Four years ago this organisation proposed that there should be a panel of Lay Visitors for Psychiatric Intensive Care Units (PICUS) on the model of Police Stations. Where vulnerable people are detained there is a requirement to see that they are detained properly and that their needs are met. Although the idea was welcomed nothing has been done to develop it and the Care Trust has been resistant to the idea. This is likely to be a campaign on which CMHC renews and continues. GOOD NEWS ON THE PILLOWS FRONT CMHC’s view on ‘Pillows Not Policy’ has sometimes been used as a criticism of the organisation. This has usually been due to a misunderstanding of the idea. It is good to be able to report a ‘pillows’ success. For some time, CMHC has been asking that people brought into hospital, often unexpectedly and sometimes unwillingly, should have the basics in toiletries made available to them so that they may maintain some dignity and self-care. After a long and not always easy campaign on this matter, we are delighted to say that the Care Trust has taken up the challenge and that such packs will be available in future. A small success indeed, but one that does show we are ‘Making a Difference’. WHAT’S HAPPENNED TO THE MENTAL HEALTH LIAISON GROUP? For many years Camden Council’s Mental Health Liaison Group was one of the stalwarts of the mental health groups in the Borough attracting many service users to its meetings. Lately, the number of users attending has dropped off worryingly and at its last two meetings the group has been dominated by professionals. This was a great pity at the last meeting which dealt with Talking Therapies, a subject on which users and this newsletter have had much to say. If you have any ideas on how to revitalise the Mental Health Liaison Group (which meets next on Thursday, 11 December) then please contact either CMHC on 020 7419 4196 or by e-mail on administrator@cmhc.org.uk or Jill Clarkson who organises the group on 020 7974 1459 or by e-mail: jill.clarkson@camden.gov.uk
WELCOME CMHC would like to welcome Oneal Thomas to his new role as Service Manager within Camden Mental Health Service. Part of Oneal’s responsibilities will be the South Camden Crisis Team and the Camden Assertive Outreach Team and he will be working out of the Bloomsbury Building at St Pancras Hospital. We look forward to working with him. CARE TRUST BOARD MEETINGS This month’s meeting of the Mental Health & Social Care Trust Board will be held on Thursday, 30th October from 5.00 pm in the Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital. Trust Board Meetings are open to the public and we would encourage as many people as possible to attend. Papers may be obtained from the Board Secretary, Kate Wilkins, on 020 7445 8427 or by e-mail kate.wilkins@candi.nhs.uk SOCIAL & COMMUNITY SEMINARS The Royal Free Hospital is holding the following Social and Community Psychiatry Seminars: 31st October “Service Users and Employment” this is to be presented by Steve Marwaha, Lecturer in Psychiatry, UCL and “The experiences of women mental health service users who have children” presented by Dr Angeles Diaz-Caneja, Specialist Registrar in Psychiatry, St Mary’s Hospital, London. Both seminars start at 4pm and will be held in room 155, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Second floor, Royal Free Hospital. CMHC PRE-CHRISTMAS PARTY & DISCO This year’s CMHC Pre-Christmas Party takes into consideration that plenty happens in the month of December but that November is often a very dull month which could do with some spicing up. Hugh Sturrock, CMHC Trustee, is arranging another of his CMHC Disco/Parties at The London Irish Centre in Camden Square from 8.00 pm until late on Friday, 21st November. There will be music, free food and soft drinks and a pay bar for all those who attend. There will also be the opportunity to win Sainsbury’s vouchers. We hope that everyone will come along and have a good time and take an early opportunity to adopt the Christmas spirit. CMHC CHRISTMAS MEETING & PARTY This year’s CMHC Christmas Meeting & Party will be held from 6.00 – 8.00 pm on Friday, 12 December in The Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital. The Management Committee of this organisation has decided that this should be a Special General Meeting for the sole purpose of trying to increase the number of Trustees. There are still three vacancies. Formal notification will be sent out and this will be the first business of the meeting. This year’s speaker is Peter Horn, Chief Executive of the London Development Centre for Mental Health, who is now a much-seen face in Camden. He will be talking about the year’s work of the LDC. The meeting will then go on to take its usual social form with food, drink and socialising. COMMISSION FOR PATIENT & PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT IN HEALTH (CPPIH) The local centre for CPPIH is in Euston – brand new offices for a brand new organisation. Although the 6th October was the closing date for the first tranche of applications to join the Patients’ Forums, there is still an opportunity to take part since although the first appointments will be made for December, there will be a further round of applications to complete the numbers. CMHC is hoping to arrange with the local CPPIH for them to come and talk to one of our meetings about what their role is that they are playing and the recruitment process. They are keen to involve new faces and are anxious to talk to people who feel that they may be interested but are uncertain what is entailed. Further information can be obtained by telephoning 0845 120 7115 or from the website: www.maketimeforhealth.org LATE NEWS CMHC has been advised that there will be a Service User Advisory Group meeting in November after all and that it will be held on Friday, 21st November 2003 at The Peckwater Centre, Peckwater Street, London NW 5.
At the October meeting Bruce Buckmaster, Employment Scheme covered 'New Opportunities'. As a former service user, Bruce understands how difficult it can be to return to employment. The numerous employment projects on offer throughout the Borough were outlined, in particular the Care Trust’s Service User Employment Programme which Bruce manages. This has been set up to give individually tailored support and advice to those seeking employment or work experience both inside and outside the Care Trust. This is a welcome and much needed development, but many members were naturally more concerned with how their benefits might be affected. Recent changes replacing 'therapeutic earnings' with 'Permitted Work Rules' now allow service users to earn £20 per week without prior permission from their doctor or the Department of Work & Pensions. The only apparent condition seeming to be that the DWP must be informed before the work comes to an end. This is the minimum figure. Higher earnings are possible, although the rules become more complex. As always, there can be complications, and it is extremely important to seek professional advice before contemplating work. Bruce can be contacted at 020 7530 2713 or by e-mail on bruce.buckmaster@candi.nhs.uk For nearly four years now, CMHC has been working in partnership with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at The Royal Free Campus of University College London looking at the stigma of mental illness from the point of view of the service user. Many CMHC Members may have been involved in this study and two Members, Jennifer and Robert, have been working as Research Assistants with Sokratis Dinos, the Research Fellow. The first part of this work has been completed and will soon be published in The British Journal of Psychiatry. This research will be the subject of the North Camden User Forum on Tuesday, 4th November from 5.00 – 6.30 pm in Room 20 of the Psychotherapy Corridor on Level 2 of The Royal Free Hospital. Christmas can often be a very difficult and lonely time for people, particularly those without family or many social contacts. It is often worse if you have a mental health difficulty. The December NCUF on Tuesday, 2nd December will look at the various ways that people enjoy, cope with or survive Christmas. The meeting has no invited speaker because the best people to give their views and advice are our members and we hope that they will come and do so. When we ran this meeting last year it was very well attended and a number of people found new ways of spending the holiday period and of discussing their feelings about it. With such a success, we have decided to run it again. It will, of course be the last NCUF of 2003.
Dr. Peter Byrne is a Consultant Psychiatrist and a Researcher at University College London with a special interest in 'Stigma'. He was the speaker at the September meeting of the South Camden User Forum. This was both a well-attended and lively discussion, on what has proved to be one of the most enduring topics amongst our membership. Dr. Byrne used newspaper headlines of various mental health news issues to show how attitudes are formed and changed. The recent 'BONKERS BRUNO' tabloid headline was a case in point, and seemed to strike a chord in many present. Adverse public reaction in this case brought about a swift change of heart. The efforts of Dr Byrne and colleagues to influence such irresponsible reporting in an organised manner are beginning to bear fruit. However, it is obviously too early to claim total success against this particularly cynical and hypocritical part of Fleet Street. As we go to press this month, the South Camden User Forum is about to happen with Erville Miller, Chief Executive of the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust inviting people once again to ‘ASK THE CEO’. This format was first tried at a meeting of the North Camden User Forum in August and left the CEO and the Chair of CMHC misreported by the Camden New Journal. We hope that the questions and answers will be as relevant as before but that the reporting will be more trustworthy. This is a valuable opportunity for people to put questions directly to the man who is responsible for running many of the services that we use and we would hope that despite the controversy there will be further opportunities to do this again. The November meeting of the South Camden User Forum is the last one of the year since in December the Christmas period covers the date at which the meeting would be held. The November meeting on Tuesday, 29th November in the Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital will bring along Sarah-Jane Mills, who is the Director of the North London Forensic Service, and some of her colleagues to talk about those services which we hear about but do not see – the Secure & Forensic Services. This is a particularly important area locally with the move of the Care Trust into the Prison Service at HMP Holloway and HMP Pentonville. Although there is no SCUF in December, the meetings will commence again in January and there will be another full year of meetings. The January meeting on Tuesday, 27th January will bring an old friend, Professor Roland Littlewood to present the subject of ‘Psychopathology and Creativity’. Roland was going to give this talk in July 2003 but ill-health prevented him from doing so.
The October meeting of CBUG was a meeting just for CBUG Members to look at ways in which the Group might develop with David Armstrong, Principal Consultant from The Tavistock Consultancy, facilitating. Although it began with some tensions, the afternoon went extremely well and at the end of it CBUG Members felt that they had made real progress and that one of the results of the exercise would be a CBUG Protocol which would indicate what CBUG does and how it does it. There were also some interesting views about what CBUG might do in the future, and these will be reviewed when the written proceedings of the afternoon have been completed. It was always intended that this meeting should either be a one off which was not really successful or the first in a number which would work to develop the different aspects of the group and look at what it does and would like to do. The group took the clear view that the latter was the model which it wants to follow. The November CBUG Open Meeting is replaced by the CMHC Annual Service Users’ Conference on Wednesday, 26th November from 1.00 pm at Hampstead Town Hall. The subject of this year’s Conference is ‘Mental Health Advocacy’ and although the providers are being asked to present, we are looking for the experiences of people who have used the advocacy services or have been unable to obtain advocacy to feed into the debate. We need to know how many people will be attending this meeting so if you do want to come please call CMHC on 020 7419 4196 or e-mail us on administrator@cmhc.org.uk The CBUG Meeting on Wednesday, 17th December will be the last for the year and will take the form of a Review of the Year and a party. We have invited members of IBUG to join us for this event in an attempt to draw closer the two bodies of work and the people concerned. There will not be any CBUG Open Meetings in 2004 until April. The reason is that CBUG is now engaged in a programme of work which it feels it needs to devote its energies to and complete so that there is something to examine and show when it meets again publicly. This reverts to the original format of there being quarterly open meetings and the other monthly meetings would be working groups. By the time of the April Open Meeting it should be able to report on its work monitoring the Mind in Camden Advocacy Project at The Royal Free Hospital and monitoring the North Camden Crisis Service. It should also be able to produce its proposed programme of work for the next twelve months. The Camden & Islington Mental Health Day Fair 2003 and "Fortnight Focus" on Positive Mental Well-being Tulloch Kempe, Executive Director of New Directions Camden, reviews this year’s 9th Mental Health Day Fair and looks forward to the next one. The C&I Mental Health Day Fair 2003 was received particularly well this year with over 400 visitors at the Fair and over 70 visitors at the Art Exhibition and Competition Private View. Feedback has been very positive both about the Fair itself and the associated events that made up this year's "Fortnight Focus" on positive mental well-being - a theme The C&I Partnership hopes to build upon for next year - its' 10th Anniversary! From the Fair, feedback was particularly positive about the inclusive and relaxed atmosphere with a diversity of activities and entertainment on offer. This included the "Question Time" session chaired by Glenda Jackson MP which was very lively with a good level of debate. The "Working it Out" forum in which seven professionals working in or with mental health talked about their own mental health experiences in their jobs - some for the very first time in public was very poignant and especially supports one of the key aims of the Fair - to challenge the stigma so often associated with mental ill health. This year's Art Exhibition and Competition was of a particularly high standard and the judges had a challenging time in making the following prize awards: 1st Prize: Marie Mackay 2nd Prize: Maureen Grayson 3rd Prize: Peter Herbert Commendations: Pauline St. Marie, Pelham Davy, Raymond Black, Gerald Sestanovich Many thanks to all of you who were involved in the organising of the fortnight of events and to those of you who supported them by attending. If anyone is interested in being involved in next year's events please let me know. Camden Council’s Mental Health Liaison Group The next meeting of this important group which provides an opportunity for service users to raise issues with Councillors as their elected representatives will be on Thursday, 11 December from 6.00 – 8.00 pm at a venue to be arranged. It is an important group for service users to raise issues which will be taken back to the Council and where service user attendance has been dropping off.
Robert Jones, the Social Care & Inclusion Development Manager, 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 7445 8554 or by e-mail robert.jones@candi.nhs.uk The Government has launched a national consultation process focused on Choice, Responsiveness and Equity in the NHS and Social Care. This seems all well and good but what does Choice, Equity and Responsiveness mean for mental health services? For example can patients who use mental health services receive treatment in a hospital of their choice? Can patients choose the diagnosis that they have been given? Or choose a particular treatment? Can they choose the medical and support staff? The questions that the government is asking are; · What choices do patient/users/carers want? · What information and support would patients/users/carers need to exercise these choices? · What changes in the system, or how people work, or communicate would be needed to create these choices and make health and social care more responsive? · How could these choices be made fair for all? The Care Trust welcomes the move towards clearer lines of accountability, where patients have a say about their care have a range of choices and options. I am co-ordinating a response to the Government. If you would like to have your comments represented please forward them to me by the 7th November 2003. This tight deadline is unfortunate but you can be assured that our influence on this particular initiative will be on-going. Delivering Race Equality Another consultation launched by the Government is focused on Race Equality within mental health services. The consultation follows on from the findings of “Inside Outside” (a report recently published by the government), as well as the findings of the inquiry into the death of David Bennett, a young Black man who died whilst an inpatient in Norfolk Mental Care NHS Trust in October 1998. The consultation asks twenty questions that focus on: · information and monitoring · appropriateness and responsiveness of services · community engagement · work around suicide prevention · pathways to care and inpatient facilities For a list of the questions and further details about the consultation process you can contact me. The closing date for responses is the 16th January 2004. Improving Services for Black and Ethnic Minority Patients In line with improving services for Black and ethnic minority patients, Camden & Islington Care Trust launched a Race Equality Scheme in 2002 (this scheme is currently being reviewed). The purpose of the Race Equality Scheme is for the Care Trust to identify the barriers that exist to people from Black and ethnic minority communities either working for or accessing mental health services, and to help the Care Trust in identifying ways in which services need to change in order to give a fair and equitable service to all. To achieve this aim The Care Trust has established systems that: a) Identify and record patients’ ethnicity, gender and other relevant data. b) Ensure that staff, patients and their relatives/carers understand the importance of this data for improving services. c) Map ethnic information through care pathways to inform decisions about appropriate treatment/services. d) Gather ethnicity data from Camden and Islington that will provide the Care Trust with needs assessments, including an understanding how different cultures within the area regard mental ill health e) Enable the Care Trust to use this information to plan and design services around the different needs and understanding. Working with Women Conference The Care Trust is running a conference for staff who work with women who use services. There are a number of places available for service users to attend. The day will consist of presentations and workshops on ‘Working with Self-Injury,’ Working with Women who have been Sexually Abused’ and ‘Race Issues for Women.’ The conference is being held from 09.00 – 15.30 hours on 28th November ’03 at the London Irish Centre. The event will also include singing, poetry and drama demonstrations. Refreshments and lunch will be provided. For more information and to reserve a place please contact Shirley McNicholas or Martha Sanchez on 020 7607 2777.
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 I am very pleased to say that October was a particularly active month in the area of mental health promotion locally. The Camden and Islington Mental Health day was a resounding success. I have participated in this event for the past three years and each year my experience has been of an event that gets better each time. This year, I think the social aspect of the fair was very evident with large numbers of service users and professionals attending. It was good to see that many visitors stayed on for most, if not all of the day, to enjoy the entertainment, arts and crafts on display and to take advantage of the various fitness and therapeutic services on offer. To my mind, the most striking part of the day was the session where individuals spoke of their own experiences of mental illness and how this affected their personal and professional lives. I felt this took great courage on the part of those involves and I found listening to the speakers both moving and reaffirming. I very much look forward to the tenth Mental Health Day fair in October 2004! That should be a very special anniversary which will be marked in the appropriate manner CIPF’s own event in October, “Partnership in Action”, was very well attended. We had about eighty delegates representing in almost equal measure both the voluntary and statutory sectors. Many senior managers and frontline staff from both sectors attended, which I believe attests to the importance we all place on joint working across the sectors to deliver effective and appropriate services. Martin Elman attended on behalf of CBUG and took part in the panel session, which responded to the issues that were raised during the day. Both these events, along with the carers’ support workshops, art exhibition and festival of music and poetry formed part of a fortnight focus on positive mental well-being. It was good to see the level of commitment, co-operation and involvement that went into to making this two-week period such a success. Some of the other initiatives we have been involved with locally in recent weeks include Camden’s Local Implementation Team (LIT) and Islington’s Best Value (BV) Review of Mental Health Services.
The Service User Advisory Group (UAG) has gone through a number of changes over recent months, and a sub-group of 10 members was formed to look in detail at the future of the UAG. When the UAG developed into an ‘open’ group, numbers increased rapidly and recent meetings have attracted more than 30 service users. This is great for increasing inclusion and numbers, but it means that the UAG has changed radically. A sub-group was set up and met three times to review the role and function of the UAG, and at the October UAG meeting the sub-group’s proposals were put forward and voted on. The UAG agreed to these changes: The current UAG would evolve into two new groups, a ‘Consultative Forum’ and an ‘Implementation Group’. The ‘UAG Consultative Forum’ will be meet six times a year and be open to all service users. People will not be paid for attending but there will be a buffer lunch and reasonable travel expenses will be covered on provision of a receipt. There will be Care Trust representation at each meeting and Directors / service managers will be invited dependant on the theme of the meeting. The meeting will usually be divided into two parts with visitors / guest speakers attending the first half of the meeting and the second half being open. The meeting will be chaired by service users on a rotating basis. The Chair of each meeting will be assisted by another service user. Other necessary tasks will be allocated. The ‘Implementation Group’ will be comprised of up to 20 service users (10 each from Camden and Islington) with arrangements for people to move on and new people to join. A Job Specification will be drawn up and members will be recruited in the usual Care Trust manner, although precedence will be give to current UAG members. The group will also have Care Trust representation. This Group will be paid at the usual rate and will meet monthly. Full induction and training will be provided for members of this Group whose primary task will be to work on all areas pertaining to the Care Trust’s Service User Involvement Strategy. Initially the Group will work on and agree a list of guidelines, principles, standards and code of conduct for service user members.
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