Tag Archives: mental health

Lewisham Mental health Stakeholder event 2019

imageWelcome to another blog from South London unpaid carer Matthew Mckenzie. On this particular blog, I am covering how the Lewisham Mental Health Stakeholder event went. Health Commissioner stakeholder events usually run once a year, these events are usually borough wide and incorporate the community regarding health interests.

The theme of the Lewisham CCG Mental Health Stakeholder event was on “Me and my community”. The theme was to help bring the community together to discuss, plan and celebrate how Lewisham as a whole are working towards the mental health and well-being of its community.

The event took place over at Lewisham Town Hall – Civic Suite from 9:30 am till 4:30 pm. If I remember correctly, the event takes ages to plan and I believe such a stakeholder event was not run in 2018. So the event was great received, due to many mental health service updates and changes in the community.

EG0-11jX4AEFjhx

The stakeholder event had many stalls from providers, workshops, sessions and talks and presentations. Those involved in the event were of course Lewisham CCG, Lewisham council, South London and Maudsley NHS Trust (who provide MH services in the area), Lewisham Healthwatch, Bromley, Lewisham & Greenwich Mind, Compass (services for children), Lewisham Carers, Department for work & Pensions, Sydenham Gardens, GCDA, Lewisham college, Lewisham & Greenwich hospital trust and more.

To open the event, we had the welcome from Councilor James Rathbone, who is currently Lewisham’s Mental health Champion. Next was the Lewisham Mental Health Alliance with updates provided by Donna Hayward-Sussex – who is SLaM’s Service director and also Dr Charles Gosling who is the CCG’s senior clinical director.

EG2dUK-W4AEnrQz

Since the event was themed for Black history month, plus the London borough of Lewisham being a diverse community, we have an update on health inequalities in the borough from Dr Catherine Mbema who is the Director of Public Health in Lewisham.

EG1IHFXX4AEeSf3

Next up was CEO of Your Voice in Health and Social Care who have partnered with Carers Lewisham. Tim Spilsbury spoke about the difficulties unpaid carers face in the borough of Lewisham and how the charity is seeking to tackle those issues. To my surprise he spoke about the Triangle of Care, which is a policy aimed at buildng a working collaboration between the service user, professional and carer.

One thing critical about stakeholder events is giving the community a chance to ask questions or bring out statements, so I was glad to see a panel session consisting of those who spoke previously including the Joint commissioner of Adult Mental Health and Head of services for BLG-Mind. We certainly had some hard hitting challenging questions from the audience, although I felt some great work has been done by the services so it was a shame no one mentioned anything about that.

Next up after the 20 minute break and some networking were the Workshops. The aim of the workshops was to either educate the community on mental wellbeing, provide updates on services, a way to promote services and allow for stakeholders to connect with the community.

Prevention – This workshop looked at Social Prescribing (connecting people in their community)

5-ways to Wellbeing – This workshop taught by Lewisham Healthwatch looked into those who work with children and young people.

What is the Relationship between Mental Health and Internalised Racism? – This workshop taught by Hillna Fontaine, explored the complex issues of race and mental health.

Carers Workshop – This workshop co-produced by some of my members of the Lewisham Mental Health Carers forum and Carers Lewisham and myself.

Mental Health Equalities – What we know, our ideas and your suggestions – This workshop facilitated by SLaM equality team looked into what the Trust is doing to improve the experiences of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) service users, carers and staff.

Social Inclusion Recover Services; Paths to Recovery at Sydenham Garden – On this workshop, we could find out more about Sydenham Garden’s work – helping people in their recovery from mental and physical ill-health in Lewisham.

Mental Health in Schools: Challenges and solutions – This workshop aims to explore mental and emotional health challenges faced in school environment.

Healthy Walk – An excellent workshop, were attendees found out about the greenspace, gentle exercise and good company are great for physical and mental wellbeing and were actually walking outside.

The Lewisham Wellbeing Map: showing the great places for health in our borough – This workshop looked into a social prescribing map for link workers, navigators, and signposters.

Help in a mental health crisis – A workshop taught by the manager of the Ladywell Unit looking at where you can access help in a crisis and what you can expect from services Alternatives to going to A&E

DWP – Forest Hill and Bromley Jobcentre – The Partnership Team and the Disability Employment Advisers provided people with an insight to what is available to support those with Disability and Mental Health under Universal Credit and Employment Support Allowance

Wellbeing Education at SLaM Recovery College – Lastly we Trainers from SLaM Recovery College will discuss how the college operates, the benefits of attending for SLaM service users, carers/supporters and staff members.

IMG_20191014_153726

A quick mention on the carers workshop I co-produced with members of the Lewisham MH carers forum, we looked at ways to involve unpaid mental health carers in the community as carers like myself can be isolated, lacking support and driven to desperation when supporting someone with mental ill health.

I cannot thank Lewisham CCG enough and also Carers Lewisham and YVIHSC for helping and attending.

All in all, I thought the event went very well with special thanks to Karin Barthel who is the senior CCG comissioner for involving myself and carers lewisham to run the workshop in co-production.

I hope other CCGs will continue to run stakeholder events, or I am wondering how do they engage with their communities when it comes to mental health and wellbeing.

Thanks for stopping by.

Lewisham MH Carers forum September 2019 update

133Welcome to the September update of the Lewisham Mental Health Carers forum. I guess you might already know, that I facilitate two carer strategy forums in the borough of Lewisham.

 

 

However one of the forums focuses more on BAME queries/issues with families and unpaid carers. The one that runs at Lewisham Carers tends to focus on unpaid MH carers as a whole.

Mental Health Open Forum

Just as a reminder, the term ‘mental health carers’ refers to unpaid carers supporting those with mental health needs. I know not many people are happy with labels, but on some level it just helps with identification and at best helps to lessen isolation as people know they have something in common with each other.

For the September Lewisham Mental Health Carers forum, we were lucky to have Lewisham’s latest mental health Champion James Rathbone, who is also the Labour Councillor for Lee Green. As unpaid MH carers, we were also joined by South London & Maudsley’s Quality Improvement QI Facilitator. It is important NHS mental health trusts engage with families and carers at grassroots level.

We first heard from Cllr James Rathbone who has lived experience of mental health. He spoke about how he became a mental health champion and why he would like to make a difference in the community regarding mental health needs. Not every service user can speak out when addressing mental health issues and it helps when someone is high profile enough to raise mental health at important meetings.

IMG_20190924_133930

James specified he does not control how Lewisham health services run, but he will bring mental health to attention when the issue arises. It is important that a mental health champion gets out and engages with the community. It is important to hear what the community says about the issue of mental health needs. James raised the situation of mental health needs from the BAME community and felt there needs to be more priority due to a high level of BAME using mental health services.

James was critical with the term ‘parity of esteem’, because he felt the term itself does nothing to address the real issues. He felt the main issue was funding and the new term should be ‘parity of funding’. He felt what are services bringing to the table? It is easy to talk, but funding matters in the end, plus how the funding is used.

James talked about the big launch of the Lewisham suicide prevention strategy held on the 11th of September 2019. I am not fully aware of the suicide stats in Lewisham or other London boroughs, so it would be interesting to chase that up. Especially since I am a carer member of SLaM’s suicide prevention group.

The next and last point raise by Lewisham’s Mental Health Champion was on how Families and carers can be involved in shaping Lewisham’s mental health services. I asked this query, because families and carers should feel part of the system, they should have their views and experiences taken into account and feel empowered they have the chance to be involved.

James spoke of how carers can become members of their NHS trust and have a greater say on what is going on. James spoke that we should pay attention to what SLaM governors are doing and try query what they are involved in. James mentioned that Lewisham CCG have their public reference group, which allows for involvement and it helps to understand the important health policies affecting the community.

We were glad James mentioned the important Lewisham stakeholder event on the 14th of October, since members of the MH Carers forum will be holding a workshop there about carers.  The link has been added below.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lewisham-mental-health-stakeholder-event-me-and-my-community-tickets-72248203321

On the 16th of October will be Lewisham Child & Adolescent event, although not sure where it will be.

Some questions from the forum asked at James were on the merger of the six CCGs, the use of the Joint Health and Safety Committee and James returning for the Lewisham BAME forum.

Next up was Aaron Brewer who is SLaM’s quality improvement facilitor. Many NHS trusts around the country have quality improvement projects to work out how to improve services for patient and carer (yes, thats right! carers also use services). They want to ensure that the people that access our services experience the same standards of care no matter which borough they live in or which service they com are under.

355Z1977_Maudsley

Aaron spoke about SLaM’s Inpatient Care Process Model. The model is broken down in to six phases of an admission. Lewisham are currently implementing three phases. The decision made to admit and first 24 hours, First 24 to 72 hours in
hospital and Final discharge preparation and discharge.

The model is broken down in the following sections.

– Decision made to admit and first 24 hours
– First 24 to 72 hours in hospital
– Getting better
– Getting ready to leave
– Final discharge preparation and discharge
– Staying well

Aaron then spoke about Lewisham’s Hospital patient system ‘I Care’ and how data can be used to focus on quality issues and quality behaviour. The group were shown some graphs and quality data to help educate members on how hospital data can help make decisions. We were shown nothing confidential, but numbers and figures. It was pointed out that the graphs look very complex, but I always stress carers MUST get used to poking their noses on data and quality. We need to understand how NHS systems work and how they make decisions on services.

IMG_20190924_134002

The following graphs were shown on

Hospital Length of Stay
Discharges by directorate
Readmissions within 30 days
Admissions and Transfers into External Overspill

The next discussion was on how the Hospital’s patient system can help in improving care and outcomes. These will follow on from the Red2Green tool. The Red2Green is a tool to aid daily multi disciplinary team decision making to ensure that every day spent in hospital is meaningful and contributing to a person’s recovery. Red2Green was developed in an acute general hospital but has since been adapted for mental health settings, multiple NHS trusts are now using it and having success in reducing unnecessary delays, length of stay and bed occupancy.

The Ladywell unit based at Lewisham hospital has several mental health wards. We were shown how one of the wards operates in regards to the Red2Green tool. The ward chosen was the ‘Powell Ward’, where we were explained the following

180 Green Days and 4 Red Days for 18 patients in August.
No Delayed Discharges.
Targetted Theme: Awaiting Social Services

The last part of the discussion was on Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). The aim is to agree Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to unblock common barriers to discharges between community and inpatient services. The more I looked at who was involved at the SOP, the more my head began to spin because I felt they need to engage with the forum somehow or the risk is the community would not always know what is going on, however we did mention we have invited Lewisham’s head of social care to attend.

This concludes the update for the September Lewisham MH Carers forum. As a note due to resources, I cannot always update on the 4 forums, but will try every so often.

The next Lewisham MH Carers forum is on the 29th of October

Service User Advocacy Exhibition

Thanks for stopping by at another carer blog post. I thought to quickly drum up a page on my latest visit to the Bethlem’s Museum of the mind. I was excited to be part of their new exhibition “Impatient! Stories of Service User Advocacy”.

bethlem-entrance

The exhibition which is over at the Bethlem Museum just inside the Bethlem Royal Hospital, celebrates the history of Service User advocacy. There is history on how the groups and organisations projected their causes and how they relate to psychiatry. I felt that sometimes when it comes to NHS exhibitions they tend to promote much of what has taken place in the hospitals, but showing what the community or inpatients have done, can give more of a holistic picture.

Continue reading →

Lambeth MH Carers Forum update August 2019

Welcome to the August update of the Lambeth Mental Health Carers forum. As a reminder the Mental Health carers forums are not primarily focused on discussing mental health benefits, but are aimed at carers supporting those with mental health needs. The forum usually has organisation who either provide mental health services, commission them or oversee the services e.g. Lambeth Council, South London & Maudsley, Lambeth CCG and Lambeth healthwatch besides others.

For the August forum we were fortunate to members and representatives from Maudsleys Older Adults and Dementia Advisory group. They presented to the forum what the group does over at South London & Maudsley and how they work with unpaid carers who are caring for those suffering Dementia, Alzheimers, Parkinson and so forth.

IMG_20190822_192101

Before I continue on with a brief update of the work of the older adults Clinical Academic Group, we also had on the August agenda the following.

Continue reading →

Royal College of Nursing involvement day

Rcn-logoThanks for stopping by. Here is another blog post by unpaid carer Matthew Mckenzie. This blog post is about involvement, but I have added to this post my involvement with another organisation the Royal College of Nursing. Usually I spend most my time at carer or community centres running family and carer strategy forums. We aim to engage with hospital trusts, healthwatch, health commissioners and councils. Most forums look to increase education and engagement on mental health and the health services.

Still, education is not enough and there should be involvement and empowerment for services users and carers. Anyway, I would like to put a bit of background into the RCN otherwise known as Royal college of Nursing. I have been hinting about nursing and the Royal college of Nursing from my previous blog posts, although there are many other organisations I will post about soon.

The RCN represents nurses and nursing, promotes excellence in practice and shapes health policies. It is the biggest and well known union for nursing in the UK. They do not just represent nurses, but also midwives, Mental Health nurses, health care assistants, assistant practitioners, student nurses and trainee nursing associates.

They have around half a million members and are growing in number every day. The RCN also have a vast history in the field of nursing and have made major impacts in advocating for the field of nursing in the UK. The RCN also runs forums, consultations, conferences and allows members to get involved or even become an RCN Rep.

It has not been an easy time for nurses or the NHS at present, I am not going to get too political today, but never has there been a greater need for the RCN to vouch for nursing as pressure is brought to bear on nurses via lack of funds, bursaries and incentives to stay in the industry.

RCN-Twitter-image

The RCN now wishes to expand its involvement and has been honest that in its prestigious history, it has lacked the drive to engage with its mental health patients, however many a large organisation can fall into this situation, although some are worse than others.

I have noticed that the RCN looks to take on engagement and involvement policies regarding its mental health programme, but to do this it must feed into its patient forum and also draw from Triangle of Care representatives. Of course no one is going to say such a drive is not without its challenges, but the sooner work begins on involvement, then the better the outcome.

Early this august I was invited to the first of many reference groups to collectively figure out inclusion and co-production within the RCN. I was joined by many patients and carers like myself. I did hear that reps from a mental health forum could not make it, but hope they are free next time.

The group was chaired and facilitated by both Catherine Gamble and Tim Coupland. Catherine is a RCN Mental health lead & Head of Nursing. She is also proactive in eduction practice & research at South West London and ST Georges NHS Trust. Tim Coupland is the RCN Programme Lead for Parity of Esteem and promotes many policies on mental wellness for all including nurses themselves.

I will not go into too much detail on how the group went, but I felt I was very looked after at the group and I felt everyone got their chance to have their say. We had many passionate and rich experiences from the members of the group, everyone truly deserved their place there. I was amazed that some members have had an impact promoting nursing and service user experience in other countries.

We each also asked what our involvement and interests lie, where mine was on the NHS Long term plan, mental health act and Suicide prevention due to my involvement at South London and Maudsley Suicide prevention group. I was excited to hear that the RCN have representatives engaging in the areas I have raised.

image1

There is however a lot I can say regarding involvement, inclusion, engagement, co-design and co-production, but I think I will leave that to another blog post. There is much out there that carers like myself can get involved with. We never have enough carers getting involved at an exciting and challenging time in the health services.

You can find out more about the Royal College of Nursing from the link below

https://www.rcn.org.uk/

My summing up of the day is that there is a lot of work to do, but I feel that the RCN as a body is massive and offers many opportunities even if it is just to understand its core principles and the future of nursing.

Carers and GP Surgeries

me_edited-1Welcome back to another blog post by unpaid Mental Health carer Matthew Mckenzie. I often write blog posts that try to focus on carer issues, but sometimes I stray into areas of mental health, events and the field of psychology, sociology and maybe psychiatry. Of course I don’t stop there. I run carer engagement/strategy forums in south London and every so often I tend to update how they went on this site. Feel free to check out my Youtube channel or twitter channels where one channel focuses on the carer experience and the other channel on mental health developments.

Enough with the shameless advertising, this particular post is on a much needed subject and it is aimed at unpaid carers, however I hope GP surgeries get the time to read considering at the last Lambeth forum there was major discussion on the Lambeth Patient Participation group network. I have also arranged for the Lewisham PPG chair of South Lewisham Practice to present and update the members of Lewisham BAME Carers forum.

Continue reading →

Lewisham BME MH Carer/SU Forum July Update 2019

965946_fa217b70Welcome to the July 2019 update of the Lewisham BAME Mental Health carer forum. The forum is one of the 4 carer strategy forums I run in the community and has a focus on BAME carers and sometimes Service user issues. As a reminder, the London borough of Lewisham is a diverse community, with many health and wellbeing challanges, but also some successes.

Although it is good we have carer support groups, there must be a physical platform where families and unpaid carers can come together for empowerment purposes. Carers should have a right to have a say about Health and well-being services. For the July Lewisham BAME Carers mental health forum, I had to run it earlier in the month due to a meeting I have at the end of the month.

IMG_20190712_110237.jpg

Usually the forum would be packed, but a lot of members had sent apologies and this is one of the reasons I have blogged about the forum as a way to report back to members who can then feed into their networks.

Continue reading →

National MH Nurses director forum – Building Resilience

D_BbtpdXYAEqkWdThanks for stopping by my blog-site. I thought to try and note down a lovely conference I was involved in as a guest speaker, but before I begin explaining more about the National directors nurses forum 2019. I want to pitch some ideas for any unpaid carer reading this blog post. Have you ever wondered what inspires team leaders on hospital wards? Have you wondered about how senior nurses inspire their staff? What makes nurses tick and how do they become more resilient in there roles?

As carers, I often try and get families and carers to become excited about the NHS. If not that, then try to inquire what the NHS is doing for you or what you can help the NHS in regards to promotion and co-production. We carers are unique in our roles and sometimes we stay silent and get on with it, but we should try use our voices to influence health services.

About the National MH Nurses director forum

I now want to talk about the forum which runs each year, I think the one for 2019 was the fourth of its kind. The NMHND forum aims to focus on leadership for mental health and learning disability nursing. It also wants to help spread best practice in mental health and learning disability nursing. It helps bring together those who work in the field of nursing to help raise the voices in regards to the pressures of nursing.

You can find out more about the National Mental Health Directors Forum (NMHND) off their site shown below.

https://mhforum.org.uk/

Plus you can find out about Directors of Nursing for the UK through the forum site.

https://mhforum.org.uk/trust-breakdown

The 2019 National MH Nurses Directors forum was held at Warwick University. I was impressed by the conference center and the facilities, which also had a bar, large canteen and many conference rooms. I was told Warwick University had many conference centers and as a carer guest speaker, I felt I was really spoilt since I was provided a room at the center, the Dinner, Breakfast and lunch was fantastic.

The theme of the 2019 NMHND forum was on “Building Resilience”, which was fitting due to the pressures the NHS is under. Plus if the NHS is facing large challenges, it will filter down from leaders, to senior staff and front line staff and guess what? The patient and carer will be next in line. So I was glad that the National MH Nurses forum raised the theme, but it was not moaning and groaning, we sought to find answers, solutions and inspirations into building resiliance. We do not want nurses to struggle and leave the profession.

About the Forum Chair and Organisers

To open the event we had Mel Coombs who is the Director of Nursing at Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. I felt comfortable with her chairing style and that put me at ease as I felt welcomed. I was fascinated by her inspirational story into the role of Nursing and felt she was ever so dedicated in her field, but more on that later.

You can find out more about Cambridge and Peterborough NHS trust and their board of directors below.

https://www.cpft.nhs.uk/about-us/board-of-directors.htm

I was also welcomed by Professor Hilary McCallion CBE and was shocked that she remembered me from when I spoke at South London and Maudsley carer conference almost 6 years ago.

If it was not for Hilary, I doubt I would be speaking at the Nurses forum that day and thank her for involving me at such a level. Prof Hilary is the Director of Nursing and Lead Nurses National forum, plus she is also a Trustee of Dementia UK and Bethlem Museum of the Mind, which I aim to get involved on Bethlem museum latest project soon, watch this space.

Last but certainly not least was Peter Hasler who I have known for a very long time and has inspired me to get involved at South London and Maudsley as a carer when I first started out learning more about the NHS. Peter has many roles, but he is the Forum Development Officer.

What happened throughout the day

After the welcome by the chair, I spoke about resilience as a Carer and the impact of mental health needs in the family. I spoke passionately and from the heart as I wish to lead by example when I want to raise the profile of families & carers in the NHS.

D_BbBkrWwAAQk4C

My talk consisted of the importance of Carers being empowered to network
My background and the Triangle of Care, plus the Health Service Journal.
Carers Navigating the NHS
The need for support from nurses and also resilience of carers.

I hope my message was inspirational and I felt those who work within the NHS have families and patients in mind. I want to inspire nurses to join and avoid leaving the profession, especially in the mental health field, which is very challenging.

We then had Ruth May who Chief Nurse of NHS England speaking about “Nursing Resilience in delivering the NHS Long Term Plan”. I am looking forward to hearing more on how she can help educate us on the NHS Long term plan. She answered many challenging questions from the audience and I noticed she has her work cut out, but her passion and drive shows that she will make great progress.

D_BdRWvXsAY6mMu

After the break Prof Hilary McCallion spoke about patient Observations on inpatient wards. As a carer, her talk was easy to understand and there was an interest in psychiatry as she provided many insights as to why patient observations in hospital mental health wards was so important.

D_BxNXRX4AECYAP

I admired her knowledge and energy and I felt jealous when someone in the audience got her the questions correct and won a box of chocolates.

After the lecture the forum split up into 3 work-group sessions. The first session was presented by Learning disability nurses Simon Jones and Alison Williamson from Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust on PBS in Forensic Services.

You can find out more about Oxford NHS Trust below

https://www.oxfordhealth.nhs.uk/

The second Session was on Stepping Up via Resilience through the CQC, which was presentation by Amanda Griffiths and Jane Fullard from the Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Trust, which recently got an Outstanding ranking from the CQC on their mental health services.

D_B709rX4AIn244

This was the session I joined, probably due to the CQC paying even more attention to the Triangle of Care and being active on twitter, plus engaging with my Carer strategy forums. Amanda and Jane spent a lot of time education myself and other trusts in the room, which an impressive presentation. As a side note, I met nurse from SLaM based in Lewisham who spoke kindly about my presentation. I was glad we had more SLaM staff at the forum and hope they will also continue to engage with the carer forums.

You can find out more about Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Trust below

https://www.hpft.nhs.uk/

The third and final session was on How do mental health practitioners understand & experience resilience which was presented by Simon Wharne of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. I have nothing but admiration for Sussex staff and their CEO Sam Allen who has supported my work for quite while and they are heavy advocates of Triangle of Care. I will never forget Sussex involving me as a carer at their event a while ago.

You can find more about Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

https://www.sussexpartnership.nhs.uk/

After a tasty lunch at the conference center, I got the feeliing at ate too much and it made me sleepy, but I couldnt help myself as I networked with NHS staff from other trusts. There are going to be some exciting projects coming up soon.

The forum moved on to Resilience in your NHS Career Journey, were we got to hear personal stories from Mel Coombs, Christine Hutchinson who is the Nurse on Learning Disability at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust and Francis Adzinku who is the Service Delivery Director at Oxleas NHS Foundation trust.

You can find out more about Lancashire and Oxleas below.

https://www.lancashirecare.nhs.uk/

http://oxleas.nhs.uk/

I would like to give Special thanks to Warwick university and Radcliff conference center as I found the food, facilities and guest room excellent.

How I felt about the event.

I was delighted to be invited to participate in such an influencial nursing forum. If I did not blog on such a forum, it really would have been a missed opertunity. I felt the event was very well organised and kept to time.

I enjoyed the art work of the event done by Dr Pen Mendonca.  The art really summed up the day as words cannot always be the best representation of describing things.

D_CFjyoXkAALP-i

I hope to meet up again with Prof Hilary McCallion again over at SLaM and most of all I was impressed by the caring attitude of the audience making me feel welcomed as a carer among friends.

I would like to mention Lookout for my next blog which will be a video timeline of UK nursing throughout the ages.

Thank you for reading.

D_DEDXZXoAIF4jE

Health and well-being in the community

https___cdn.evbuc.com_images_50751415_246297577353_1_originalI recently came back from an event held by an award winning social consultancy called “We Coproduce”. The event was a 2 day look at Trauma and its causes due to the tragady of Grenfell Tower, it was one of the best times for the community over in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea. When I arrived at the event, I was amazed to see how many of the public turned up and how many were interested in the talks.

Continue reading →

Sometimes us unpaid carers need to step up

smallerHello again, I have not blogged in a while, because being so active in my area due to attending events, running carer strategy forums and networking like hell. I know the title might seem a little off putting, but in my long experience of being involved in health and mental health services as an unpaid carer, there are a few things I have noticed.

Just to note, I am writing as an unpaid mental health carer, basically a carer supporting someone close who has mental health needs. Unpaid carers struggle quite a bit to get noticed, their culture is to put the ‘cared for first’ and themselves last. Perhaps it is a respected human trait, carers come with a big heart, but it does come with some risks. This is what I will be blogging about today.

Continue reading →