involved register, at the same time recognizing the limitations that people have on their time and totally understand that people don’t always have the availability just because of the other things going on in their life. Not least of which may be caring for their loved one.

The involvement register can be a flexible way of getting involved and being paid for your time. It means that you can you have opportunities to get involved in projects, sharing experiences as a carer in a way to try and influence change in terms of how services are developed.

  • Emily Holzhausen from Carers UK presents

Emily from Carers UK was delighted to be at such a carer-led forum and wanted to mention how she met Matthew quite a few years ago and I was so impressed with how he spoke about carer involvement at mental health trusts. She also wanted to mention how impressed she is with Matthew as he advocates for carers in regards to national work, because he really draws on the experience of working with unpaid carers and their stories. Emily enjoyed the discussions regarding mental health services and how unpaid carers experience involvement.

Emily has been around for many years campaigning on the unpaid carers movement, but she does wonder whether with some of the engagement and involvement is very well aware around the benefits issues with those payments. Emily wondered if it’s possible to be flexible around some of the expenses, for instance maybe paying for WiFi or data or something like that to help carers engage in a different way. If they can’t take the payment because of benefits.

Emily continued to speak about Carers Week 2021 and talked about why they campaign for Carers Week? They do it because caring is so often invisible, because it can quite often a private matter. The problem can also be a double edged sword because while its private, it can also mean carers can suffer in silence and isolation. So this year, it allows us to talk to anybody we want to really about caring, whether that’s the general public, families of friends, whether it’s employers, services and so on. So this year 2021, Carer’s UK chose the theme “visible and valued”, because last year, we said making caring visible, and carers told us we want a bit more than that. So such a theme added in.

Carer’s UK used their words and added invisible and valued this year. It has been really interesting as We’ve had a lot of engagement. Carer’s UK has done more events with employers than ever. Such events with employers and many more, but another thing is Carer’s UK had last year was tough for people because many are still getting to grips with the pandemic. So this year, there has been an increase in online activities with less being face to face.

Emily spoke about numerous wellbeing activities, which have been focused on carers, these were in terms of the politicians, where they had 66 MPs pledge support for carers week. Plus a number of MPs came to hear carer stories at one of Carers UK focus event.

  • Elinor Bradley on Royal College of psychiatrist project

Elinor attended the carers forum to speak on her latest project, she also works for Kent & Medway NHS trust, but she is representing the faculty of rehabilitation for the Royal College of psychiatrist. Elinor wanted to speak about a national issue, where she suppose it was similar to what Emily was talking about bringing the voice of carers forward. As of this moment the Royal college is sort of trying to represent the voices of carers and service users of rehabilitation services. She was sure many of those attending would know about mental health rehabilitation, but it’s really the branch of mental health services for people with complex mental health difficulties quite often psychosis. For those patients with psychosis, they have got some residual impairments, that really limit their ability to function independently. So quite often they unfortunately have had lots of repeated admissions, lots of crisis admissions, or lengthy admissions.

The royal college of psychiatrists have campaigned quite hard for the voices of people who have got complex mental health difficulties. This has sort of resulted in a new NICE guidelines, which are very sort of focused on reducing out of area care, and being focused on Person Centered Care, and also the involvement of carers and family as part of the support system.

So the RCPSYCH has done some really good work in the college, but what they are aware that they don’t really have the voices of carers or those other service users with lived experience represented on the website. So they currently engaged in a project and to collate some narratives or some stories of service users, for carers with lived experience of complex mental health.

The aim is to give those a platform nationally, so that would be on the Royal College of psychiatry website. Plus also to use experiences to work towards future campaigns and guidelines that we should be working towards. This is so that the royal college is looking for the good and the bad of supporting someone with complex mental health difficulties. This can also extend to the good and the bad of rehab services or even 136 assessments and inpatient wards as she mentioned on what David was talking about earlier on.

The aim is to raise the voices of the whole journey of supporting someone with complex mental health difficulties, so the college is looking for accounts, narratives of a range of people nationally.

This concludes June’s joint Southwark & Lambeth Mental Health carers forum.

Please check out our next set of carer group dates.

Please check out our next set of carer group dates.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum March 2021

Welcome to the March 2021 update of the joint Southwark & Lambeth Mental Health carers forum. I know its a mouthfull of a title, but just consider its an open forum for those who care for someone suffering mental distress.

For the month of March, the guest invites were the following.

  • Jessica powell – Researcher from Imperial College London
  • Ros cumberbatch – South London & Maudsley NHS trust carer lead for Southwark
  • Annette Davis – Carer peer, activist and BAME carer support.
  • Claire Parry – Psychotherapist leading on trust psycho therapy
  • Debika – SLaM Assistant Psychologist for Family and Carers Support in Southwark
Continue reading →

Black Thrive Employment Project: improving outcomes for Lambeth residents with long-term conditions

Black Thrive is a partnership between communities, statutory bodies, voluntary organisations and the private sector. We work together to reduce the inequalities and injustices experienced by Black people in Lambeth.

According to the GSTC “One to Many” report, more than 1 in 5 residents in Lambeth live with at least one long-term condition. Over 19,000 live with multiple long-term conditions (three or more). Even though Black communities make up 18% of Lambeth’s adult population, they account for 27% of people with multiple long-term conditions. Furthermore,

in Lambeth, Black residents are four times more likely to be unemployed than white residents. When they are employed, they are disproportionately engaged in insecure, low-paid and dangerous work, which harms mental and physical health. In addition, Black people can face racism and discrimination in the workplace, which negatively impacts mental well-being.

Therefore, we know that people of African and African Caribbean descent in Lambeth are more likely to be unemployed and more likely to have poor health. One of the key drivers of these inequalities is structural racism and the fact that our current healthcare and employment systems prevent Black people from thriving.

As a result, in collaboration with Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Charity (GSTC), Black Thrive’s Employment Project is developing community-led solutions for improving employment outcomes for Black people with long-term conditions. Our goal is to ensure that Black people in Lambeth with long-term conditions are as likely to be in and sustain, meaningful employment as equivalent white people.

To do this, Black Thrive is partnering with community members, statutory bodies and local organisations to achieve justice for the Black community through radical systems change. In September 2020, we launched our £300,000 grant fund to pilot projects that consider the lived experience of Black people with long-term conditions and have the potential to create systemic change. Projects should test and pilot new ideas that have the potential to shift the dial on employment outcomes and improve the evidence base around what works for Black people in Lambeth with long-term conditions.

The fund was managed and distributed by our Employment Working Group; a group of local Black residents with lived experience of managing one or multiple long-term conditions. We believe that prioritising community-power and lived experience is a radical way of funding new and exciting initiatives that may be overlooked by the traditional system. After receiving 84 applications, the Employment Working Group decided to fund 8 projects – the vast majority of which are led by Black and disabled people.

Funded projects include a radical self-care and wellness to work programme, the creation of a network of Black social entrepreneurs, supporting those recovering from mental illness and substance addiction back into employment through dog day-care traineeships and empowering Black people to develop employability skills through social action. To read more about all 8 projects please visit: https://employment.blackthrive.org.uk/our-grantees/

As the projects begin recruiting participants, it is important we ensure that the opportunities available reach the most marginalised people. This is a form of systems change in itself, as it will allow those people who fall outside of traditional referral pathways for services to still access support. 

Given that carers have an intimate and trusting relationship with their loved ones based on an acute understanding of their needs, interests and goals, they are a vital network which cannot be overlooked! We strongly encourage all Lambeth-based Black carers to review the projects on offer, share them widely within your networks and follow the sign-up process if you, or someone you know, is interested in taking part.

If you have any questions about the Black Thrive Employment Project, please email: employment@blackthrive.org.uk

Black Thrive Employment Project Grantees

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum August 2020

Welcome to the august update of the Joint Lambeth & Southwark MH carers forum. This forum is run online due to covid-19 restrictions. The forum is aimed at those who are caring for someone with a mental illness. It is important carers understand what the mental health, health and local authority services has set aside for them and their loved ones.

For the month of August we were delighted to have John Lavelle the service director for Lambeth mental health services. We were also joined by Lee Roach who is the Head Occupational Therapist for Lambeth. In attendance were the carer members from both Southwark & Lambeth, Healthwatch Southwark and the chair of trustee’s from Southwark Carers.

The maim talking point for the August meeting was the Lambeth Hospital consultation. John spoke about how they want to improve the quality of the inpatient wards so that they can meet the most basic needs of the clients/patients. John stated that SLaM are committed to supporting people who are in distress because of their mental illness, they have an opportunity to build a new purpose, new mental health unit and SLaM are planning around how can they can make the service sustainable essentially for the future. I could certainly say most if not all members agreed with what John said.

It is well known that there has been number of periods of consultation for 12 weeks between March and May 2020. In the presentation to the forum from John, there were 2 options. Option 1 being that nothing is done about the state of Lambeth hospital or Option 2 where SLaM looks to relocate 4 acute wards and the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) to a new purpose-built facility on the Maudsley site, Denmark Hill.

There was another option to develop a new facility on the existing Lambeth Hospital site, but it failed to meet 2 key affordability tests.

These were that the option required additional capital of between £30 million and £35 million due to additonal infrastructure and loss of capital receipts, coupled with a need to decant at least one ward to the Bethlem and another to the Maudsley, causing significan disruption.

So eventually planning permission was granted in January 2020 by Southwark Council to replace the existing vacant Douglas Bennett House facility on the Maudsley Hospital site. It was also mentioned in John’s presentation that Service Users, Clinicians and Carers from a number of boroughs attended workshops to help shape the design so that a service user voice was present from the beginning of the design process.

The facility includes 72 acute beds for Lambeth patients across four 18 bedded wards. The wards will be single gender, compliant with modern standards and ventilated with direct unsupervised access to outside space. The facility will also include a Psychiatric intensive care unit and a rehabilitation ward designed to support the needs of these services.

Lastly two national specialist wards, neuropsychiatry and eating disorders will be transferred from the Bethlem Royal Hospital.

The carer forum were then showed their first visual of what one of the rooms would look like.

John Lavelle mentioned the mock ups are designed to give a with an idea what we think the rooms would look like. It is based on the drawings of that the architects came up with so the forum saw then would be things like flooring, textures and colors and even then those things might change.

John showed us what the dining space consisted of. He explained in the dining space there are two gentlemen sitting through the window and to the left is that kind of living space as you will see in the top left hand corner, one of our wards, current dining room on the London hospital site.

The carers forum were shown some figures in where

  • There were 235 responses regarding the consultation
  • 48 people participated in focus groups and public event
  • 148 responses in the online survey
  • 24 people then also commented on facebook
  • 171,189 were reached through the facebook adverts
  • 12 email responses regarding the consultation

One thing noted was even though SLaM had the intention to have some face to face meetings, they ended up having to move everything to virtual because of the COVID-19 issues. There also was a focus on making sure new services would target hard to reach communities especially those from BAME background who often would feel they were being let down or having to miss out on services.

Of the response to the proposals with about 84 % of responses were being being in favor of the change. Plus of that 64% were positive in the move of the wards to Maudsley.

SLam also did a specific work with a black male group around the consultation, and I found that there needs to be some further work to do around culturally appropriate inpatient clinical offer.

A good example was that one member of that particular group mentioned that the ward looks great, but actually, it’s what happens within that Ward is most important. So John mentioned in regards to BAME communities that maybe we arent getting it right for the moment. There is still a lot of work to do.

There will be a piece of work that is going to start in September, which is going to be supported by black thrive, which then will have SLaM think about what their offer is to black men as an example, when they are using patient services. This is work in progress, but SLaM are committed to that as part of the feedback from the consultation process.

John mentioned that they will be analyzing that the data that they got back done by the trust or by the CCG. And it’s just a bit of worth reminder that the consultation was actually a CCG consultation, because they are the people that ask slam on their behalf to provide the services to Lambeth. So the CCG led on the consultation and now SLaM’s healthcare consulting team is going to do the consultation and they have produced a report on the Lambeth’s Together website.

At the end of the presentation I stated it was an excellent presentation and it always helps when you’re describing something that seems really complex. This is one of the reasons for this forum is to get carers in the community and those who’s going to be affected by those changes to get at least an idea and get a chance to ask queries or comments or even compliments if you think this is something that’s really needed

Questions from the forum members

First to ask queries where representatives from Healthwatch Southwark.

Healthwatch felt it was really interesting to see and wondered if SLaM had like a Lamberth versus Southwark resident breakdown, because they were a bit concerned that maybe less people from Southwark had been heard from because the presentation was kind of titled as like improving services for Lambeth.

Another interesting query was on how wide the consultation going to be? as in numbers wide. A carer queried on is it just the local community because the impression they got from the report is its the local community. Plus it’s a Lambeth hospital and it should go to the whole Lambeth and and what does it now offer to the whole of Lambeth rather than the local area. The carer felt that it seems to present sort of housing project and, and and who’s going to administer that, for instance, who’s going to have The freehold at that particular site?

One other carer stated they came across the survey document in May, but they wasn’t aware then that the there was no provision being made for the Leo Ward and the early onset for psychosis Ward that is currently at Lambeth hospital. They felt according to the one of the therapists from the Leo community mental health team, which has been caring for the person they are looking after. That ward was the only early onset ward in the whole of the country.

The carer felt the ward was fit for purpose when their ‘loved one’ was there and the ward had an en suite bathroom. It was basic, but it was fine. It had an outside exercise area, and it was all on ground level. There was a separate male and female words with communal are. There were separate rooms for visitors to explore and visitors to meet a family members the carer felt that her ‘cared for’ had a good experience in that ward.

We also had another carer talk about their daughters experiences in those wards. The carers daugher did not go into Leo Ward and still the Carer did agree with what was said Leo was a good word. As the carer felt it gave both communal areas and it gave privacy for people as well and they had access to outside to meet each other in for games. The carer concluded that access to outside is important, and they don’t think that can be really possible in the tower block. On the other hand the carer agreed that the other wards are not fit for purpose at all. They’re dreadful!!

I mentioned it was good to hear that there is a push towards engaging the black community, particularly in the sense that certain things are just not quite getting there. I asked John that although he mentioned Black Thrive, I have noticed they are quite active in Lambeth. I continued to state that I’m not sure who’s the lead or use the contact for black thrive in Southwark, so I wondered who is contact overall regarding consultation under black thrive, be good to get their perspective in this forum.

Some contacts were mentioned, but also there might be at some point an opportunity for somebody to come and talk to us about the race equality framework standards that piece of work which essentially, is about assessing SLaM against some standards that have been set nationally.

Southwark Healthwatch mentioned in response to another carer’s concern about a blog they did. They had a previous presentation about the kind of safety of the ward and the architecture where someone asked a question, kind of related to what the carer was concerned about, which is shown below.

https://www.healthwatchsouthwark.org/blog/2020-04-30/whats-happening-lambeth-hospital-blog-southwark-mental-health-carers-forum

Conclusion

John finished up saying that they do have a communications and engagement group that was originally set up to think about the consultation processes and what material they might want to use and who they needs to engage with as part of the consultation processes.

SLaM are moving on the journey of the new build and providing samples and giving sign off really soon. So they will continue to think about how they can keep engaging with our communities in understanding what’s happening with the new build and what they are doing around whether it’s working with black men or whatever the different possibilities. SLam are going to keep engagement for the next few years.

Lambeth Lead for Occupational therapy presents

Lee Roach has been busy and presented a set of initatives regarding carers. Lee admitted that they have a particular challenge in the patient information system. Especially on recording information about carers.

So what they have decided to do in Lambeth is focus one week initially on carers as a is focused week. Lamberth are undertaking a number of different events during that week.

Lee thanked one of the carer members who’s agreed to come and talk to a couple of teams about her experiences as a carer.

When Lee was thinking about what what to do for those carer events, he really felt personally that the biggest impact on himself as a clinician is hearing the kind of narratives of people that his worked with and that usually has the biggest impact in terms of people reflecting on what they’re doing and so changing their practice. So in terms of hearing the experience of a carer, Lee think that’s quite an effective way of actually impacting change.

What Lee want to see as a result of the week’s events is a greater awareness of the resources that are available to carers that staff can refer people onto. Lee also wants to run a greater awareness of some of the resources that our staff can show carers on the wards. There also has been sign off of that they want more carers involved in the involvement register.

Breakdown of events

Lee spoke about the plan of the carer focused events. Where a carer agreed to talk to the to one of their teams on Monday so that’s the low intensity treatment team about her experience.

They are currently working across two sites. While they are working across a number of sites the majority the mental health teams are working on two sites. There will be another carer who will be talking to the team there about her experience on Tuesday afternoon.

The inpatient Lamberth inpatient care his group will meet virtually that started two weeks ago. Where they had 12 people attend that group. One of one of whom was was attending from another country. On Wednesday afternoon Lee is hosting a roundtable talk with possible Lambeth CCG, carers and Lambeth healthwatch. Then on thursday is the Leo ward community carers group. Then on Friday they are launching the ward lockers project from one of the involved carers who has been active inputting ideas.

This concludes the update for the August Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH carers forum. The September forum will have Kings College hospital feeding back updates on their Mental Health strategy.

Joint Southwark & Lambeth MH Carers forum June 2020

Maudsley_Hospital_Main_BuildingWelcome to the month of June joint Southwark and Lambeth MH carers forum.  I usually run this forum at the Maudsley hospital. As a reminder the carer forums are aimed at carers who care for someone with a mental health need. I run around 5 carer groups each month and most of the groups work towards engagement, co-production, involvement, education and querying about mental health and social care services.

The Joint Southwark and Lambeth carers forum runs online due to the corona virus. Carers from either Southwark or Lambeth will need a free application called Zoom either on their computer, laptop or mobile phone to attend the meeting.

For the June meeting we were Joined by Southwark Healthwatch, Lambeth Healthwatch, Lewisham Healthwatch and also Greenwich Healthwatch where they traded ideas about carer projects. We were also joined by the trustees of Southwark Carers, Southwark impatient carer lead and also a carer who is a carer peer supporter. Both SLaM Southwark and Lambeth advisory group carer members attended and we were also jointed by Cllr Jasmine Ali who is Southwark Council’s Cabinet Member for Children, Schools and Adult Care. In attendance was Cllr Danial Adilypour who is the Lambeth Cabinet Member for Health and Social Care and Finally the main speaker to engage with carers is MP Helen Hayes.

Coming off the back of carers week, the forum was interested to hear what Southwark and Lambeth council had been doing for carers in both boroughs. First we heard from Southwark Healthwatch from all the work they have been doing to highlight the situation unpaid carers face in the borough.

Southwark Healthwatch update on carers

Southwark Healthwatch spoke about listening to peoples experiences of health and social care and trying to make change to the wider community. Over the years Southwark Healthwatch spoke about the priority areas and one of them being unpaid carers. In 2019 their project on unpaid carers looked at surveys, focus groups and interviews with carers.

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Results of the project looked at the daily life of carers with themes being on qualitative experiences. The project looked looked at the Impact of caring, which was reported to be very extensive, emotional and intense.

Other findings were

  • Carers felt they were going on beyond the roles of caring – especially on care coordination.
  • It was noted some carers were doing 69 hrs of unpaid care each week.
  • Stress levels, tiredness a strain on carers Mental Health.
  • Financial situation under strain due to multiple levels of care.

Southwark Healthwatch looked at the support carers were getting through social care services, this became an additional challenge for carers due to chasing people on the phone. Bureaucracy led to isolation of carers. Carers reported back that interaction with social workers or GP was not always a positive about the experience. Many felt the levels of service was inconsistent, lacking support and empathy, which led to distrust of council provision.

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Carers did value one off support for benefits applications, carer assessments. Carers also felt activity groups were useful along with respite, but must be flexible. Counselling was hugely important for carers.

Carer members at the forum queried carer counselling services either from Southwark Carers, SLaM or Southwark council.

Southwark HW are going to raise this at Southwark Council’s “Carers Board”, hopefully the forum will get some feedback on this. The forum is worried about funding and accessiblity of counselling since Southwark carers lost their counselling service due to funding.

greenwich healthwatch

Greenwich Healthwatch fed back that on young carers awareness day they visited some schools and wrote a report on the experience of young carers, they felt that young carers are not heard in the borough and will be learning from others on what could be needed.

MP Helen Hayes engagement with forum

Helen gave overview of issues raised from when she the last attend our forum back in November 2019 . Helen updated the forum on how COVID-19 affected both Southwark and Lambeth boroughs. She noted that COVID-19 has shone a spotlight on inequalities in Health and social care. Corona virus has impacted the community’s mental health due to lose of income and difficulties accessing food and medicine. Helen’s email inbox is hitting over 1000 emails a week due to the coronavirus alone

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MP Helen Hayes

She wants to take back views of Mental Health carers back to parliament and spoke how one of Labour’s previous election pledges was on increase of carer allowance. There is also a focus on the need for paid leave for carers, which they will continue to work on.

Helen spoke on how Carers assessments under carers act and how the Care Act a welcome reform, but was not supported by levels of funding. Helen mentioned that she is the Co-Chair of the All Party Parliament Group on Adult Social Care and they were working hard to reduce the fragmentation of the care sector.

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She stressed that both Southwark and Lambeth council have been working very hard to address those needs and although she has been MP for Dulwich and Norwood for 5 years, she felt that MH issues will rise due to the problems corona virus has impacted on the communities.

The forum raised the issue of care homes especially the problem of how COVID impacted them as many carers have loved ones in support housing or care homes.

I also asked Helen about involvement for carers at the highest levels, where Helen phrased the importance of “Nothing about me without me”. She agrees that those who are expert by experience should be involved in policy or carers be allowed to co-design and co-produce.

Update from Cllr Jasmine Ali on Southwark Council commitment to carers

Jasmine thanked Helen Hayes for her support when COVID caused so much distress in the borough of Southwark.

Cllr Jasmine Ali

Cllr Jasmine Ali

Jasmine was not a fan of the work Matt Hancock has done so far, but at least we are slowly getting in a better place. Jasmine noted that adult social care and carers are a big priority in the borough. She reported that there are around 26,000 carers in Soutwark alone, but she was proud of the work that Southwark’s Wellbeing hub, Southwark carers and older peoples hub were doing. Jasmine talked to the forum about Southwark’s future plans and that there will be a strong emphasis on advocacy, guidence and signposting.

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She spoke about the importance of SLaM’s recovery college and how a focus needs to look at increasing the caring relationship between cared for and carer. There are plans to Link carers with Universal services e.g. public health, learning and leisure and the developing work on Southwark’s Carers joint strategy, need assessments and the carers pathway board. She wanted to hear what are issues being raised from the forum.

Jasmine spoke on the importance and need for the Ethical care charter and carers charter, although a lot of work has stopped she fedback that by the end of June things will start up again.

Update from Cllr Danial Adilypour on Lambeth Council’s commitment to carers

Danial agreed with what both speakers raised at the forum and mentioned carers are a very important issue in the borough of Lambeth. There are big pieces of work from the boroughs “carers card” scheme which came out of Lambeth Carers Strategy. First part of the launch was actually off carers week 2020. The Second part of the ‘carers card’ launch will be at the end of the year, where businesses will provide a range of discounts to carers.

Cllr Danial Adilypour

Cllr Danial Adilypour

Daniel gave out stats and showed there are around 20,000 carers in Lambeth. He mentioned that the Lambeth carers card is not the end of what is being offered off Lambeth Carers strategy, there will be more to come.

Currently there is a helpline open during the corona crisis. Lambeth council will work on several strands being.

  • A&E services (the problem of people not accessing services due to MH), but will work with Lambeth’s ‘Living well network alliance’ to increase access to A&E.
  • The problem of Social isolation is another strand Lambeth is going to work on where they will develop a strategy.
  • Lastly Daniel stated that Mental Health will hit Lambeth due to the COVID situation, Lambeth will continue to engage with groups on this topic, especially the MH carers forum.

Carers from the forum were queried Cllr Danial regarding the SLaMs Lambeth hospital consultation. There will be wider plans over the coming years involved with Lambeth carers strategy to engage with forum.

Healthwatch Lambeth Update

The forum was joined by Lambeth’s Healthwatch Natalia Sali​​​​​​ who is their Engagement Manager. She Updated us on the 80 page report of Lambeth Hospital consultation recommendations.

lambeth healthwatch

She reported that over the month carers were fearful of using services. So because of this, Lambeth Healthwatch put on an webinar event where Speakers from Kings college hospital and a GP from a surgery presented what services are available for users.

Consultations are online at least and Lambeth HW will expect changes to face to face appointments, but this depends on virus

Lambeth Healthwatch will continue to speak to carers, older adults and young people regarding experiences in care packages during pandemic. As of this moment Lambeth HW are runing webinar’s every 2 weeks, the latest one on pregnancy, which did interest a member of the forum.

Updates from SLaM and forum carer members

David Meyrick SLaM’s carer inpatient rep fed back on how SLaM’s wards were

  • Allowing visitors back on ward, but visitors need to respect social distancing.
  • Developing a ‘missing in action’ project on female wards.
  • Looking into wards becoming more family friendly during visiting hours.
  • Carers strategy is in a draft.
  • Webinar course at SLaM recovery in July.
  • How the Peer support groups were continuing to run online.

The SLaM carer peer support runs every Wednesday from 6 till 7 online, where the carer peer support updated the forum on how the carers group was getting along.

We also had Updates from Southwark Advisory group members on

  • Producing a video for SLaM website on what Service user involvement does
  • What can be learnt from COVID-19
  • Qualification courses for patients

Updates from Lambeth Advisory group

  • Richie QI peer lead asked the group on what patients expect from services
  • Met with the Head of Lambeth Alliance chair on regarding how their Covid-19 strategy would be developing.

This concludes the update for June.

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.