At the last North Camden Locality Management Advisory Group (LMAG), the results of some small focus groups showed that the psychiatrist is the person that people have most difficulty talking to. There are many possible explanations for this, not least the power relationship which sometimes allows the psychiatrist to admit the patient to hospital against their own will. The psychiatrists often say that this is a power that they do not really want. The truth of this view about their power is questioned when they are not prepared to agree to a Ward Round Protocol, or explain their opposition to it. Such a protocol would at least offer the patient a clear opportunity to put his/her own views about the treatment being offered and make what patients describe as a ‘difficult and frightening occasion’ a little easier for them Perhaps users of the mental health services have difficulty talking to their psychiatrists because those psychiatrists do not really want to listen to them.
An Order has been laid before Parliament to establish the Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust. On 1st April 2002, this new entity will come into being and the shape of mental health in the District will change once again. At the same time, the new Primary Care Trust’s also begin to work and the new Strategic Health Authority will operate across Barnet, Enfield, Haringey, Camden & Islington. There is bound to be some confusion as these new organisations settle down, but the changes for service users should be minimal and for the better. The idea is that Mental Health and Social Care will be a single project across the District and that should make it easier for service-users to access the services and obtain the best from them whilst cutting down on the bureaucracy and unnecessary paper work. Single systems of referral should be available and the treatment package available should be seamless. If it works, then it will be a valuable and worthwhile development and one that has followed almost directly from the Mental Health Strategy into which users of the mental health services had a substantial input. With the new Social Care Trust comes a new Trust Board and all appointments must be made by the Secretary of State. For the present a Shadow Trust Board exists which will continue to be Chaired by Professor David Taylor and Hilary Lance and Sharon Matthew will continue as non-executive Directors. Camden Council has nominated two new Non-executive Directors in Councillor Penny Abraham and Councillor John Rolfe. It is intended that there will eventually be a service-user Non-executive Director and discussions are continuing about this being a job share between Camden and Islington, but until the process for this has been sorted out Scott Stevens, Chair of CMHC, will fulfil this role for Camden and Barrie Hall will represent Islington service users on the Shadow Trust Board. The Shadow Care Trust Board will have its first meeting on Thursday, 25th April from 5.30 pm at St Pancras Conference Centre. Trust Board meetings are open to the public and the tradition has already developed of allowing the public to have their say at these meetings.
New Co-ordinator CMHC has recruited a Co-ordinator who will be responsible for CMHC and CBUG. John Lavery will start work with us on Monday, 8 April on a one-year contract. He will be attending all the regular North and South Camden User Forums and will be responsible for co-ordinating and developing the Camden Borough User Group (CBUG). John will be attending meetings on behalf of CMHC and will be working in the office. He will be reporting to the wider membership through a monthly column in the Camden Bugle. Although John’s role will include some development work, most of his tasks will focus around the running of the organisation and in this sense his role is a development of that of the first CMHC Co-ordinator, David Early. Changes Tracey Griffiths has joined North Camden Mental Health Service in the role of a Modern Matron. Whilst Tracey will not be wearing the famous white dress and starched cap, she will be taking an interest in patients needs and cleanliness. Stuart McMullen, Acting Assistant Locality Director for North Camden, has agreed to take the lead on user involvement within the Camden side of the Camden & Islington MH Trust. People will have already seen Stuart at the North Camden User Forum meeting, but we are particularly happy to welcome him in this new role and we look forward to working with him. Nicky Coombes has been working with CMHC for three years in a consultant role and more recently as the CBUG Project Manager. John Lavery will take on Nicky’s CBUG role and she will be leaving the organisation as an available figure. CMHC owes a big ‘thank you’ to Nicky for all the work that she has done for us particularly in raising funds. Over the next couple of months, she will still be working in the background on fund-raising and policies but people are not likely to hear her voice when they telephone. CMHC now has a voice messaging service on its telephone lines and this means that even when we are on the telephone you can still leave a message. We hope that this will help to improve the responsiveness of the organisation. Camden Freedom Pass The news on the Freedom Pass seems to be good and we hear most of the people who have applied for it have not had any problem in obtaining it. CMHC is still interested in hearing from anyone who has had their application rejected. Camden Crisis House Some concerns have been expressed about the time that it is taking to find and establish the Camden Crisis House. These concerns are genuinely felt but reassurance has been given that a property is actively being sought and that Camden will get its Crisis House in 2003. CMHC has been deeply involved in this whole project, being responsible for the Camden Crisis House Report, and there is no possibility that we would allow it to slip from the agenda of needed provision. Developments Information Website - CMHC has dedicated some funds to the development of an information website and it is seeking some further funding for this project, but in the meantime it is improving its own website with more information about the venue, dates and times of its meetings and more links to other relevant information. We have taken the decision that there is no advantage in us trying to provide the information on our own website when we can provide links to other sites where it is available. Thus, we will not be providing information about benefits but we will provide a link to the Department of Work and Pensions site – www.dwp.gov.uk – and to other sites which provide benefits information. The new Mental Health Service-User Information Website will be one of CMHC’s largest projects in the coming year. We are aware that many people still do not have access to the internet and we are going to design the website in a way that will make it possible for documents to be circulated in a printed form too. Linda HelpLine – Linda Polan is well known for both her work in user involvement and her role as an advocate. CMHC has agreed with Linda that from May we will provide a new service one day each week from 11.00 – 3.00 pm where Linda will be at the end of a CMHC telephone to provide information and advice to callers. Linda will not actually be taking on cases but she will be sign-posting to the people, places or services that should be able to assist callers. This is a trial project which will last for six months to see if people make use of it and if they find it valuable. After that CMHC will consider the possibilities for its future. Social Event CMHC was disappointed to have to cancel its Social Event planned for 27th March, but there was just not the time and energy to arrange something. However, there will a CMHC Party in the Spring and we hope to have further details in the next issue of The Camden Bugle.
Angela Hall, Service User Co-ordinator for the C&I Mental Health Trust reports on the proceedings of the Trust’s Service User Advisory Group. Last year ended with the UAG Away Day – a day to reflect on the many achievements that members of the UAG have been involved in, and a chance to focus on our aims for the forthcoming year. Due to the increasing demands on user input the UAG now meets monthly rather than 6-weekly. So far this year the UAG has held two meetings – the items raised included: User Focussed Monitoring/ The new Care Trust / The Trust’s Service User Strategy / Recruitment + Selection Training / Creche Facilities / Security in Day Centres/ The Womens’ Forum at Drayton Park/ Crisis Intervention / New Supervision Group for Service Users / Occupational Health Guidelines / Mental Health Strategy Board/ The Trust Board / The Representativeness of the UAG / Physical Abuse and Violence Policies/ Deaf, hard of hearing services/ and the New Highgate Wing (Business Case). Visitors have included : Dave Lee (Care Trust Project Director for Mental Health); Jim Green (Freelance M.H. Development Consultant); Shirley McNicholas / Bobby Baker (Women’s Forum at Drayton Park) The UAG is looking forward to a busy year. Membership remains open and anyone interested in joining should contact Angela. The next meeting is on Friday, 19 April. Copies of the UAG minutes are available for further detail. Anyone interested in obtaining copy or requiring further information should contact Angela Hall on 0207 530 2744 or by e-mail angela.hall@cichs-tr.nthames.nhs.uk.
The Camden Borough User Group (CBUG) continues to meet monthly. Since its launch in November last year, it has been trying to establish a group identity and develop a programme of work, together with arranging the necessary training and support for its members. This ambitious programme continues with meetings each month and new ideas about what it is and what it should do. When the new co-ordinator take up his post we expect to add extra meetings to the monthly CBUG schedule so that the Group can roadshow itself at different venues in an attempt to increase and obtain a more representative core membership. We have had to revise the original idea of a group of twelve people coming forward and we are now working hard to encourage people to see it as a worthwhile project which they would like to join. The new CMHC/CBUG Co-ordinator will have the task of supporting and developing CBUG and he will be helped in this task by Angela Hall, the MH Trust’s Service User Involvement Co-ordinator, who will now attend CBUG meetings. This is important because it will bring together some of the work being done across the District and will also feed into the MH Trust’s Service User Advisory Group (UAG) which is developing wider membership and will now be reported regularly in The Camden Bugle. Cross-fertilisation will take place because the CBUG Co-coordinator will also attend the UAG to keep it updated with developments and exchange ideas. CBUG is presently involved in developing its Code of Conduct. It has just taken on a piece of work initiated by one of its members, Andie Triantafillou – a Dictionary of Jargon. There are two stages to this: a list and explanation of commonly used acronyms; and the more complicated jargon used within the mental health system. Anyone who has anything to contribute should send it to CMHC or to Andie at Jules Thorn Day Unit. The list of acronyms is expected to be published quite soon, but it will be a growing project as more come into use. CBUG will be holding its first open meeting of the year on Wednesday, 17 April at ‘The Hoo’, 17 Lyndhurst Gardens, NW3. The meeting will begin with lunch at 1.30 pm. Anyone who is interested in attending should contact CBUG on 020 7419 4196. This will also be the group’s introduction to its new co-ordinator. This year a further two Open Meetings will be held at Hampstead Town Hall on 21 August and 18 December. CBUG is still recruiting and anyone interested in becoming a member should contact CMHC. It is quite possible to come along and see if it is for you without committing yourself to future attendance.
The National Schizophrenia Fellowship (NSF) is in the process of developing a new project, the establishment of Social Firms. Julie Coombes who is working on this project came along to the March meeting of NCUF to talk about the concept and the first of the Social Firm developments which looks like being a mental health consultancy. This is an interesting and innovative development and we look forward to hearing more about it. The proposal to build a Nurses’ Tower on the current Felix Brown Day Hospital site is going ahead and it is hoped that at the base of the Tower there will be three new mental health wards to replace the current facilities on Level 2 in The Royal Free Hospital. Work is currently being done by the architects and a small team to develop a plan for these new wards. George Platts, Acting Locality Director for North Camden, is coming to the April NCUF on Tuesday, 9 April to talk about these proposals and to listen to the views of a wider group of service users on how they think these wards should be set out and the facilities that should be available. This is an opportunity to have an input whilst the development is still at the design stage on wards which people may be using in the future. Already, input from CMHC has led to the inclusion of a Resource Centre within the new unit. The Mental Health Trust is developing a Strategy for User Involvement. A District Steering Group was set up at the end of last year and it has been working through a document which is now being circulated for consultation. Sue Balmer, Locality Director for South Islington, who is the Trust’s lead on the development of this startegy will be attending the May meeting of NCUF to hear the views of service users. This is a real opportunity to influence the MH Trust’s policy on user involvement and people are urged to attend and say what they think about it, and how it would better fit the needs of service users. CMHC OPEN SUPPORT GROUP The Open Support Group continues to meet on a monthly basis. It was originally set up in response to the requests of service users and has been running since May, 2001, but sadly the attendance has not been high. The next meeting will take place on Monday, 8 April from 6.00 – 7.30 pm at the Community Health Council, 197 Kentish Town Road, NW5. There will be further meetings at the same time and place on Mondays, 13 May and 17 June. Any service user is welcome to attend, and the only rule is that people must respect each other’s viewpoints.
So many people had asked for ‘Personality Disorders’ to be a topic at SCUF that the attendance at March’s meeting was disappointing. The Oscar Hill Unit has been around for about two years and it treats people who have a diagnosis of ‘borderline personality disorder’ although this may be combined with other conditions. It offers Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) on an intensive basis and the small size of the Unit and the intensity of the treatment means that it can only manage to see a few people. This has been further complicated because a Random Control Trial has been in operation too. However, it seems to help a group, which is all-too-often shunned by the mainstream services. It recognises and tries to deal with the real problems that so often attend self-harming behaviour. It was clear from the two members of staff from the unit who came to SCUF that the therapy provided there also makes unusual demands on them and for this reason it is not easy to recruit staff to the service. It was interesting to learn that a new service for personality disorders is being introduced at The Tavistock Centre and The Bugle will be seeking more information about this. The MH Trust’s recently produced Service User Strategy will be the subject of the meeting on Tuesday, 30 April. In May the topic will be ‘Medication’. CAMDEN COUNCIL’s MENTAL HEALTH LIAISON GROUP(MHLG) The Mental Health Liaison Group held on 21st March in The Sir William Wells Atrium at The Royal Free Hospital had as its subject ‘What Keeps People Out of Hospital’. Clearly different things work for different people and among them are family and friends, spiritual beliefs, crisis services and day centres. What people thought would help would be more services available after the working day is ended and this is an issue which CMHC will be following up. Other issues that came up were a Ward Round Protocol, which this issue of the Camden Bugle is following up and the Camden Crisis House. This was the last MHLG of the present Council, but these very valuable opportunities to discuss issues with elected Councillors will commence again in the Summer after the local Council elections.
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