Monthly Newsletter of Camden Mental Health Consortium

ISSUE 42

FEBRUARY 2001

This Government is particularly responsive to the consumer culture, something that shopkeepers have known about since shops first opened - if you don't give customers what they want then they don't come.

Some mental health services are forced upon people and they do not have any choice in what they receive. However, where this is not the case (and perhaps even more so where it is) then it is a good idea to ask people what kind of service they would like and what would best meet their needs.

For a long time day services opened during office hours, 9 - 5 Monday to Friday. This did not meet the needs of the users of those services.

Moves have been made to provide services at the weekends and this is much appreciated, but this is not the general position and is mainly in the voluntary sector. If this is what service-users want and need, then why is it not happening within the statutory sector too? Perhaps the problem is, as so often, the terminology. If you call them 'day services' then those running and staffing them expect them to open in what they consider the day. But they are not there just for the convenience of those running and staffing them, they are there to meet a need. If that need is outside the hours of 9 to 5, then they should start responding to it.

 

Where Are The Advocates

The White Paper on Reforming The Mental Health Act and the NHS Plan have talked a great deal about advocacy. Users of the mental health services have been asking for it for a very long time.

It seems then that everyone agrees that it is a good idea and will provide a necessary service. The problem is that there are not enough advocates around and there are no training courses that produce advocates with a certificate that allows them and those using them to know that they are qualified and competent.

Camden now has in-patient advocacy provision at The Huntley Centre and The Royal Free Hospital. That is very important, but it is not enough. There are some very good training institutions within Camden and it would be valuable if they could provide some courses and qualification in advocacy.

CMHC is very pleased to learn that the North and South Camden User Forums have been funded for a further year. These regular meetings in the two localities are the foundation of user meeting within the Borough and under some new plans they may be the routes into a new Borough Forum, which would be the centre-point for user involvement.

CMHC would also like to thank our member John Wetherell for his donation.

Crisis House Research

In response to the 'Real Work for Real Pay' advert, five Development Workers were recruited. Ian, Lisa, Paul, Oriana and Tabitha are now engaged in designing the questionnaire and finding respondents in order to produce a report on the views of Camden service users about what kind of crisis house they would like to see developed.

Commissioning work in this way may be one of the new roles which CMHC takes on more often in the future. We will provide the facilities and support and pay the workers.

Review of User Event

On 29^th November last year, the first Camden user event was held and a number of people came along to be part of that afternoon and contribute their views. On the day, it was promised that the main themes of the event would be established and another time would be set when these could be discussed further and the possible ways forward looked at. This will happen on the afternoon of Tuesday, 27 March at Hampstead Town Hall when after lunch people will be invited to consider the main points and look at some possible ideas for developing them into an action plan.

This will be followed by a debate on the White Paper proposals to Reform the Mental Health Act. Dr Trevor Turner, who is a community psychiatrist in East London will speak in favour of the new proposals, and Dr George Szmukler who has some original ideas on mental health law will speak against them. Once the two speakers have made their points, there will be an opportunity for views and questions from everyone else. There are important changes proposed, including the introduction of Community Treatment Orders. This will be an opportunity to hear what they mean and to have your say about them with the possibility of sending the views of the day to our elected representatives.

Jobs in Mind

Ben Anthony, the Volunteer Co-ordinator at Jobs in Mind is looking for a service user to talk on Thursday, 5 April at 7.30 pm to the Mental Health Awareness Course that they run. Anyone interested should contact Ben on 0207 482 8185.

Mind in Camden

Mind in Camden has a new Director, Brian Dawn, and he has promised to write something about how he sees MiC going forward for a future edition of The Camden Bugle.

Mind in Camden will be holding its AGM at Barnes House on Wednesday, 28 February.

New Directions Camden - Change to Opening Times

New Directions Camden's contract to run the day centres at Crossfields and Jamestown has been continued for a further three years. At the Camden Social Services Committee Meeting which agreed the new contract, Cllr Janet Guthrie raised the question of the possibility of changing the opening hours to suit service users better, and the Committee was told that this could be part of the discussion around the new Service Specification.

This matter has been raised twice in the Bugle's 'In My View' column by users of the NDC service and has come up regularly at meetings in the Borough. NDC's Executive Director, Tulloch Kempe, now writes to explain the organisation's position:

"I am writing to the Bugle as I feel it is important to clarify a number of points raised under 'In My View' in the January edition (Issue 41).

New Directions Camden (NDC), as a mental-health provider, manages the Crossfield and Jamestown Centres and is widely recognised as an active promoter of service-user involvement through its well established and developed Service User Forum and service-user structures.

In the November NDC Forum meeting, a service-user raised the issue of changing the current Centre opening times. The NDC User Forum decided to undertake a survey to ascertain NDC service users' views on the subject. It was agreed that if any changes to opening times were proposed, it would be suggested by the Forum that they were considered as part of NDC's new Service Specification, due to be reviewed for April 2001. In subsequent discussions, I also explained that nay proposal would first of all have to go through a consultation process with staff members involved and also go to NDC's Board. Following this consultation, any decision to change current opening times would finally need to be passed by Camden Social Services before any implementation might be possible.

As stated, NDC is highly committed to service-user involvement and to responding to service user needs wherever possible. We have however, a responsibility also to go through the correct process of consultation with all of those concerned. I have consulted on this response with NDC Service User Representatives and hope that this provides some clarification on the subject."

The new Crisis Response and Resolution Team (CRRT) is the latest development in South Camden and the January South Camden User Forum discussed the type of user involvement that there should be with the new team. There had always been an idea that there should be a service user as a part of the actual team but there had not been enough money to achieve this on a permanent basis even part time. The solution for the time being is to establish a reference group to which the team will regularly report and there were volunteers from SCUF to be part of this group. The CRRT is expected to begin its task at the end of February and it is hoped that the Reference Group will be established by then.

For the first half of the year at least, SCUF has a fixed date, time and base: 5.30 - 7.30 pm on the last Tuesday of the month at Jules Thorn Day Hospital. This and the fact that it is to continue being funded for a further year provides an opportunity to develop it further.

The meeting on Tuesday, 27 February, will have Saimo Chahal, a local solicitor, talking about the Mental Health Act and the Human Rights Act. Interesting and relevant subjects in themselves, it will also lay the groundwork for the debate on the proposals to reform the MHA at Hampstead Town Hall on 27^th March.

The Meeting on 27 March would clash with the normal SCUF for that month and so we have decided that it would not be possible to hold that meeting and the next SCUF will be in April on Tuesday 26^th, when Kate Crosby - an advocate who works within an NHS setting and a long-time member of CMHC, will come to talk about her work and her book on advocacy 'Power Tools'.

In May, SCUF will hear from Andy Mattin, the Director of the North London Forensic Service and one of his medical colleagues, about the work of that service and how it deals with detained patients who are held in secure conditions. This is another opportunity - Andy came to the February meeting of the North Camden user Forum - to hear about this subject.

The February meeting of the North Camden User Forum was opened by Keith Russell talking about the proposals to set up Patients' Councils in the in-patient wards and day hospitals at the RFH. There was a discussion about what they would do and how they would be constructed, but the proposal was generally well received. The working group is still drawing up the plans but it is hoped that they will be ready by the end of March, and Keith has promised to come back to the April meeting with a full proposal.

During the discussion on the Patients' Councils, there was a wider thread of user involvement and the matter of opening hours at the NDC Jamestown and Crossfields Centres came up again. The possibility of two members of the NCUF attending the North Camden Locality Management Advisory Group attracted comment but no volunteers. Perhaps we need to prepare a clear description of what the role entails and how people will be supported. These points can be taken up when the LMAG meets on March 9^th.

The secure psychiatric services are quite small in proportion of the whole, but they tend to attract more than their share of comment often because of the nature of the patients they look after, people who have usually been in trouble with the criminal law and sometimes very seriously.

In this area, most of the secure provision is under the control of the North London Forensic Service and Andy Mattin is its Director. Andy used to be the Assistant General Manager of Mental Health Services at the RFH and he was interested to see how user involvement has developed since he left. In his own service, he recognised that there was little real opportunity for patients to have a great say in things and that the provisions of the NHS Plan, which apply equally to the unit that he manages at Chase Farm, present a real challenge to implement. Andy came to the NCUF to talk about the high security services, which run from the Special Hospitals to specialist hostel accommodation. It is a very interesting and little understood area which costs large sums of money and often makes headlines for the wrong reasons. In the end, it is caring for patients with high needs and probably for a long period of time.

The March NCUF will bring back a local solicitor, Louise Coubrough, who specialises in mental health work. She is coming to talk about the Mental Health Act and The Human Rights Act. While people are sure to have questions about 'sectioning' and Mental Health Act Review Tribunals, we hope that it will also provide some background for the White Paper Debate on Tuesday, 27 March, when people will have the opportunity to listen to what the government proposes and possibly still take some steps to change it - it is an election year!