Pharmacists are highly trained specialists who know a great deal about drugs, often much more than doctors do – that it their profession after all. It seems a pity that there is not more use of pharmacists outside the pharmacy. They could do much more than dispense the medication. They could advise patients on the effects of the drugs and the unpleasant and unwanted side effects and they could work with the multi-disciplinary team to offer medications which were less unpleasant and which the patient night not find so difficult to take. At a time when all the other professions are becoming more intimately involved in the direct care of the patients it seems a mistake to leave out this group of highly trained specialists. There must be a case for an advisory pharmacist who can function in the role of informing advising on medications and monitoring how individual patients respond to their drug regimes.
Camden Borough User Group (CBUG) is about to roll out the audit of service user involvement in mental health facilities across the Borough. It is hoped to produce a snapshot of what type of user involvement there is at day centres, day hospitals, employment projects and residential units. It has been decided not to include in-patient units in this survey. There are two sets of forms. Those for service users will be brought around by CBUG members who will assist users to complete them and then bring them back to CMHC for analysis. Different forms will be sent to service providers who will complete them and return them to CMHC. The audit is entirely anonymous and there is no space for individual names or details and the completed forms will only be seen by workers at CMHC. We are still looking for further interviewers to take part in this project and if you are interested then please contact us on 020 7419 4196. We hope that this will provide us with a picture of what goes on and from which we can obtain both some idea of what people consider user involvement to be and the particular strengths and weaknesses of the process. The analysed information will go eventually to the Mental Health Strategy Board with the intention that it should inform developments and investment in user involvement in the future. The picture in Camden will be helpful, but it will be much more useful to be able to see what is happening across the District. We are hoping to work with service users in Islington to conduct the audit there. We are anxious to recruit Islington service users to assist with this work or just want some more information; you should contact Nicky Coombes on 020 7419 4196 or by e-mail at co-ordinator@cmhc.org.uk This is an important project and its real worth will be determined by the number of service users who have completed the audit forms. The more people who complete the forms, the more information that we will have and the clearer picture this will provide of what is actually going on and where the gaps are. Unless we have clear information about this, we are not in a strong position to ask for further resources. Copies of the audit forms may be obtained from Nick Coombes and eventually the project and the analysis will be available on the CMHC website.
CARE TRUST BOARD MEETINGS This month’s meeting of the Camden Mental Health & Social Care Trust Board will be held on Thursday, 31st October in the St Pancras Conference Centre. The meeting is open to the public and we would encourage as many people as possible to attend. Papers may be obtained from Kate Wilkins on 020 7445 8427 or by e-mail kate.wilkins@cimhscaretrust.nhs.uk There are further Trust Board Meetings on 28 November and 19 December. ALL IN THE MIND The popular BBC Radio 4 programme ‘All In The Mind’ is about mind and mental health and is chaired by the psychiatrist, Dr Raj Persaud. We have received a request for service users with experience of the treatments to help make up the audience for the final programme of the present series, a debate on ‘Drugs Versus Talking Cures for Depression’. The programme will be recorded from 6.30 pm on Thursday, 7 November. If you are interested, then please contact us on 020 7419 4196. CAMDEN COUNCIL’s MENTAL HEALTH LIAISON GROUP The next meeting of the Mental Health Liaison Group will take place on Thursday, 21 November at Hampstead Town Hall from 6.00 – 8.00 pm and the main topic for discussion will be the provision of in-patient beds. This is a topic which has been raised several times in the past around the new Royal Free build and the new Highgate Wing where there will be fewer in-patient beds than at present. CAMDEN ANNUAL SERVICE USERS CONFERENCE Last year at the Camden Annual Service Users’ Conference, the Camden Borough User Group (CBUG) was launched. The thinking behind CBUG was partly based on some work done by five local service users who produced the Camden Crisis House Report. This year’s conference on Wednesday, 27 November at Hampstead Town Hall will have as its theme ‘Dealing With A Crisis’. There will be presentations from the North and South Camden Crisis Teams with details of the South Camden Crisis Advisory Forum. The meeting will look at Crisis House models, receiving presentations from The Nile Centre in Hackney (which target ethnic minorities} and Anam Cara in Birmingham, which is a User Led Service. From these we will try and establish the Crisis House model that we would like in Camden. Dr John Carrier, former Chair of The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust, and currently Chair of Camden PCT has agreed to Chair this year’s Conference. All service users are invited to attend, but CMHC needs to have some idea of the numbers so if you are proposing to come, please let us know. PRE-CHRISTMAS PARTY Last year’s Christmas party was not as well attended as we would have liked and we suspect it is because there are so many other things going on at this time of year. We have decided that this year we will hold a Pre-Christmas Party and Disco to start the festivities rolling. It will be held at The Irish Centre on Friday, 29 November from 8.00 pm until late. There will be free food and soft drinks and a pay bar. There will also be prizes to win. Although Hugh Sturrock has once again arranged this event, he will not be DJing it. This task has been taken over by people from The Royal Free Hospital. CMHC CHRISTMAS MEETING/PARTY We have adopted a tradition that we hold our Annual General Meeting at The Royal Free Hospital and our Christmas Meeting and Party at the St Pancras Conference Centre. This is fortuitous for CMHC since it means that we receive the venue and the catering free. Thanks to Colin Plant, Director of Mental Health for Camden, we will once again be holding our Christmas Meeting/Party at St Pancras on Thursday, 12 December from 6.00 pm. There will be some business and then we will go on to consider User Focussed Monitoring. The meeting will be followed by a buffet and drinks and there will be raffle prizes for CMHC members to win. CHRISTMAS CLOSING CMHC will be closed, as usual, over the holiday. The last day will be Friday, 20 December. The Christmas Camden Bugle will be printed at the beginning of that week. We will reopen on Monday, 6 January. This long break is forced upon us by the way that Interchange Studios operates and not out of choice.
The October North Camden User Forum brought Roger Evans, newly appointed as Acting Assistant Locality Director (Health) for North Camden Mental Health Service, and Tracey Griffiths the new Modern Matron on Level 2. They talked about the efforts that are being made to improve the inpatient experience and to make living on one of the current mental health ward at The Royal Free easier for people. Part of the problem, of course, is the very layout of Alice and Nicol Wards, but there is nothing much that can be done about this except to look forward to the new mental health unit of the future. Lots of the usual problems were identified – secure storage space for patients to keep their belonging; access to food and drink throughout the day and night; cleanliness….privacy… The fact that the wards are not very nice places also presents problems in the recruitment and retention of staff. It is their working environment and often over a much longer period than it is the temporary home for the patient. The Government has recently issued some guidance about in-patient facilities and this has led to the setting up of Acute Care Forums. It is hoped that the Care Trust’s Acute Care Forum will have an impact on the way that things develop. Mary O’Leary manages the Patient Advice & Liaison Service which covers the Care Trust and includes North Camden Mental Health Services. She will be attending the NCUF meeting on Tuesday, 5 November to talk about the service that she and her colleagues provide. We are also hoping to have Keri Lewis present. She is the PALS Officer for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust. December’s meeting on Tuesday, 3 December will provide people with an opportunity to explain how they ‘Survive Christmas’. This is often a very difficult time for people with mental health problems and this meeting may provide an opportunity to share some of the ways people have of dealing with the isolation and loneliness which are often heightened at this time of year. The North Camden User Forum is now a well-established monthly meeting and it will continue into 2003. The first meeting of the New Year will be held on Tuesday, 7 January in Room 20 and will bring some people form Mental Health Media to talk about the work that they do.
PALS (Patient Advice & Liaison Service) is one of the new initiatives to try and provide a better NHS for patients and their carers. Each Trust has a PALS service and the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust’s service, which it shares with the Primary Care Trusts, is situated in the Bloomsbury Day Hospital on the St Pancras Hospital site and managed by Mary O’Leary. Mary and her colleague Sharon came to the September SCUF to talk about the PALS service and how it aims to help resolve the difficulties which patients and those who care for them encounter. Although it is not very old, the service seems to be quite successful in its tasks and is also quite powerful since it has a direct line to the Chief Executive and its reports are seen by the Trust Board. The service takes in the Trust’s hospital and other sites and the PALS Officers regularly visit the wards and other places to make themselves available to the service users there. We anticipate that we will be asking Mary and her colleagues to make regular visits to the User Forums, and for the sake of completeness she is coming to the North Camden User Forum in November. On Tuesday, 29 October, SCUF will here from Charlene Edwards about the work of The Bridge Project. This is a community-based service aimed at assisting African, Caribbean and Asian service users. We had been hoping to provide some authentic food, but it is beginning to look as if the usual sandwiches will be on offer. Charlotte Pommery will be coming to the SCUF meeting on Tuesday, 26 November to talk about ‘Fair Access to Care Services’. This complicated title overlays some quite important changes in the way that care services will be made available to people. It is an important issue and people should try and come along and have their say. SCUF does not meet in December because the meetings are held at the end of each month and would clash with the Christmas holiday. Meetings for 2003 are already being arranged and at the first one on Tuesday, 21 January, Sue Salas will be coming to talk about ‘Faith & Mental Health’ and give details of an innovative project that she has been involved in at The Huntley Centre. The question of how faith affects mental health and how it supports people in recovery is not that well explored and this will provide an opportunity to listen to some details of one development that is taking place and to give a wider consideration to the whole question.
Angela Hall, the Islington Service User Co-ordinator within the Care Trust writes her monthly column together with Jackie Drury, Assistant Locality Director in South Islington. Angela can be contacted by post at 60 Bath Street, London, EC1V 9DP; by telephone on 020 7530 2744 or by e-mail angela.hall@cichs-tr.nthames.nhs.uk Professor Sir Liam Donaldson (Chief Medical Officer) launched the “Expert Patient Report” in September 2001. This report set out how the NHS will empower those people living with long-term medical conditions to become key decision makers in their own care. Islington Primary Care Trust has sent me flyers about the Expert Patients Programme, and if anyone is interested, and would like to find out more, please contact me and I will send you details. I must forward huge congratulations to Tulloch Kempe from New Directions Camden for his excellent facilitation of Mental Health Day at the London Irish Centre on 9th October. The Care Trust’s Benefits seminar on 15th October was well attended and many constructive questions were asked. Keynote speeches were given by Erville Millar, Chief Executive, and Hari Sewell, Director of Social Care, who outlined the Trust’s commitment to meaningful service user involvement. Initial feedback to the event has been very encouraging. The Care Trust will be holding two follow up seminars, on the 11th November and 10th December at Bath Street. The group working on a possible St Luke’s Patients’ Council is holding another meeting on Friday, 25 October, from 2.00 – 4.00 pm at St Luke’s Occupational Therapy buildings. TRUST NEWS IN CAMDEN Stuart McMullen, Assistant Locality Director in North Camden, writes monthly about developments on the Camden side of the Care Trust. Many service users attended a North Camden User Forum where issues around the experience of black people in the mental health system were discussed. Dr. Kwame McKenzie, consultant psychiatrist at The Royal Free Hospital came and talked about his research. There is a significant over representation of young black men on the acute wards and Dr. McKenzie’s research has tried to look at some of the reasons for this. The findings of this research are complex, but the discussion was warmly received. One thing that the Trust would welcome is for there to be a greater representation of black men on its user groups, telling us about their experiences. In other news the Care Trust has commissioned CORE, the Centre of Outcomes and Research Effectiveness, to undertake ‘user focussed monitoring’ of its acute in-patient units. This has been completed at The Waterlow Unit at The Whittington Hospital and a report was recently published. Steve Pilling, Head of Psychology for the Trust, has overseen the project where patients are asked to complete a questionnaire about what they think about the wards. The goal is for people’s attitudes to be used as a baseline to improve the service. Regular such reviews will then be able to measure any improvement. The project has audited The Huntley Centre at St Pancras Hospital and patients on the acute wards have been asked to fill in a questionnaire. A similar audit will start at The Royal Free Hospital on 23rd October and last for three months. In North Camden we about to interview for a Ward Manager for Nicol Ward at The Royal Free Hospital. The post is considered to be important as the successful candidate will be managing a wider multi-disciplinary team. The way the wards are managed is changing to reflect the variety of different professionals who work there. The challenge for the new manager will be to set up structures which support staff to deliver the best possible care to patients. The goal is to increase the amount of time that members of each team, the nurses, Occupational Therapists, doctors etc spend directly with the patients. This will mean flexible working times and sessions being offered into the evening. The audit of satisfaction of acute services will give us an idea of whether service users think this is working. USER ADVISORY GROUP This district-wide group which is the principal consultation forum for the Care Trust meets each month. At its last meeting, it heard about the Acute Care Forum which has been set up to look out how patients with mental health problems at University College Hospital Accident Emergency. There is a need to see how this effective initiative could be translated to The Whittington and The Royal Free Hospitals.
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