A Camden Crisis House has
been high on the CMHC wishlist for a number of years.
We were responsible for producing the Report on service-users’
views on this matter and have been in the forefront of the campaign for this
much needed facility. The money to run a Crisis
House - £0.5 million per year has been secured and is ring-fenced for this
purpose. The difficulty has
always been in finding a property and how the capital costs could be met.
That search continues and is a priority for the Local Implementation
Team which is responsible for delivering the National Service Framework.
It has also been recognised by the Care Trust as a necessary part of
the provision for a reduction in bed numbers. The campaign has been given
a boost by the recent Camden Scrutiny Committee on Suicide which is expected
to recommend that a Crisis House be part of the provision.
Whether this will be a lever to persuade Camden’s Housing
Department to provide a property is a different matter. WHAT
ABOUT THE
BILL? It seems unlikely now that
there will be a new Mental Health Act during this Parliamentary session or
indeed during this Parliament – they will be too busy worrying about the
next general election. Most people would consider
that this is a step forward since the draft bill was almost universally
condemned, although it did have some good points like the formalising of
assessments and the recognition of the value of advocacy.
The problem is that the pressure for changes, almost always about
greater powers to detain, is too-often driven by public opinion whipped up
by tabloid newspaper reporting after a high profile case.
FIRST PUBLIC MEETING The Patients' Forums for the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust held its first meeting in public on Thursday, 10th June, at Hampstead Town Hall. The Patients' Forum are required to hold regular public meetings. This meeting was short and was said to be primarily and to introduce the PF Members to the public. What was obvious was how few PF Members there were - only five present at the meeting - and the fact that there was a disproportion in the representation of Camden and Islington. Indeed, one of the pleas of the Forum was for more Members, well recognising that it would not be able to undertake any reasonable programme of work with the few people that there presently are. There is also a clear need for more representation from people who actually use the care Trust's services. The meeting concerned itself with a number of constitutional issues, but did not really establish what the public thought that it should be doing. This is clearly material for another time. What was recognised was the youth of the PFs - not only this one, but the whole idea - the poor resourcing, and the fact that it will take time for them to bed down and establish their role. CAMDEN COUNCIL'S MENTAL HEALTH LIAISON GROUP The Mental Health Liaison Group will hold its next meeting at the Crossfield Centre, 8 Fairhazel Gardens, NW6 from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm on Wednesday, 14th July. The principal items on the agenda will be Fair Access to Care Care Services (FACS) and the progress of the Best Value Review. The changes in FACS criteria have troubled a number of people with the possibility that services will no longer be available to some people who have been using them because they will now fall outside the band. So this is an important opportunity to hear more about the changes and how they may affect people. The Liaison Group presents an opportunity to discuss these matters and raise other issues of concern with local Councillors. CARE TRUST BOARD MEETINGS The next meeting of the Care Trust Board will be held on Thursday, 15 July 2004 from 5:00 pm in The Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital. Papers are available from the Board Secretary, Kate Wilkins, on 020 74450 8427 or e-mail: kate.wilkins@candi.nhs.uk Any questions for consideration should be notified by Tuesday, 13th July. MID-SUMMER BARBECUE Last year CMHC introduce a new item into its social events with a Mid-Summer Barbecue. This was an event which was obviously popular and enjoyed and so we have decided to do it again this year. From 6:00 pm on Friday, 6th August, CMHC will be holding a barbecue in the Courtyard at St Pancras Hospital where the usual fare for such events will be on offer. Although judging from last year, there is a rush for the food, so it may be wise to come early. The event has been organised at St Pancras Hospital to provide an opportunity for in-patients to come along and join in. CMHC will provide, food, soft drinks and music but it recognises that the weather is beyond its control, so it can only hope that it will be summer. SOUTH CAMDEN USER FORUM Doing something in South Camden has always been high on CMHC's list because we recognise that it as an area of high mental health need and deprivation. We have run the South Camden User Forum there for a number of years and it has often been a struggle with quite poor attendances. This year the attendances have dropped away badly and CMHC has decided that SCUF does not seem to be what South Camden service users want. We are cancelling the Summer meetings (July and August) and proposing to do something new and different in their place. Further information will be sent to Members as soon as we have managed to arrange some events for these two months. The SCUF meetings will be recommence on Tuesday, 28th September when Sarah Jane-Mills, Director of the North London Forensic Service will come along to talk about the work that is done by the Secure and Forensic Services. The meetings in October and November will go ahead as planned, but the success of any new events will be considered when the planning for meetings in 2005 is undertaken. The North Camden User Forum continues to be successful - although it too has blips of poor attendance - and there is no intention to alter the programme here in the foreseeable future.
Mental
Health and the law come into contact in many ways. Those that are best known are sadly the high-profile criminal
cases which fuel the tabloid press’s negative views and serve to misinform
the public. Richard
Charlton is solicitor in local practice that specialises in mental health
work, and has a particular interest in people in secure settings and prison.
He came along to talk to the June meeting of the North Camden User
Forum on the often vexed subjects of ‘What Lawyers Can Do & What
Lawyers Can’t Do’. As
with any discussion on the law, it was a meeting which had difficulties –
people expect the Law to offer remedies which it sometimes cannot or does
not provide. It was a
wide-ranging discussion from the right to a second opinion and challenging a
diagnosis to the role of the Court of Protection. What
was clear is that the law may be very good with dealing with clearcut facts
but it is not so good in dealing with issues like mental illness although
they are often brought together. The
subject of the July meeting of NCUF from 5.00 – 6.30 pm on Tuesday, 6th
July, is a group of people who often find themselves in conflict with the
law – those suffering from Personality Disorders.
This is a really complex area with some specialists arguing that
there are no such disorders and even if there are, that they are not capable
of treatment. It is also the
area where that most stigmatising of diagnoses ‘psychopathy’ has grown
up. It is the place where
mental illness and crime most often come together and the arguments about
‘mad or bad’ abound. Steve
Pilling, a Psychologist with the Camden & Islington Mental Health and
Social Care Trust and Director of CORE at University College London will
talk about the new Personality Disorder Service that is being set up in
collaboration with the voluntary sector.
There is plenty of room for innovation in this area where there is
little if any medical treatment and it will be possible to hear about the
different ways of dealing with these difficult problems.
SOUTH
CAMDEN
USER FORUM (SCUF) The
last South Camden User Forum for the Summer will be held from 5.00 – 6.30
pm on Tuesday, 29th June in The Conference Centre, West Wing, St
Pancras Hospital when Erville Millar once again invites people to ‘Ask the
CEO’. This is an opportunity
to ask the man who has final responsibility about issues to do with the Care
Trust.
NEWS
FROM THE
VOLUNTARY SECTOR Aidan
Moloney is the Co-ordinator of Camden & Islington Providers’ Forum (CIPF). We include 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 Again
and again the opportunities
available and, indeed, the need to strengthen partnership working with the
Voluntary Sector are being acknowledged
in various local forums. At the
recent special joint meeting of the Camden and Islington Local
Implementation Team(LIT)s, it was explained that the Mental Health
and Social Care Trust would experience huge financial pressures following
the opening of the Highgate Mental Health Centre.
In fact, a shortfall of £2.8million has been estimated on the
funding of the centre. In view
of this, a review currently being conducted by independent consultants, and
expected to report in July, will address all services provided by the Trust.
At the time of the meeting there was no clear agenda as to what the
preferred solution was. It was proposed that outsourcing some services to the
Voluntary Sector should be considered as part of the remedial package as the
voluntary sector historically provides services in a more cost-effective
way. It was agreed this would
be explored as part of the package. The
draft mental health strategy just published makes specific reference to
several voluntary sector organisations and the invaluable contribution these
make to suicide prevention locally. The
report makes various recommendations for partnership working and for
modelling services on some already provided within the voluntary sector.
The
major provider of mental health services in Camden is the Camden and
Islington Mental Health & Social Care Trust.
This applies equally to Islington.
It seems likely that any problems with these services are likely to
occur in both Boroughs and therefore it makes good sense for there to be a
consolidated service-user approach. To
this end the active service user groups in Camden and Islington – CBUG and
IBUG – have agreed to meet together and discuss these issues and look at
ways of approaching them which will be effective across the District. To
this end both groups met at ‘The Hoo’ on the afternoon of Wednesday, 16th
June. The Islington contingent was much larger then when the groups
had their initial joint meeting in the Summer of 2003, but both groups
suffer the same difficulties in recruiting service users to their number and
this must be an issue that they address if the local service-user movement
is to increase in strength and effectiveness.
Both groups expressed the need for some kind of co-ordination and
administration of their work and revisited the proposal for a Co-ordinator
working with both IBUG and CBUG. This
proposal which was originally developed for the first joint meeting
floundered because of lack of funding.
It seemed appropriate to raise the matter again with Commissioners
and to look at the possibilities of funding such a joint post, which
everyone felt would substantially benefit both the individual groups and
improve the opportunity for cross-borough work. While
both groups recognised the work that the Care Trust has done to improve user
involvement, there is concern that this is led in the wrong way – by the
Care Trust rather than by service users.
It lacks the independence which is necessary to give it real strength
and credibility. It also feels
hampered by the natural resistance of the Care Trust to criticism and for
the lack of accountability for some of the services.
The position for patients presenting with mental health problems in
the Accident & Emergency Department at University College London
Hospitals was pointed up. The
procedure requires patients to explain their problem in a non-confidential
setting and this is disturbing and degrading for service users, who often
feel that they receive poorer treatment.
This has been reported in monitoring undertaken by the South Camden
Crisis Team. Whilst deploring
the reported position, the meeting was impressed that the A&E Services
at UCLH are monitored in this way. There
is no similar service at The Whittington or Royal Free Hospitals.
It was suggested that perhaps the Care Trust should be asked to set
up a group which looks at A&E practices across the District. This would provide an opportunity to compare and contrast and
to work for better practice in all of the A& E Departments.
It was agreed that this should be taken forward to the Care Trust. This discussion almost inevitably led to the position with the Camden Crisis House. In the recent Best Value Review consultations, this issue came up and it has received significant interest from the Camden Council Scrutiny Panel looking at Suicide. The proposal has been around for some time but it has not come to fruition largely because of the problems associated with finding a property to serve as the Crisis House. The latest developments in engaging the public with the National Health Service is the Commission for Patient and Public Involvement in Health (CPPIH), which has set up the Patients’ Forum. There is one for each Trust, and this includes the Care Trust. The Care Trust’s Forum had held its first meeting in public the previous evening and it was clear that this new body was hardly likely to be effective if it continued with only the five members who had been present at that meeting. To make matters worse, only one of them represented Islington. There is a clear need to try and increase the number of Forum Members, but so far service users have shown little interest. There
was a way in which the two groups could become involved and this would be by
co-opting all the members to the user group section of the Patients’
Forum. This would provide some
advantages which the Care Trust’s present methods of involving service
users did not offer – the Patients’ Forum had some Statutory Powers and
would be in a position to bring matters not only to attention, but to
actually try and see that some action was taken.
This was broadly welcomed and agreement was given to taking this
forward with the Patients’ Forum. IBUG
and CBUG felt that they should meet together regularly and that such
meetings would provide useful opportunities to discuss developments and
cross-district issues and problems. They
also felt that should try and arrange some joint social events.
This came out of the invitation for IBUG Members to come along to the
Camden Mental Health Consortium Mid-Summer Barbecue which will be held in
the ground of St Pancras Hospital from 6.00 – 8.00 pm on Friday, 6th
August.
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 OPE, by
telephone on 020 7445 8554 or by e-mail robert.jones@candi.nhs.uk Information
regarding the breach of security of service user notes at the St Pancras
Hospital Site - June 2004 On
10 June 2004, an individual found a number of notes containing information
about service users on the St Pancras Hospital Site.
The Care Trust was
shocked to discover that these confidential files, relating to records from
some years ago, had been taken from the hospital and handed to a newspaper. The
individual concerned handed these notes to the Camden New Journal and
Evening Standard newspapers. The
Care Trust was notified regarding this breach of security on June 10 and
took steps to secure the site where the notes were found. Both
the Camden New Journal and the Evening Standard have returned all the notes
in question and have assured the Care Trust that they no longer have any
notes containing information about service users in their possession. On
being informed about this, swift and immediate action was taken to ensure
that all patient records are secured. The
Care Trust takes seriously any breach of security and is working with our
partner organisations to make sure that this will never happen again. The
Care Trust is embarrassed over this lapse in security and apologises to our
former patients for this breach in security. Main
points ·
The records found concern a relatively small number of service users.
All the documents found concerned patients who lived in the Camden area
only. ·
The documents found do not contain any clinical records but
information regarding Mental Health Tribunals dating back to 1992. However,
some of the records found do include personal information and details
regarding individual service users. ·
The Care Trust has secured all the records that have been found on
site and those returned to us from the Evening Standard and Camden New
Journal. Further
action to be taken The Care Trust takes this breach
of security extremely seriously and immediate steps and measures have been
taken to ensure that an incident such as this never occurs again. An
investigation was immediately instigated with one of our partner
organisations, Camden Primary Care Trust (PCT), which is also based at the
St Pancras site. The main aims
of the investigation are to look into how an incident such as this could
have occurred and what steps can be taken to make sure that this does not
happen in the future. As the
Care Trust want to instigate thorough processes as soon as possible to
ensure this incident does not occur again, the investigation panel will
report back to the Care Trust in early July on their findings and
recommendations If you
would like more information about this incident please contact Camden and
Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust on the following direct line
0207 530 3277 or e-mail: communication@candi.nhs.uk Hanley
Road Education & Employment Project The Education and
Employment Project at Hanley Road is running training courses in
Reception/Administrative work and Maintenance work. The training for both courses is over a period of 12 – 16
weeks out of which People gain the skills to become either a first class
Reception /Admin worker or develop basic skills in home/premises
maintenance. The training consists of group work and on-the-job training.
At the end of the training, trainees have the chance to apply for a
4-6 months paid work at the project and gain even more experience in the
job. For more information
contact Reshad, Vanesa or Clover on 0207-281-6221 Service
User Involvement Strategy Most people will be aware
that over the last two years the Care Trust has been developing a Service
User Involvement Strategy. The Strategy document is now complete and will
formally be launched later this year. In line with the launch, the Service
User Resource Team is conducting a survey to assess the impact of Service
User Involvement. The survey
will provide an opportunity for staff and more importantly, Service Users,
to have a say as in whether Service User Involvement has made a difference
to how a person is treated or ‘cared’ for.
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