On Wednesday 26th March, I had the pleasure of attending and representing Carers UK along with Greenwich Carers MH carers grouos. This was at the Greenwich Carers centre – Carers Forum – Mental Health event.
The event was held in the building and then in a beautiful garden setting surrounded by passionate individuals and organisations all focused on supporting unpaid carers. As someone who’s deeply involved in carer advocacy, this was more than just an information stall, it was a moment to connect, empower, and share resources that can make a real difference in someone’s life.
Welcome to this blog by Cygnet Carer Ambassador Matthew McKenzie. As a carer ambassador, I strongly believe that those in similar roles who representing families and carers within healthcare and mental health services, should have maximum visibility and reach. This ensures that not only service users but also their carers receive the support and information they need.
On the 19th of March, I had the opportunity to visit Cygnet Millbank for a filming session where I shared my thoughts and messages aimed at families and carers with loved ones using Cygnet’s services. This initiative followed Cygnet’s Patient Carer Race Equality Framework event launch, a commendable effort to enhance outcomes for individuals from diverse communities.
During the filming, I was joined by fellow Carer Ambassador Julian de Takets. Together, we explored ways to strengthen the connection between families and carers and the services supporting their loved ones.
In my segment, I spoke about my role in representing, supporting, and advocating for carers. My work involves ensuring that carers’ voices are heard, offering guidance, and contributing to the development of inclusive, culturally competent services that genuinely address carers’ needs.
However, to make a real impact, it is vital that these messages reach the right audiences. Without effective promotion and engagement, our efforts as carer network ambassadors risk being limited in influence.
Families and carers play a fundamental role in supporting their loved ones’ recovery journeys, yet many feel overlooked or uncertain about how to navigate the mental health system. This is why mental health providers must actively promote and support the work of carer ambassadors. By amplifying our reach, healthcare organizations like Cygnet can ensure that carers feel seen, heard, and valued as equal partners in care.
As an ambassador, I see my role as a bridge between carers and mental health services, offering guidance and ensuring they have access to the right resources and support networks.
I look forward to seeing the completed videos off Cygnet’s website and hope that they serve as a valuable resource for families and carers. More broadly, I urge mental health services to not only establish ambassador programs but also to actively promote them, ensuring that Expert by Experience voices are at the heart of shaping and improving care services.
Carers and families deserve recognition, support, and inclusion in the mental health care process. By championing ambassadors and giving them a wider platform, we can create a more informed, connected, and supportive community for all involved.
Caring for someone with a mental illness is an emotional, often isolating experience. Unpaid carers—whether they are family members, friends, or loved ones—carry immense responsibility, yet their voices can feel unheard, especially within the healthcare system.
One of my poem’s “On Being Heard” taken from my book The Poetry Book of Mental Health Caring, captures this struggle with raw honesty.
On February 25th, 2025, carers, professionals, and support organizations gathered at Tooley Street for a Carers event provided by Southwark Council. The event was developed by Sarah Bullman, Senior Policy and Strategy Lead for Adult Social Care over in Southwark. The event, hosted by Simon Rayner, provided an opportunity to connect, share updates, and explore ways to support carers in the community.
Key Highlights from the Event:
🔹 Carefree – Presented by Salil Meech Mazumdar, Carefree shared their work in providing much-needed short breaks and respite opportunities for unpaid carers, ensuring they have time to rest and recharge.
🔹 Southwark Carers – Sarah Bullman introduced Southwark Carers including Verinder CEO of Southwark Carers, an essential organization offering tailored advice, practical support, and advocacy for carers in the borough of Southwark.
🔹 Mobilise – A digital-first platform supporting carers, Mobilise was discussed in depth, highlighting how online peer support and coaching can help carers navigate their roles more effectively.
🔹 Imago – Known for their work in youth and adult carer services, Imago shared updates on their projects that focus on young carers, connecting them with resources and professional guidance.
🔹 Carers Hub/Centre – Southwark council focus on a new Carers Hub set for next year, where updates on focus groups and workshops on how the carers centre will be used for supporting unpaid carers.
The last section of the event was below
🔹 Voice of the Carer & Carer Empowerment – Chloe Harvey and Sarah Bullman provided updates on Southwark’s Carers Strategy, reinforcing the importance of carer voices in shaping policy.
Plus Matthew McKenzie, a well-known carer advocate, spoke passionately about listening to carers, empowering them, and ensuring co-production in decision-making. He also read moving excerpts from his book, The Poetry of Mental Health Caring, which resonated deeply with attendees.
The event concluded with a networking lunch, allowing attendees to connect, share experiences, and strengthen their collective efforts in supporting carers.
This forum was a powerful reminder that carers should never feel alone—there is a strong and growing community dedicated to uplifting and advocating for them. 💙
Welcome back to a quick update from Carer activist, author and poet Matthew McKenzie. This update is from an event I performed at which was held over the Chestnut Community centre over at Haringey. The event was a spoken word event, which was part of Haringey Service User and Carer Forum.
A quick note is you can actually download poems and listen to songs if you scroll to the end of my update of the spoken word event.
The Haringey Service User and Carer Forum aims to provide a place for past and present service users and carers to learn about new developments and to provide feedback on services.
The forum provides an opportunity for people to discuss their experiences and to share views with staff so that their ideas can help to influence the way services operate. This meeting is organised by Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust.
Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust provides integrated mental health services in Barnet, Enfield and Haringey, and also provides community health services in Enfield. They look after people’s mental and physical health in hospitals or in the community, and provide a range of mental health services for young people and adults.
So for the 8th of July, I attended the spoken word event hosted by Martin Weegmann who is a Clinical Psychologist & Group Analyst at the mental health trust. We were joined by many who also performed, songs, spoken word, poetry and art.
Some of the art presented at the event, I managed to take some pictures. This was in order to help promote the work by Nicola Newman
You can view more of Nicola’s art at her Instagram page.
I was joined by Jo Lambert who does poetry to help express mental wellbeing, mental health experiences and also carer experiences. Jo and myself have a poetry circle to help promote carer awareness. You can watch our performance off my YouTube Channel.
We also heard excellent poems, songs and spoken word performed by others at the event. Obviously I could not record them, but I spoke to a few who loved to have their work shared off my blog site.
A number of songs were performed by Victoria Lamb who has her songs hosted off her soundcloud page, which is linked below.
I enjoyed being part of this excellent group that has a focus of community empowerment.
I often try attend the SU forum when I can as Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust are supportive of my work engaging with carers. I look forward to the next spoken word event.
You can also check out many of the poetry from those with lived experience from the following book which can be viewed below.
Here is the latest blog for the month of March. Did you know that on the 6th if March, the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the budget for spring 2024? As a carer, you might not think the budget is important. You might think numbers, figures and percentages are not worth paying attention to. As a carer you might not want to be bothered with political parties, but as a carer activist I feel we must hear the government and hold them to account on their policies.
I was fortunate enough to present my circumstances as a carer on the BBC news. I wanted to know how the budget would affect my caring role. BBC news also interview Holly Mackay who is the Founder and CEO of Boring Money, plus we had Joanne who also wanted to know how the budget affected her situation when trying to buy property.
Holly Mackay gave her thoughts on what she felt would be included in the spring budget. I also wondered how the Budget 2024 would affect my situation as a working carer. There was not a lot of expectation due to the downturn in the economy, but we all waiting with anticipation. Since I engage with carers through my carer groups, I asked how can carers prepare themselves if their situation became worse. Holly Mackay gave some excellent advice.
Holly Mackey – CEO of Boring Money
You can see the first part of the interview below.
After the budget was presented by the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. Holly gave an excellent breakdown on how the budget will affect those who are vulnerable. I felt that the “Household Support Fund” being extend was great news for those struggling with energy bills, but many were stating it was a short term fix. I also was hoping for an increase in universal credit for both my brothers. Holly mentioned there will be an increase from £368.74 to £393.45 per month, which is good news.
Still, there was no mention of carers allowance in the budget, plus others would like a National Carers Strategy to transform Government’s approach to support unpaid carers. Holly mentioned there is some support for those who provide care and also work, but it might not be enough to make a big difference.
You can watch Part 2 of the interview in the video below.
Again, as a carer you might think the Budget 2024 is boring and not worth paying attention to. As a carer you might think the news on the government is not worth the time. As a carer you probably might think your MP is not interested about carers. I say that it is incredibly important to hold the government to account on the plight of carers. We are lucky to have a government system where we have the power to vote who we feel serves us best.
You can find out more about the budget in the link below
Welcome back fellow carers. This blog is by Matthew McKenzie, carer activist, author and poet. I write and campaign to raise awareness of unpaid carers. A lot of my focus goes on those caring for someone with mental illness.
I also have a focus on cancer carers, but more on that in a moment.
I have just released my 6th audio story about the importance of carer peer support. The story is called “Just when I needed you”. You can actually watch the story for free at the end of this blog.
The audio story revolves around the struggle to show empathy and the challenge someone faces with their faith. When people care for each other then the community carers, but this is not always the care as the carers in this story have their own struggles.
It takes a couple to walk that journey of someone damaged by the community. They are there for that person when he feels the world has abandoned him. The couple find a bond with their close friend as Barbara who is providing unpaid care can sympathize because she also experienced mental illness.
The audio story provides a story of hope, but raises challenging questions for those caring for someone. Things are not always so clear cut and it can be very difficult to be involved in someone’s care. This is especially problematic if someone is suffering depression.
Watch the video below and enjoy the carer awareness.
My next audio story will soon be released titled “A story of Hope”
Hello, everyone!! Merry Christmas thanks for joining me here today to explain a bit more about future projects that I’m going to be working on. Some of them actually, almost practically finished. So yep, my name. As you can see from the title here, my name is Matthew McKenzie, Carer campaigner, Mental health carer activist who facilitates several carer groups around half of London.
what I want to do is just explain a few things regarding some books that I’m working on. I’m going to start developing audiobooks, I will of course continue to work on paperbacks, one of them is in draft at the moment. I’ll talk about that in a bit.
If you want to see the video version of this blog, please watch below.
Special edition of my poetry Audio book – The Poetry book of mental health caring
So during summer 2022, I published my first poetry book. This was my first attempt at what I felt would be focusing on the experiences of providing mental health care. One of the reasons of doing poetry is that you don’t have to really read a whole book to just sort of reach out to those who perhaps understand, in a sense of what’s it like to provide care for someone with mental ill health. Plus to also reach out to those who’ve never experienced it.
So I’m doing an audiobook project on my poetry, but with the added benefit of contributions from other carers who are activists or are poets who want to produce poetry on the carers experiences. So I’m hoping to publish in early 2023, January, February, by that time, that audiobook will be coming out.
Race, caring and mental health
The next book, which is not an audio book, will be in paperback form. I felt it was due time to come out. This is because I have been writing books close to two years now. I have also been running as carer groups, but two of them focus on ethnic carers coming from ethnic minority background, so obviously, they are providing care and support to someone experiencing some form of mental illness.
I’ve been meaning to develop a book like this for some time looking at how mental illness can impact on the family, on friends, not from the patient side. Let’s look at this new book closely. The book titled “Race, Caring and Mental Health”. From it’s first chapter, I often say to many people that it’s important to tell your story. With this book, I felt it even more important due to some of the tragic consequences that can happen to ethnic minority groups providing unpaid care. This is it’s not just within the mental health system as the book’s second chapter will be looking at discrimination and racism, and links to mental health, for the other chapters, they will focus on health inequalities and the structures. The book will explore the deadly roundabout regarding the repeat situations of those going in and out of the mental health system. Why does this occur?
I don’t have the answers and can only share my ideas of what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, but I know what I’m learning about. I’d be really interested on people’s views of my new book, which is in draft form at the moment and I will probably change a couple of pages in the hope to release this around January 2023.
Providng Care and other Short Stories
Lastly my 6th piece of work will be an audiobook, similar to the project of the poetry audiobook. But this time I want to work towards fiction. Now, I’ve been writing two years now. Most of the books that I’ve been doing are not fiction at all. I mean, I suppose you could argue in some sense that poetry is looking at certain topics that may or may not happen. So this new audiobook will be my first attempt at fiction, including 20 short stories about unpaid care, here are some of the stories below.
This audio book will explore some of the following carer themes.
Providing Care Story about a woman finding out her husband has developed a form of mental illness, she now has to battle to become an unpaid carer.
Digging out of a hole A young man caring for his sister, but this time there are horrible things that make his life difficult.
A family Affair Story of a main carer feeling isolated by the family, everything is thrown at her and no one wants to help.
Never thought it would be me A female carer whose partner is caught in a serious accident, her life is turned upside down as she battles to provide care for him.
Angry A carer thrown into anger and despair as she is let down time and time again, leading her to becoming angry.
Just when I needed you A story of carer peer support and why it is needed, a story that is more hopeful than previous stories.
Anyway, thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a lovely holiday break.
Hello fellow unpaid carers. Here are some more poems from my book “The Poetry book of mental health caring”.
Every so often I tend to make videos of my poetry off my YouTube Channel.
The Long Wait – Poem by Matthew McKenzie
The Poem below describes my experiences in a hospital when trying to help my mother who was suffering mental and physical health problems at the time.
The unwanted role – by Matthew McKenzie
This poem below focuses on someone becoming an unpaid carer for the first time. The poem explains from their view that they are slightly aware of the difficulties they will face, but will have to face these challenges alone.
How do I say this? – by Matthew McKenzie
The Poem below explores the struggles a carer has in understanding mental illness. He is aware of the stigma when he is trying to communicate with his daughter, but he is dealt a blow regarding his own caring duties and also to fight to sustain a relationship with his daughter.
The Triangle – by Matthew McKenzie
The poem below explains a mental health policy aimed at NHS organisations to make sure carers are included in services. The Triangle of Care has a long history and is highly sought after by mental health NHS trusts to strengthen carer strategies.
To explore more carer/mental health poems from Matthew McKenzie, you can check out the book below on Amazon.
A Caring Mind 