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Dear Carers,
Thank you to those that attended our Food and Feedback event on September 16th . At Carers in Mind we are always looking for ways to improve and develop the service and your feedback is a key part in this process.
We have gathered your feedback and we are keen to share it with you all. For this event the focus was on reviewing our social outings/activities, exploring ways to better measure outcomes from the service and discussing local service issues faced by carers.
1) Service Review: Social Outings/Activities
What you said
We discussed the aims of the trips:
- To offer respite for carers; it’s a chance to focus on carer wellbeing
- To combat isolation and loneliness
- To provide peer support
The carers present believed the trips met all the outlined aims. They said it “was nice to have a change” and it helped them “switch off”. Another carer said “Since coming to Carers in Mind, I’m in a much better place as a carer. I’m not angry or agitated and I know where to go.” In terms of communication, carers said it was “perfect” and “very good, you can’t do any more”.
We all recognised the value of trips and the disappointment when they needed to be cancelled due to low attendance. After much discussion, there didn’t seem to be any obvious explanation for the low attendance.
What we did
We agreed to develop a survey to get a wider perspective on how we can develop this service moving forward. The team are currently developing this and it will be sent in January 2020. In the meantime, social activities will continue to be run as normal.
2) Measuring Service Outcomes (quantifying the impact of Carers in Mind on carers)
What you said
We reviewed the Richmond Carers Centre Survey which was sent out over the summer and we discussed editing this survey to be more RB Mind focused. The carers present had few comments to add on the survey; they suggested adding statements to determine whether carers felt informed about what services were available, whether they knew who to contact during a mental health crisis and what knowledge they had around different mental health pathways. Another suggestion was to add a text box at the end labelled “Is there anything else we could do?” or to include a section on ‘areas of improvement’.
What we did
The team are currently developing a survey based on the above suggestions which will be used as a method of collecting feedback on the service. The survey will be ready for use by January 2020.
3) Issues with local services
What you said
These were the main issues that came out of this discussion:
- Recovery & Support Team – lack of communication and difficulty getting through to professionals, issues with actions agreed in meetings being followed through, lack of care coordinators
- High staff turnover and lack of staff in general
- Lack of care plans
- Lack of contactable community psychiatric nurse
- Poor transition between hospital and discharge into community care
- Lack of psychiatrists and difficulty getting hold of them
- The feeling of being “left” to care for the cared for
- Lack of local appropriate mental health respite
- Difficulty with direct payments due to recent changes regarding payment approvals
- SwLstG Crisis line – sometimes no one answers
- Psychiatrists not listening to carers or taking what cared fors say at face value
- ‘Discharge to street’ - cared fors being discharged from A&E in the early hours and carer not being informed
What we did
The charity RUILS coordinated questions from Service Users to Richmond and Twickenham prospective parliamentary candidates on 12th December (https://www.richmond.gov.uk/general_election_2019 ) . We submitted questions based on the above issues to be delivered on behalf of RB Mind.
We are speaking with Mike Derry from Richmond Healthwatch to highlight the matters you’ve raised and we will be discussing ways in which these can be communicated and tackled.
We are also set to raise these issues at the next Triangle of Care meeting.
Having a Service Lead back in place will ensure we have more of a presence in forums and meetings where these problems can be vocalised and acted on. Until then, the team are discussing other ways in which they can raise these concerns.
We will continue to keep you all updated on the progress of the issues above. Thank you again to those that continuously give us feedback and help our service grow.
We look forward to the next Food and Feedback event:
When: Friday January 17th 2020
Time: 1-3pm
Location: 32 Hampton Road, Twickenham, TW2 5QB.
The agenda for this event will be sent 2 weeks prior to the above date. For suggestions on what to include please contact Kat Moore on kat.moore@rbmind.org
Best wishes,
The Carers Team
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