Welcome to my first forum update for the new year. The first forum is the Lambeth Mental Health carer forum, which took place over at Brixton 336 on the 23rd of January 2020. The Lambeth carers forum exists to give unpaid carers a chance to know what Health and Social services are doing for them and also what those services have planned.

Lambeth has some of the highest rates of mental health problems in the country and perhaps even further, it is important carers come together and ask why this is the case and what are the authorities doing about it. As you might already know, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust cover the mental health services in Lambeth and also in Lewisham, Croydon and Southwark, so he forum seeks to engage with the Mental Health Trust over the coming year.

More importantly, there are other NHS trusts serving the community in Lambeth and we had the opportunity to have Guy’s and St Thomas NHS trust Mental Health lead engage with the forum, more on this later.

The January forum was very well attended and word is spreading about the importance of the Lambeth MH carers forum, with the help of Lambeth Carers hub, unfortunately the forum took place at the same time of the SLaM carers committee, so some members had to send apologies.

At the start of the forum, we took time to go through the minutes of the last forum which was held over at Moasic Clubhouse. The forum was attended by Helen Hayes Labour candidate for Dulwich and West Norwood and also Lambeth Healthwatch who are seeking consultation from Carers on the future of Lambeth Hospital. There was a lot of discussion from the updates from the last forum.

Next we had a presentation from Caroline Sweeney who is the Mental Health Lead for Guys & St Thomas NHS Trust. You might not already know, but Acute NHS Trusts tend to develop, renew or plan mental health strategies, however both Kings NHS trust, SLaM NHS Trust and Guys & St Thomas NHS trust are working on their Carer’s Strategies as well. If you are a carer or are lucky enough to attend a carers forum, certainly inquire if your hospital trust is working on either or both policies and strategies, especially carer engagement/involvement policies.

For the Lambeth MH carer forum, Caroline updated us on G&STT Mental Health strategy. The strategy was not developed in isolation as the trust held six workshops in the past via the hospital and its community sites.

Their external workshop had a range of stakeholders including Service Users and carers, London Ambulance service other MH Trusts, CCG’s, Black Thrive, Oasis and Papyrus (youth suicide prevention), Lambeth Alliance and more.

Their Strategy contained many important sections being

Developments and Good Practice.
Linking to National Drivers.
Objectives of the Strategy.
Overview on Patients, People and Partnerships.

There were more, but due to limited time, we could only cover a few areas off the presentation.

GSTT Developments and Good Practice

The plans and targets for GSTT are

• Improving partnership working with South London and Maudsley NHS Trust
• Delivery of training across in-patient and community services
• Development of improved assessment processes for district nursing
• Improve experience of patients who receive Enhanced care
• Development of primary care hub for adolescents
• Implementation of the Children and Young People Healthy Partnership (CYPHP), probably due to GSTT children’s hospital (Evelina London Children’s Hospital).
• Mind & Body and IMPARTS service
• GSTT psychology service

Linking to National Drivers

• GSTT Long term plan is to
• Increase Mental Health Liaison capacity e.g. specialised MH nurses in Accute wards
• Equipping Ambulance staff to deal with MH crisis
• Importance of improving child and adolescent MH care
• Commitment to reducing National Suicide rates (Zero Suicide national driver).

Other drivers

GSTT also have internal drivers mentioned in their MH Strategy.

• These drivers were from audits and reports about Liaison teams and children services experiencing an increase in referrals, this was especially noted in A&E departments and long waiting times for those experiencing MH crisis are not helping.

GSTT Mental Health Strategy Vision and Objectives

A MH Strategy would not be much without its Vision and Objectives.

• GSTT seeks to improve quality of care that it delivers to Patients, carers and families living with serious mental illness.
• GSTT also seeks to support patients with long term physical health conditions and manage their MH needs
• GSTT seeks to ensure their workforce has the right skills, knowledge and attributes to care for patients, their carers and families dealing with MH needs.

There were other things discussed in regards to GSTT MH Strategy, that due to time I have not mentioned in this blog post.

GSTT and carers

• We did not have GSTT carers engagement on their carers strategy, but Caroline did cover some part of that stategy, that being the introduction of Carers Passport to identify carers.
• Use of Carer network study days
• Dementia specific Carer days (which is still under development).
• Continued work on Alzheimer’s society and Dementia UK.
• There is more in the pipeline regarding how GSTT engages with Families and carers, but the above is a start.

The rest of the forum was discussing on the rota for chairing the meeting and future attendees for the Lambeth MH carers forum. Many hope for the Helen can update the forum regarding carers later on in the year and for other MPs to engage with the group. Other members want engagement from Lambeth leads who run social services.

This concludes the update from the Lambeth MH Carers forum for January.