In the last year the Care Trust’s Service User Advisory Group has opened its doors to all service users. From June, anyone who used the services was welcome to come and take part. This has posed its share of problems but it has doubled the numbers and there are now twice as many views to be given as previously. This has to be a good thing and is certainly more democratic than the previous incarnation. There are of course difficulties. Just finding a room large enough is one of them. How such a disparate group is to be managed is another. The cost is an important one, particularly in the present financial crisis and it has been decided that the UAG and any other open groups will not receive reward. Some people seem to see the opportunity to abandon the group completely but there is a strong user voice against this. They are disappointed at the loss of sandwiches and payment, but they do not want to see the end of a longstanding and popular group or its replacement by a more select body. Last month, The Camden Bugle discontinued reports on the UAG because it believes that it is the job of the Service User Resource Team to produce them and they do not seem to want to do so. This position continues. However, The Camden Bugle recognises the importance of this group and hopes that its expressed wish to continue in being will not be ignored. It also believes that the UAG should be reported and will provide space for these reports when they are forthcoming. PATIENTS’ FORUMS The Community Health Councils are about to be abolished and to be largely replaced by the new Patients’ Forums. Each Trust will have one and it will be composed of ordinary people some of whom use that Trust’s services. The Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH) is responsible for the setting up of the Patients’ Forums and is currently asking people to put themselves forward as potential members. It is extremely important that users of the mental health service offer themselves as potential members of the Care Trust and the PCT Forums. further information and application forms are available by telephoning 0845 120 7115 or from the website www.maketimeforhealth.org There is an urgency since applications need to be in by 6th October.
BYE FOR NOW Sandra Miller has been seconded from the Care Trust to the Social Services Inspectorate for a period of two years. We are sorry to lose Sandra who played an important part in user involvement, particularly in South Camden. FORTNIGHT FOCUS This year there will be a fortnight focus on Positive Mental Well-being in the Community. This will feature the 9th Annual Camden Mental Health Day Fair on Wednesday, 9th October at The London Irish Centre in Camden Square where CMHC will have a stand. The programme for the fortnight is shown below:
CARE TRUST BOARD MEETINGS This month’s meeting of the Mental Health & Social Care Trust Board will be held on Thursday, 25th September from 2.00 pm at the London Voluntary Resources Centre, 356 Holloway Road, LONDON N7. This meeting is open to the public and papers may be obtained from the Board Secretary, Kate Wilkins, on 020 7445 8427 or by e-mail kate.wilkins@candi.nhs.uk In the same venue, the Board Meeting will be followed at 5.30 pm by the Annual Public Meeting of the Care Trust. We would urge as many people as possible to attend. NEW DIRECTIONS CAMDEN ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING NDC will be holding its Annual General Meeting 2003 on Thursday, 6th November 2003 from 6pm at The Crossfield Centre, 8 Fairhazel Gardens NW6 3SG. The meeting will be a short business meeting without the usual social event afterwards.
As we go to press this month, the September South Camden User Forum is about to take place. From 5.00 – 6.30 pm on Tuesday, 30th September, Dr Peter Byrne will come to talk about his work on STIGMA. Peter is a psychiatrist working in Kent and doing research at the Whittington Campus of University College London. From now until the end of the year, the SCUF meetings will be held in the St Pancras Conference Centre in the West Wing at St Pancras Hospital rather than at Jules Thorn Day Unit. The change was made because we were expecting larger numbers to attend some of these meetings. However, the August meeting did not produce that many more people and it may well be that we return to Jules Thorn in January. The meeting on Tuesday, 28th October, will bring Erville Millar, the Chief Executive Officer of the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust in a South Camden version of ‘Ask the CEO’. This is an opportunity to put questions to the man who is ultimately responsible for the services provided by the Care Trust and provides a chance to enter into dialogues about issues. On November 25th, SCUF will hear from Sarah Jane-Mills and colleagues from the North London Forensic Service about the work that is done in secure settings. This is an area of mental-health care where the law and psychiatry often prove to be unhappy neighbours and people are detained for treatment in secure settings. This will be the last SCUF for 2003. The South Camden User Forum is firmly established and funded and there will be a full programme of meetings during 2004. Advance details are available on the CMHC website at www.cmhc.org.uk THE CAMDEN LIT The National Service Framework for Mental Health requires each area to set up a Local Implementation Team (LIT) to bring together key stakeholders and develop Local Implementation Plans. Until this year, there was a Camden & Islington LIT, but now the two have been split and there is a LIT for each Borough. The LIT is seen as the primary vehicle for delivery of the National Service Framework. The Camden LIT was launched at a meeting on Thursday, 18th September, where representatives from the various stakeholder groups attended and made their aims and aspirations for this new group known. If the eventual composition of the LIT follows that of the launch then service users will be the majority partners.
The September CBUG meeting was held at ‘The Hoo’. This attractive building in the middle of Hampstead, which is the home of the Community Mental Health Teams and other North Camden services, has become CBUG’s second home. This was an important meeting because it was the last CBUG Open Meeting for the present year. This is slightly misleading because the November meeting takes the form of the Camden Annual Service Users’ Conference and the December meeting tends to be a review of the year in a party atmosphere. The October meeting will be a closed session which is intended to be an opportunity to develop the group with the aid of the Tavistock Consultancy. This month, CBUG looked for the first time at Clinical Governance and received a very clear presentation from Alison Chapman who works in the Care Trust’s Clinical Governance Department. Alison went through the four aspects of the Trust’s Clinical Governance programme: Maintaining Accountability; listening to service users; monitoring and improving clinical care; and clinical risk management. These are not as simple as the headings sound but they, at least, provide a framework for understanding this quite difficult subject. A deeper understanding arose out of the questions that were asked and answered and there was an opportunity to learn how the User Focussed Monitoring of Care Trust services fits into the clinical governance framework as a tool for both listening to service users and improving clinical care. The second part of the meeting brought along Robert Jones, who is the Care Trust’s new User Development and Social Inclusion Manager. Robert freely admitted that he has not been in post long enough to come to grips with the whole of the task that he has to deal with, but that it is a big job and that user involvement is only one part of it. Perhaps the wider and more important part is the Social Inclusion agenda. This led to some interesting comments and questions about whether there was in fact a Social Exclusion Agenda and how this operated. Some of the bad news that Robert brings stems from the new budgetary controls that are coming into place which mean that the Care Trust will not be providing the customary food at its future meetings and that there will cease to be payments to service users for open meetings and preparation. It will be interesting to see what effect this has and to listen to the various comments about cutting funding in this area. There was one very positive outcome of this first meeting with Robert, an undertaking that his department will produce a list of conferences and meetings which service users might like to attend and indicate where free or subsidised places are available. This is something that CBUG has been requesting for some time and we are delighted to receive the undertaking that the Care Trust will produce it. The meeting had some discussion about the new Patients’ Forums and how people can apply to join them. It was recognised that every attempt should be made to persuade service users to put themselves forward, not only for the Care Trust’ Patients’ Forums but for the Primary Care Trust one as well. The application form is hardly user friendly and presents a problem for a number of people in the requirement for two referees. It does not seem that the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health has recognised these difficulties or is moving more towards inclusion, since this particular requirement seems likely to exclude a number of people. ANNUAL SERVICE USERS’ CONFERENCE This year’s Annual Service Users’ Conference will be held on the afternoon of Wednesday, 26th November from 1.00 pm at Hampstead Town Hall. The meeting will start with a buffet lunch. This year’s topic will be Mental Health Advocacy and much of the presentation will come from the local AIM Advocacy Partnership – a partnership of ASSERT, Islington Mind and Mind in Camden. This is particularly relevant since between them they provide the advocacy services to the in-patient sites in Camden and Islington and it seems appropriate that they talk about what is and is not advocacy and what they provide locally. Representatives from the PALS (Patient Advice and Liaison Service) and from the new ICAS (Independent Complaints and Advocacy Service) will talk about the work they do and how it fits in with mental health advocacy. We are keen to hear the experiences of people who have used the advocacy services about the successes and failures and how they feel the service would be better suited to their needs. This will tie in closely with the monitoring work that CBUG is undertaking at The Royal Free Hospital on the Mind In Camden Patients’ Advocacy Project. What is this monitoring for and how will the results shape the advocacy provision in the future? The keynote speaker will be Dr Di Barnes from Durham University who has done much work in this field and will talk about the future of mental health advocacy. In the past years, the Annual Conferences have launched CBUG (2001) and looked at ‘Dealing With A Crisis’ (2002). They have been interesting, informative and thought-provoking and there seems every reason to believe that this year’s will carry on in that tradition. Since we need to know how many people to cater for, it would be helpful if people would let us know if they wish to attend, either by calling CMHC on 020 7419 4196 or by e-mail to co-ordinator@cmhc.org.uk
Aidan Moloney is the Co-ordinator of Camden & Islington Providers’ Forum (CIPF). In future we will be including regular monthly contributions from Aidan telling people what is happening in the voluntary sector. Aidan can be contacted by post at Camden & Islington Providers’ Forum, Legard Works, Legard Road, London, N5 1DE; by ‘phone on 020 7226 2022, and by e-mail cipf.office@virgin.net “Partnership in Action”, is CIPF’s Autumn seminar. Its aim is to review and analyse the hallmarks and key aspects of joint working and develop ideas for future work. This event is part of the Camden and Islington October “fortnight focus” on promoting positive mental well being in the community. We are excited by the potential this seminar has for taking forward real partnership work across the sectors. Workshops on the day will look at effective ways statutory and non-statutory providers and those who commission services can work together in providing the best possible services to our clients. These workshops will explore various topical issues around which partnerships have been seen to work effectively and where work can be developed. These include user involvement in service delivery, sustaining effective community support, crisis resolution & suicide prevention, substance misuse & mental health, black & minority ethnic services, and employment & daytime opportunities. “Partnership in Action” is supported by the London Development Centre and we are very pleased to have Peter Horn, LDC’s Chief Executive to open the event for us. We have already secured the participation of many statutory representatives on the day, including Erville Millar, Chief Executive of the Mental Health and Social Care Trust. Financial contributions in support of the event have been received from the Camden and Islington Partnership (organisers of Camden and Islington Mental Health Day), Community Housing Association, St Pancras & Humanist Housing Association and Umbrella. We were disappointed to hear that the recent CMHC proposal to employ a ‘District-Wide’ Service User Involvement Officer to work with Camden Borough User Group (CBUG) and Islington Borough User Group (IBUG) to encourage increased user involvement in the development, commissioning, monitoring and evaluation of mental health services in Camden and Islington was not successful. CIPF, fully supported the proposal and, in the spirit of partnership working, had been prepared to part-host the project at its offices in Legard Road. It is unfortunate that this opportunity has been missed.
Robert Jones, the Social Care & Inclusion Development Manager, talks about his role within the Trust and his previous work & experience and provides a review of the month’s events within Camden & Islington Mental Health & Social Care Trust. Robert can be contacted at Care Trust Headquarters, 2nd-floor, East Wing, St Pancras Hospital, London NW1 0PE, by telephone on 020 7530 8554 or by e-mail robert.jones@candi.nhs.uk I would like to use this opportunity to say ‘hi’ to you all. I'm Robert Jones, the newly appointed Social Care & Inclusion Development Manager. During the September/October months I will be trying to get out and about in order to meet as many people as possible. At the same time I will be fulfilling the commitments that I have inherited in attendance at meetings while also trying to get to grips with the many different areas and complexities of my post. Explanation of My Post This simplified version on what my post is about will I'm sure come to haunt me once I've been in the post for a longer period however here it is: Basically, I need to ensure that the Trust meets its targets, responsibilities and moral obligations around User Involvement, Race, Diversity, and Social Exclusion. This means working with Users/Survivors and Carers as well as staff in partner organisations to see how collectively we may make changes for the better within the Trust and build on the progress that has already been made. My background has been within the Voluntary Sector working on issues to do with Race and User Involvement. I have used mental health services in the past and I am committed to using that experience positively with my work in the Trust. Service User Appointments to Care Trust Committees After a successful recruitment process the Trust has appointed service users to the following committees & forums Clinical Governance Committee
Cathleen Mainds (Camden rep.) Peter Jones (Islington rep.) Angela Raja-Chowdhury (Observer)
Care Trust Forum
Martin Elman & Alasdair Lees (Camden reps) Peter Jones (Islington rep)
Service User Incidents and Complaints Committee
Kate Crosby (Camden rep) Ben Ferry (Islington rep)
The Care Trust would like to thank all of the people who applied and I look forward to working with those who have been appointed. St Luke’s Hospital St Luke's Hospital Patients’ Council is looking to increase its membership. The Patients’ Council meets on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month in the quiet room at Leawood Day Hospital between 12.45 and 1.30pm. Refreshments are provided. To find out more you can contact Andrew, Roger or Chris on 020-8219-1849 Service User Survey The Care Trust's first service user survey has taken place. Under the auspices of the Commission for Health Improvement CHI), the Care Trust took part in a pilot with 29 other mental health trusts. The pilots will help inform the 2004 survey, which will form a key component of all mental health trust's performance ratings. In response to the question about how they rated local mental health services, responses were as follows Excellent 19 Very Good 22 Good 25 Fair 22 Poor 6 Very Poor 6 To put this another way, 66% rated local mental health services as good, very good or excellent. 12% rated them as poor or very poor. Service User Payments There has been some uncertainty about the conditions associated with the criteria applied for service user payments. The Care Trust has attempted to introduce immediate clarity by issuing an interim guidance note. This is even more important in the light of significant financial pressures. An implication of the change is that payments will only be made when someone is specially asked to become involved. They will be told at the time whether a payment will be made. Optional attendance at open meetings will not merit a payment. Contact Angela Hall, Service User Involvement coordinator on 020 7530 2744.
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