MACA CONFERENCE

On the 8 and 9 September MACA is holding a 2-day conference at Aston University in Birmingham entitled ‘Listen, Hear! – Realising the Hopes of Service Users and their Carers’.  Further details and booking forms are available from MACA on 020 7061 3400

TAVISTOCK & PORTMAN NHS TRUST

The Annual Public Meeting of the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust will be held from 6.00 pm on Monday, 13^th September at The Tavistock Centre, 120 Belsize Lane, NW3.  The speaker at this year’s event will be Professor Raj Persaud, psychiatrist and presenter of the radio 4 programme ‘All in the Mind’.

CARE TRUST

The next Board Meeting of the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust will be held from 2.00 – 5.00 pm on Thursday, 23^rd  September at The London Voluntary Resource Centre, 356 Holloway Road, London N7

This will be followed at 6.00 pm by the Care Trust’s Annual Public Meeting which will have Lord Adebowale from Turning Point as its keynote speaker. 

At 5.15 pm Simon Rammage will talk about his sponsored walk up Kilimjaro, show stunning photographs of the East African mountain and present a cheque to Mind in Camden.

The Annual Public Meeting provides one of the few opportunities when direct questions may be put to the Care Trust Board.  It should not prove to be a missed chance of holding them to account.

CMHC  ANNUAL  GENERAL  MEETING

All the preparations have now been made for this year’s Annual General meeting which will be held in The Sir William Wells Atrium at The Royal Free Hospital from 6.00 pm on Tuesday, 21^st September.  The Nomination Forms for the Honorary Officers and the Management Committee have been sent out and should be returned before 5.00 pm on Tuesday, 7^th September.  All Nominees, Proposers and Seconders must be members of Camden Mental Health Consortium on Tuesday, 24^th August.

The format of the meeting will be that set out in the Agenda and attempts will be made to make it as interactive as possible so that all members may have their say and be heard.  The formal proceedings will be followed by a presentation on ‘Social Inclusion and Mental Health’ from Miles Rinaldi who has been working with the Social Inclusion Unit at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

There will be the usual prizes of Sainsbury Gift Vouchers to be won by CMHC Members.  The first prize will be £25 vouchers, the second £20, the third £15 and the fourth £10.

After the meeting has been closed there will be a buffet and refreshments.

CMHC  ANNUAL  SERVICE  USERS’  CONFERENCE

CMHC is funded to host an Annual Service Users’ Conference in November of each year.  In 2002 the topic was ‘Surviving a Crisis’ and in 2003 ‘Mental Health Advocacy’. 

Since CMHC has been very involved through its CBUG arm in collecting service user views for the Camden Best Value Review of Mental Health Day Provision, it seemed appropriate to try and see how that had resolved itself into the recommendations and the decisions by Camden Council and what the future shape of day provision might be.  From 1.30 pm on Wednesday, 24^th November at Hampstead Town Hall, the Annual Conference will hear about ‘Implementing the Best Value Review’.

Geethika Jayatilaka. Camden’s Executive Member for Health and Social Services has promised to come along and talk about the decisions that have been made and give some explanation of the thinking behind them and detail the plan for making the changes – the where, the when and the how of the process.  This should provide an opportunity not only to look at the decisions but also at the process and gain some view of how democratic it has been and how much notice has been given to the views of service users.

The august meeting of the North Camden User Forum presented two different aspects of life. The first was a presentation of the Smoking Cessation Service within the Primary Care Trust. It was more interesting than usual for those presenting, since almost none of those listening smoked. However,  it did come across that this is an important and usual service which offers people the opportunity to give up that most disapproved of social activities.

The importance of food cannot be over-rated and for people in hospital it takes on an ever greater significance, sometimes because they cannot eat. Dave Weaver is the Catering Manager at St Pancras Hospital and it is clear that he is passionate about the food that his department prepares - both the quality and quantities. He says that there have been lots of changes recently to try and provide it when patients want it rather than to simply serve it at the regular times. It is good news that the Care Trust is interested in the further involvement of service users in this area.

The current in-patient wards at The Royal Free leave much to be desired. The news that the new dedicated facility is to be opened as part of the Nurses' Tower development on the site of the former Felix Brown Day Hospital is very welcome, even though it will have eight fewer beds than currently available in Alice, Nicol and Helen Boyle wards. The building work is now well under way and George Platts, Assistant Director of Mental Health for Camden, will be coming to the NCUF Meeting from 5:00 - 6:30 pm on Tuesday, 7 September in Room 20 in the Psychotherapy Corridor (near Psychiatry Out-Patients) to talk about the development and how service users can be involved in the interior design of the unit.

The October meeting of NCUF will present another opportunity to 'Ask the CEO'. Erville Millar, Chief Executive of  Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust will come along to answer questions.

The poor attendance at recent meetings of the South Camden User Forum caused us to cancel the meetings for July and August. The meetings will be restarted in September when from 5:00 - 6:30 pm on Tuesday, 28th September in the St Pancras Conference Centre the topic will be 'Secure & Forensic Services'. On Tuesday, 26th October, the PALS Officers will come to talk about their work and the last meeting of this year will be on Tuesday, 30th November when Dr Diana Rose from the Service User Research Unit at The Institute of Psychiatry will talk about 'Users Experience of ECT'.

The poor attendance at the SCUF Meetings led CMHC to question whether these were effective and to consider other possibilities.  So as we go to press this month the first of a series of 'Stress Busting' sessions will be held.  There will be further sessions each month culminating with  the 'Surviving Christmas' meeting on Tuesday, 7th December at The Royal Free Hospital.

CMHC will be taking stock of the North and South Camden User Forums and seeking the views of people on what form they should take for the future, but there is every intention to continue these meetings into the coming year.

Camden & Islington Fortnight Focus

CBUG and IBUG are the sister organisations in Camden and Islington which are set up to take forward user involvement in the adult mental health services across the District and, in particular, work with the largest provider of mental-health services locally, Camden and Islington Mental Health Social Care Trust.  They met together in July to look at joint projects and the August meeting was also combined and concerned itself with the Strategic Review of the Care Trust Resources and Estates carried out by the Management Consultants, Finnamores.

Wendy Wallace, Director of Mental Health for Islington came along to present the Finnamore proposals to CBUG/IBUG and interested others.  It was disappointing that the turnout was quite small and it is to be hoped that this in no way reflects people’s view that this is unimportant.  If there is a major reconfiguration of the Care Trust’s activities then this is likely to affect the provision of mental health services in Camden and Islington for some years to come.  The major proposal is that the Care Trust reconsider how it provides in-patient services:

a two-site possibility with in-patient wards at The Highgate Mental Health Centre and on the St Pancras Site;

a three-site possibility using The Highgate and St Pancras sites with either St Luke’s or The Royal Free Hospital

and a four site option which mostly means leaving things as they are.  There are also proposals about rationalising the way that the Care Trust delivers its community services.  Currently there are a large number of sites.  There are ways of reducing the number of sites and consolidating the services.

The reason for the review is the Care Trust’s difficult financial position where it seems always to be struggling to keep up and certainly is constantly talking about over-spending, particularly in Adult Mental Health in North Camden.  This may be linked to the cost of the Service Level Agreement with The Royal Free Hospital – the contract by which ancillary services are purchased from the RFH.  The Finnamore Report says of it: The SLA costs per bed at the Royal Free are the highest in the Care Trust………… The Royal Free SLA includes overheads and other areas which do not appear to relate to the Care Trust’s use of the site and which are not recharged by other organisations in similar situations.  From this, it would appear that the RFH is overcharging the Care Trust for the services it provides and thus taking away money from the provision of mental health service.  This is a serious issue and needs to be given particular consideration when the Nurses’ Tower development with the intended provision of three new mental-health wards is under way and

due for completion in 2005.  Any proposal to remove services from the RFH needs to bear this in mind.  There is also the long-term promise of ‘providing local services for local people’.  This is a question which also arises if there is to be a rationalisation of community sites – will the services then be provided within the community which they serve?

There are another two strands which also have to be woven into this discussion.  What proposals will come out of the current Best Value Review of Mental Health Day Provision in Camden and how will these affect the nature of services?  What will the new Mental Health Bill contain and how will this affect the need for in-patient beds?  In terms of the Best Value Review, there are bound to be moves in line with the recent Social Inclusion Report to try and bring mental health away from the margins and back into the mainstream.  Mental ill-health needs to be regarded as a condition from which most people recover and return to normal life and work and not as a continuing theme which affects and damages their whole lives.

At its July meeting, CBUG/IBUG agreed to a proposal that they should be co-opted to the CandI Patients’ Forum as its User Reference Group.  This action was taken by the Forum at its July meeting and there is now a need to see how this can be developed to give the best effect.

At that same CBUG/IBUG meeting, the proposal to employ someone in a Service User Involvement Post across the District was reconsidered and approved and that proposal which would have a worker with responsibilities to IBUG to CBUG and across the District has gone to the local Commissioners for consideration.

As part of its work programme for the coming year, CBUG had decided to try and monitor the Camden Assertive Outreach Service.  This is quite a small service and it was considered that a better and more comparative picture would be obtained if it was also possible to measure the Islington Assertive Outreach Service too.  Talks were held and it has been agreed that IBUG should monitor the Islington AOT.  This is the first time that the groups have been involved in a joint project of this type.

In the coming year CBUG will also continue to monitor the Advocacy Service at The Royal Free Hospital, but using a programme that should provide more information where people who have not received advocacy will also be interviewed so that a more complete picture of how advocacy helps should become available.  The group would also like to extend this monitoring to the other advocacy projects at St Luke’s Hospital and at St Pancras Hospital.