Monthly Newsletter of Camden Mental Health Consortium |
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ISSUE 90 |
February 2005 |
The name for the new mental-health unit being built on the site of Felix Brown Day Hospital site at The Royal Free Hospital provides some interesting opportunities for thought and innovation. It is to be hoped that it will be called something less pedestrian than the Hampstead Mental Health Unit in keeping with the idea used for the brand new hospital replacing the old Waterlow Unit at The Whittington Hospital. There are those who will feel some warmth for the current longstanding names – Alice and Nicol. There are others whose experience of these is all bad. There is a move to keep the name Helen Boyle for the women-only ward. Perhaps nostalgia will call for a new Six Oaks or some of the names from the Friern Barnet Hospital. There is another group which feels that a new unit should have a new name and should reflect the new model of ‘recovery’ so that what is practised on the wards will be reflected in the names. It may be difficult to please both groups. Then there is the question of whether there should be any reference at all to what the unit is – one where mental illness is treated. One group feels that it is better to let this be properly known to attempt to make society realise the nature and extent of the problems. Another argues that to name it in such a way will stigmatise both the unit its staff and patients and make life there even more difficult than it need be. Perhaps the name will in some way enhance the practise and the treatment of those who find themselves there. In that case it would be a good idea to have a name which reflected that – Hope maybe? People have been invited to submit their ideas for names and a decision will soon be made by a small group charged with this task. They will need to think carefully and try and choose names which will give the right feel to the place. In any case the new unit is likely to be opened before the Autumn of this year and although it will be known by the name it is given, it will be better know by service users for the treatment ethos that it represents. Clearly this should be one that gets people well in the shortest time and with the best experience. Excellence is judged by the standard of service not by name; but the name can come to represent that standard.
WELCOME CMHC would like to welcome Rebecca Harrington who is to become Assistant Director for Strategy and Commissioning for Camden Social Services. Rebecca is no stranger to Camden. She worked for the Camden & Islington Health Authority and then joined Islington PCT. It will be good to have her skills on this side of the Holloway Road. Although Rebecca will not be solely concerned with mental health, it is to be hoped that she will bring her special expertise to this area.
CARE TRUST BOARD MEETING The next meeting of the Board of the Camden & Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust will be held in the Conference Centre at St Pancras Hospital from 5.00 pm on Thursday, 10th March. Board meetings are open to the public and papers are available from the Board Secretary, Kate Wilkins, who can be contacted by telephone on 020 7445 8427 or by e-mail: kate.wilkins@candi.nhs.uk. There is no right for the public to speak at Board Meetings, but the Board will take written questions submitted in advance. Questions should be submitted to Kate Wilkins by 5.00 pm on Tuesday, 8th March. The Trust Board has observers from the Patient & Public Involvement Forum, Ciaran Farrell from Camden and Peter Jones from Islington. Anyone with a point to raise could contact these representatives to bring it to the Board.
SMUG CMHC joined together with two users of the Substance Misuse Service to set up a new group for people who have problems in that area. That group which has adopted the title Substance Management User Group (SMUG) has been going since November 2004 and has made great strides forward already meeting all its targets. SMUG is a District group spanning both Camden and Islington and whilst it works with the services provided by the Care Trust, it is keen to establish its independence and it recognises that its membership should come from people who use and do not use services. This is a new area for CMHC and we are very proud of the achievements that have been made in such a short period and offer our congratulations to Shirley Norton and Richard Scott who co-ordinate the group for their achievements with SMUG and on their forthcoming marriage.
The idea of service users having some input into the research that is gong on has been around for some time, but the February North Camden User Forum saw this crystallised into a new project – the Service User research Forum (SURF). The idea is that researchers should meet with a group of interested users of the mental-health services on a regular basis to discuss the research that is being carried out, propose new research and ideas for research from both the researchers and the service users. There would be a number of obvious benefits arising from this – there would be more information about the research that is actually being carried out and that is being proposed; there would be opportunities for users to propose research projects and perhaps be involved in them; there would be a better understanding of the nature of research and the way that it is funded and carried out. The next step will be to assemble the group of interested service users and to set up the collaborative meetings. There is every hope that this will be done and done well because it is supported by the researchers and is being co-ordinated through CMHC by one of them, Dr Helen Killaspy who is a Consultant Psychiatrist in Islington and a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mental Health Sciences at The Royal Free Campus of University College London. There is no doubt that hospitals are becoming more dangerous places. There are an increasing number of attacks on patients and a worrying increase in the use of weapons in these attacks. The situation is one where ‘something needs to be done’. The real question is what can be done that has the least effect on the good and efficient running of the wards and is least intrusive on the lives of those who occupy them. The same arguments apply in a more strengthened form to illicit drugs. The truth is that illicit drugs are readily available and this is as much true in closed environments as in open ones. There is a need to protect the vulnerable. Hospital patients must fall into this category. What can be done? The next meeting of the North Camden User Forum from 5.00 – 6.30 pm on Tuesday, 1st March in Room 20 in the Psychotherapy Corridor on Level 2 at The Royal Free Hospital will address the question of ‘What Do We Do About Illicit Drugs and Dangerous Weapons In Our Hospitals?’. Andy Smith who is the Security Consultant to the Care Trust and a former Superintendent in the Metropolitan Police will come along to discuss with people the problem and some possible solutions – some more restrictive than others! This is a real opportunity for service users to have an input into this important current debate.
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, St. James’s House, 15 – 20 Bruges Place, Baynes Street, London, NW1 0TF; by ‘phone on 020 7428 5999, and by e-mail at cipf.office@virgin.net Following our Annual General Meeting, CIPF Directors have recently nominated Andreas Ginkell and Ann Byrne to succeed Gareth Pountain and Tulloch Kempe as Chair and Vice-chair respectively. Gareth and Tulloch held their respective positions since CIPF was set up in 2001, following the amalgamation of Islington Mental Health Consortium and the Camden Voluntary Sector Mental Health Partnership. Under their guidance CIPF successfully developed its role as the umbrella organisation for Camden & Islington voluntary sector mental health services providers. Andreas Ginkell is committed to continuing this successful work and to ensure that voluntary sector providers meet the diverse needs of mental health service users through services firmly based on user involvement. Active partnership working and consultation with CMHC and CBUG are key factors in achieving this aim. I am pleased to have relocated office to my new base at St. James’s House. Access to improved I.T. facilities and administrative support here will greatly ease the work of the service. It is also good to have such a central location convenient to both Boroughs. One of the immediate benefits of this is that CIPF is able to provide an initial central contact point for queries related to the capital Volunteering project in Camden. Tying in well with the inter-sector work that is currently in progress to develop the BME Mental Health Strategy for Camden and Islington, interim Guidance has now been published by the Department of Health that provides a framework for local health and social care systems to introduce Community Development Workers (CDWs) for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) Communities into the mental health workforce. This is in accordance with the Department’s target to employ 500 CDWs nationally by December 2006. It is apparent from the guidance that these posts will be ideally suited to being based within the voluntary and community sector, which will afford them enhanced access to the target client group. From this base, it will be essential for the CDWs to build up strong working relationships with providers in all sectors working particularly to forge close links with the voluntary sector and the Mental Health and Social Care Trust.
Poor attendances at the South Camden User Forum have been troubling CMHC for some time. It has always recognised that it has been more difficult to engage service users in the South of the Borough and a number of explanations for this have been offered, including the more varied nature of the client group many of whom are homeless. Last year the attendances became so poor that CMHC was obliged to cancel some meetings. The Stress Busters project made another attempt at engaging people in a different way but it would not claim to have been hugely successful.
With these points in mind the February meeting of SCUF met to try and find some answers to the question ‘What Do We Do About User Involvement in South Camden?’ The meeting was not well attended and the fact that there were very few people from South Camden at it tended to emphasise the problem. There was discussion about the form and style of the SCUF meetings and it was quickly decided that the current format was not likely to suddenly transform into one that brought people to it, although it was accepted that where meetings were topic based then the topic did make a difference. This was seen by the number of people who attended when Dr Diana Rose presented her work on ‘Users’ Experiences of ECT’ in November. Some people thought that it was the venue that was problematic and that attendance had been better when the meetings were held in the Jules Thorn Day Unit.
Penny Abraham knows a great deal about South Camden since she is a Camden Councillor for Bloomsbury and she adopted the view that CMHC needs to do something in South Camden for the large number of people with mental-health problems who live in that area and that if we find that they don’t come to the meetings that we organise then we must go to them and find out what they would like us to be doing. This was an idea which was quickly accepted by those present and is based on the practise of the now defunct Locality Management Advisory Groups (LMAGs). A small group was formed which will co-ordinate this programme and it will take the opportunity of visiting the centre before the meeting to hear what topics are important for the people who use it and adopt them as the basis for the meeting.
There will be a programme of meetings at different venues. It was decided that the first venue for one of the new-style SCUFs should be Jules Thorn Day Unit and that the visit there would be held on a date to be arranged in March. Even though SCUF s will be arranged at specific venues they will be open to anyone who wants to attend particularly if they come from South Camden.
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 2nd National Service User Survey Have you or somebody you know been sent a questionnaire asking about your views about mental health services? If yes, then Camden and Islington Mental Health and Social Care Trust would like to hear from you. As part of the national service user survey, 850 randomly selected service users have been sent a questionnaire that asks for their views on the mental health services that they have received. The surveys are sent via an independent external company and the Care Trust does not get to see individual or detailed responses. Accompanying the survey will be a high street gift voucher. You must post your survey by the 15th March for your views to be included. For information, support in filling out your questionnaire or language translation contact the survey helpline on FREEPHONE 0800 0564536 Following last year’s survey, the Care Trust published an action plan that detailed a range of work that was to be taken in order to address the issues that the survey raised along with this action plan the Care Trust has produced a user survey update. Copies of the action plan or survey update can be obtained by ringing Robert Jones on 020 7445 8554 YOUR VIEWS ARE IMPORTANT FOR THE CARE TRUST. FILL OUT THE SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE AND POST IT BACK BEFORE 15th MARCH 2005.
Service User Consultative Forum The next Service User Consultation Forum is on Friday, 18th March 1pm – 4pm, Groves Lounge at St Pancras Hospital. All service users are welcome. The Consultation Forum meets six times a year and provides an opportunity for people who have used mental health services to talk directly to directors and senior managers of the Care Trust. For more information contact Robert Jones.
COUNT ME IN ‘Count me in’ is the title given to the government’s first ever, ethnicity Census of mental health services. The Mental Heath Act Commission will be conducting a survey of all service users who are in-patients on one particular day of the year. Census day this year is to be the 31st March 2005 on this day details relating to a persons ethnicity, race, language, religion along with information about their illness, whether they have been held on section and certain aspects of their treatment will be recorded. The survey is part of the government’s plans for tackling discrimination in mental health services. The information gained will help improve services for users experiencing mental illness and distress, and their relatives and carers from Black and minority ethnic communities.
Service Users Guide to Mental Health Act Assessments A half day training course for service users is being held at Hanley Road Resource Centre in Islington on the 24th February 2005. The course is designed for people who want to find out more about the mental health act and code of practice, and what service users should expect from mental health assessments. If you are interested in attending please call the Care Trust Training Unit on 020 8219 1882.
Looking for Black Writers The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health is looking for creative writers who have experienced mental health services. They want to publish articles, creative writing or poetry from Black service users in their new quarterly newsletter. The deadline for submission of work for the summer edition of the newsletter is the 28th February 2005. You can post your article direct to the Sainsbury centre, 134-138 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1LB or ring Polly Tidyman on 020 7827 8304 for more information.
Service User Involvement within the Care Trust Would you like to become actively involved in helping the Care Trust to improve services? If so, Ros Lettman, the Service User Involvement Co-ordinator, would like to hear from you. Ros is building up a service user involvement bank, people who have used mental health services and who are now available to attend and influence committees, become involved in interviewing and training staff or monitoring the services that are provided. For service users who have an interest in interviewing new staff and have not done this before the Care Trust will be providing Recruitment and Selection training on the 25th February 2005. For more details contact Ros on 020-7530-3340
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