Tag Archives: Oxleas

Greenwich Mental Health carers forum update January 2024

Welcome to a brief update of my Greenwich MH carers forum. Like all my other groups apart from the London cancer carer forum, the Greenwich forum provides a platform for carers supporting someone with mental ill health.

The group seeks engagement from the mental health trust Oxleas, healthwatch Greenwich, social care, local authority and health services. It is important that unpaid carers are heard, included and involved regarding services.

For the January forum, we were joined by Healthwatch Greenwich on their update on the focus of including carer feedback about services.

The second set of speakers were Britt makhetshemu and Ana Stojanovic (South East London Mind) on the development of the new Greenwich Mental Health Hub.

We were also joined by Sue Sauter who is the Lead governor for Oxleas NHS trust.

  • Healthwatch Greenwich updates

Nakkita has a focus on topics such as Poverty, Vulnerability and Community Activism. Her interests are in how rights are upheld, especially during times of crisis and amplifying the voices of those most marginalised. She is passionate about giving back to the community she has grown up in and the services she has used, as a carer.

Nakkita De Silva who is the Admin & Project Assistant at Healthwatch Greenwich updated on the research project about improving services for adult ethnic minority carers in Greenwich.

  • Greenwich Mental Health Hub Presentation.

Next to present to carers and Greenwich carers was the development of the Greenwich Mental Health Hub. This is a partnership between South East Mind, Oxleas NHS and Bridge Support.

It was noted that the is a strong case for for Community Mental Health Transformation, because of the following.

  • Fragmentation and Transition Between Services
  • Thresholds and Barriers to Access
  • Challenges in Getting High Quality Care
  • Distance from Community

The Greenwich MH hub has a strong vision to develop:-

Personalised support. Where their commitment is to provide a diverse and personalised range of support for people facing mental health challenges within the community, addressing their psychological, physical, and social needs.

Crisis prevention. Their approach is to enable earlier support, foster recovery and staying well, and prevent the escalation of mental health issues that could lead to crises.

Making care fairer. The Greenwich MH hub are dedicated to reducing inequalities in access and experience of mental health care for all adult residents of Greenwich, regardless of where they live or their background.

A lot of time was presented on what the Greenwich Hubs core model is looking like

It was presentated that people should be able to transition seamlessly between different types of help, care and support as their presenting needs change on their recovery journey from ‘thriving’ and ‘getting advice’ to ‘getting risk support’.

Presenters Britt makhetshemu and Ana Stojanovic also talked about the pathways people have to access inteventions at the Greenwich hub.

Oxleas Lead governor Sue Sauter engages with the carer forum

Did you know a lot of mental health trusts have governors hold to account their board? Governors are usually voted in by the public, patients, carers and staff. It was excellent to see the lead governor Sue Sauter.

Sue worked at the NHS for over 40 years as a Registered Midwife in both a clinical, managerial and supervisory capacity. During this period, she was also employed by the Nursing & Midwifery Council and was a member and latterly, a Chair of their Professional Conduct Panels.

Sue talked about the roles of a governor, where one of the roles is to ensure the voice of our members, the public, patients and staff is used to inform our trust’s decisions and improve medical care and patient experience.

Since governors are voted into the role, it helps that they can hear from community groups. Sue was kind enough to take views back from our group and feed this through their council of governors.

This concludes a brief update of the Greenwich MH carers forum.

Greenwich Mental Health Carers forum June 2021

Here is a brief update of our Greenwich mental health carer forum for June 2021. This carer forum focuses on empowerment for mental health carer, while my Greenwich Mental Health carer peer group is on peer support and carer networking.

We were joined by MP Matthew Pennycook who is the Labour MP for Greenwich and Woolwich.

Matthew was mainly here to listen to unpaid mental health carers, which he could take up be it compliments or concerns. I could not go into any details but a few issues were raised one on the state of GP practices. We were also joined by Nosizo Magaya who is CQC’s lead inspector for Oxleas.

Matthew Pennycook MP for Greenwich

Nosizo spoke about what the CQC that being Care Quality Commission does and how they engage with NHS staff, patients and those who care for service users.

Nosizo reminded us that the CQC are a regulator, so they regulate all health services in England. She felt that perhaps the CQC could describe themselves as the Ofsted of health care. The only difference with the CQC and Ofsted is that they can prosecute, if they feel that there are providers that are not providing the adequate care.

So the CQC as an organization has got teams of inspectors that go in and review the care that’s been given to people. Sometimes they respond to whistleblowing, or any responses from any member of the public. Typically, if they do get a concern, they will contact the provider. If the person who gave the CQC the information is happy for them to share it. The CQC will contact the provider and ask for feedback and query what happened with this consent that has been raised. Their teams are a combination of different people on their health care professionals, anything from doctors to nurses, physiotherapists, and also some that are not healthcare professionals being expert by experience.

Nosizo also mentioned that they are based according to team, so the London mental health and community health service team would look after oxleas and she is the main contact for oxleas. Some queries from members were worried how long it would take to raise questions to the CQC, although another carer reminded that even if the CQC did not speak to a carer during inspection, it is always wise to raise a query off the CQC’s website.

You can check out more from the CQC off the site below.

https://www.cqc.org.uk/

Greenwich Mental Health Carers forum March 2021

Welcome to my Greenwich Mental Health carers forum update for March. This is the 2nd Greenwich MH carers forum for 2021, since this is a fairly new forum aimed at families and carers who are caring for someone with mental illness.

The forum is not a support group, although there are times discussions may dwell on a supportive nature as members switch to talking about their own unpaid caring experiences. The Royal Borough of Greenwich MH carers forum aims to give families and unpaid carers a chance to talk to Mental health, health and social care services about how they can also support carers. The forum is a chance at engagement, involvement and empowerment for unpaid carers who would like to know what is going on with services. There also might be a chance to influence services when the Royol Borough of Greenwich mental health carers network grows in numbers.

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