WELCOME  RETURN

Councillor Penny Abraham has rejoined the CMHC Trustees as Camden Council’s representative.  This is a return to a position that Penny used to hold before she took up the role as Executive Member for Health and Social Services.  CMHC is delighted that she is rejoining us.

Penny has also taken up one of Camden Council’s Non-Executive Director Posts on the Care Trust Board.  This position fell vacant when Councillor John Rolfe resigned earlier in the year.

All this would seem to mean that despite Penny’s suggestion that she was returning to ‘a life’ that still a lot of time will be spent in the mental-health field.

CARE  TRUST  BOARD  MEETING

The Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust will be holding its Board Meeting from 5.30 pm on Thursday, 27^th May 2004 in the Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital.

The Board meeting is held in public and anyone wishing to attend may do so.

CAMDEN & ISLINGTON

MENTAL HEALTH and SOCIAL CARE TRUST PATIENTS’ FORUM

The first meeting of the Care Trust’s Patients’ Forum will be held at Hampstead Town Hall from 6.30 pm on Thursday, 10^th June.  All members of the public are welcome to attend.

The purpose of this meeting will be for the Patients’ Forum Members to introduce themselves and to gain some idea of the main issues that people would like them to address in the first year of their existence.

Since the Patients’ Forum is quite a new development, it needs the help of local service users in establishing its protocols and agendas and this meeting will provide a first opportunity for those who use the services to engage with this new body which is charged with representing their interests to the Care Trust.  Already, two members of this Patients’ Forum sit as Observers on the Care Trust Board.

NORTH  CAMDEN  USER  FORUM (NCUF)

Service Users have often requested that we find speakers at the Forums who can talk about specific conditions.  The May NCUF was in direct response to this and Dr Phil Harrison-Read, an old friend of ours, came along to talk about Schizophrenia.  There was a good attendance and a lively discussion followed.  Phil has generously offered to come and talk about other topics.

In May, we are also responding to the requests of service users when on Tuesday, 8^th June, Richard Charlton, a local solicitor, will be coming along to talk about ‘What Solicitors Can Do and What They Can’t Do’.  Whilst this will clearly have a direct relevance to mental-health issues, it will not be restricted entirely to them.

In July, Steve Pilling, will come along to talk about the new Personality Disorder Service which is being set up.  This is quite a contentious subject – the whole ‘personality disorder’ argument being on-going – and we expect there to be a lively discussion.

SOUTH  CAMDEN  USER  FORUM (SCUF)

The attendances at the South Camden User Forum over the past few months have led us to consider whether we should continue it.  However, the yearly Midge Clark talk on ‘Welfare Benefits’ always brings a lot of people and we had no worries about the May meeting.  It was disappointing then when at the start time there were only three people in the room.  Surely, it could not be that everyone felt that they were getting the benefits that they are entitled to.  This wasn’t the case and the numbers did increase to ten, but it was still disappointing and CMHC needs to consider whether these meetings should be continued.

Certainly, the June meeting will be held when on Tuesday, 29^th June at 5.00 pm in The St Pancras Conference Centre, West Wing, St Pancras Hospital, the Chief Executive of the Care Trust, Erville Millar, invites people to ‘Ask the CEO’.  This is an opportunity to put questions directly to the man who is ultimately responsible for the services provided and whilst he cannot answer questions about individual care and treatment or that take the form of a complaint against a named individual, he will answer questions about the business of the Care Trust and general issues.

If people have questions, it will make for fuller answers if they can let us have them in advance either by telephone – 020 7419 4196 or by e-mail: administrator@cmhc.org.uk

For most of this year CBUG has been involved in collecting the views of service users for Camden’s Best Value Review of Mental Health Day Provision.  The consultation has taken the form of meetings at Day Centres and Day Hospitals and a number of Open Meetings which anyone interested could attend.  The last of these Open Meetings was held at ‘The Hoo’ on Wednesday, 19^th May, when a fairly small but lively group was able to discuss the position so far and the themes that have come out most strongly in the consultation.

 

These themes are not new.  They have been put forward many times before when service users have been asked about the services they receive:

 

Opening times – mental ill-health does not observe the same 9.00 – 5.00, five day week that services tend to be open.  There is an expressed wish that services should mirror the needs of the service users and that there should be a wider extension of evening and weekend opening.  There are those who argue for 24-hour provision, but since that seems so far away from what we currently have and there are questions about how cost-effective it would be, it is probably not the time to be pursuing this.

 

The provision of the right amount and right quality of staff were issues in both day centres and day hospitals and this led into the question of ‘the cuts’ and the Care Trust’s budget position, with the freezing of some posts and non-recruitment to others.

 

Information or the lack of it has always been high on service users’ list of wants and needs.  Whilst it seems that there is plenty of information out there, the responses indicate that it is not in an accessible form for those who most need it.

 

This clearly opens up the question of communication, although this is much wider than how information is passed on.  It is not simply providing the information, for there seems no doubt that this is done and may be overdone.  It means ensuring that people know what information they want and need and how they can access it in a form that is intelligible and useful to them.  For some people it may be electronic, for some paper and for some word of mouth.  Communication needs to take into account not only how information is presented, but how it is transmitted to those who need it.  If it is not passed on in a way which is meaningful to those who receive it then the process has failed.  This sounds simple and self-evident, but it often does not happen.

 

Linked to this is co-ordination and continuity.  Often there seems to be a failure in linking things in the most efficient way and service-users find themselves not passing on from one service to the other with all their needs and requirements being known and some attempt to meet them.  This in part relates to the effectiveness of the Care Programme Approach, which often seems not to produce what it promises or not to be aware of the known difficulties.  Too many people are referred for psychological input when there is just not the provision of specialists to provide this is any reasonable period of time.  So the Day Service Provision is linked to the wider mental-health issues and the effectiveness of some fundamental processes.  There would seem to be some question of the reality of the title ‘care co-ordinator’.

 

However, most people liked the service that they used and thought that it was good.  This must be seen as a good sign.  However, it might be because that is the only service that they have used and have knowledge of.  This is part of the problem when asking people questions – they can only really tell you what they know about!

 

The Best Value Review continues and the findings of the consultation will be fed into the various Working Groups – Day Services, Day Hospitals, Community Mental Health Teams.  These will report to the Service Review Team who will present their findings and recommendations to Camden Council.  The process has some way to go yet.   The first report on the Day Services is expected to be ready by July of this year.

 

There have been problems with the consultation which has constantly run up against financial issues.  However, efforts have been made to take money out of peoples’ thoughts, but this is a very difficult thing to achieve.

 

The Best Value Review has been the first major exercise which CBUG has been involved in and there is a need to review its effectiveness in doing this work and see how this fits into the future role of CBUG.  Up to now it has been mostly engaged in exercises in monitoring services and these too come to conclusion at this point.  It is therefore opportune to look at the whole CBUG project and see how it has fitted the specification and what has been obtained by the people who have been involved in it and what the best model for the future should be.

 

To this end, CMHC is currently reviewing CBUG with its members and others and will be discussing the findings with the commissioners and other interested parties to see how it can be developed to best represent the user input into the monitoring, evaluation and development of services in the future.

 

There is also the need to develop and sustain a closer working relationship with the Islington Borough User Group (IBUG), recognising that the principal statutory provider is the same in both Boroughs and the issues are the same.

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, 2^nd floor, East Wing, St Pancras Hospital, London NW1 OPE, by telephone on 020 7445 8554 or by e-mail robert.jones@candi.nhs.uk

DAVID ‘ROCKY’ BENNETT SEMINARS

As previously reported in the Bugle, the Care Trust held a seminar recently, where members of staff, service users and carers came together to discuss the inquiry report into the Death of David ‘Rocky’ Bennett. David was a Black, Rastafarian patient who died whilst being held down by staff at the Norvic clinic in Norwich.  Another seminar will be taking place on the 25^th May 12 – 1.30 in the Huntley Centre at St Pancras Hospital all are welcome to attend.

RECOVERY CONFERENCE, 10^th May 2004

Over 200 people attended the conference, some sixty more than expected.  165 people had registered and some people were unable to make it at the last minute as expected but this was more that compensated for by those who turned up hoping for a place and were welcomed.  The keynote speaker was Piers Allot, a Fellow in Recovery from the National Institute for Mental Health, England. Piers’ presentation was engaging, entertaining and instructive. We had powerful presentations from colleagues within the Care Trust and also from Miles Rinaldi from the Government’s Social Exclusion Unit.  The event was an overwhelming success with some clear outcomes.  The Care Trust organised this conference, which was funded from Health Action Zone monies and involved key partners locally.  The aim was to reinforce with staff and partners the approach that the Care Trust takes when working with people affected by mental illness.  The recovery approach enables service users to foster aspirations based on hope and to be at the centre of decision making about their futures. 

ACTION AGAINST STIGMA and DISCRIMINATION

One workshop at the Recovery Conference led to and agreement to form an alliance to challenge stigma and discrimination against people with mental illness.  The alliance included service users, family members or carers, professionals with mental health services and professionals other areas.  The small core group will begin work on a series of steps to present positive messages about mental illness and to challenge discrimination and stigma.  One event already underway to pick up these issues is the Forum Theatre workshops involving service users of the Care Trust.  A cropped version of the work resulting from an intensive Forum Week will be presented on 28^th May by Cardboard Citizens (the facilitators of this work) and service users.  This will lead to a more publicised and developed round of Forum presentations between September and December 2004.  For more details contact Robert Jones.

NHS LIVE and CAPITAL VOLUNTEERING

The Department of Health is keen for NHS organisations to work with local stakeholders to identify learning on some local issues that may be useful to share with other areas at a national event that will take place on 7th July at ExCel in Docklands.  The project must be around service user choice and responsiveness.  Based on discussions and consultations so far the following projects will be the basis for local discussion:

"How best to manage the emergence of a Public and Patient Involvement Forum within a context of excellent service user involvement and pre-existing strong models of engagement" and "The positive impact of choice and leadership being offered to service users in the design and take up of a new employment based daytime provision of service - The Hanley Road Employment Project"

Stakeholder events will be set up to generating some learning about these.  More details will follow.

CAPITAL VOLUNTEERING

The London Development Centre for Mental Health and Community Service Volunteers (CSV) have secure £2.6 million and potentially another £4.6 M from the Treasury for Capital Volunteering.  The aim is for every service user on Care Programme Approach (CPA) to have a buddy or companion.  The project has wider aims: to reduce reliance of service-users on acute inpatient and secondary community based services; to create a new skills foundation in mental health volunteering; to use volunteering as a platform for service users to gain meaningful occupation and employment and to test simple media technologies to support the service-user/volunteer relationship.

Camden & Islington are leaders in this work.  Islington is testing the approach first and a more detailed toolkit of how to make the project become a reality will be produce based on this work.