We have an extremely busy and exciting month at the Rosewood involvement centre.
We have our weekly centre meeting which is held every Friday at from 1 until 3pm. Friday also starts with a garden and music group from 10 till 12. These groups help build confidence and aid the recovery pathway. We serve a small buffet from around 12:15, this is great for catching up and meeting new people. At the centre meeting guests are invited to discuss their roles within the trust and any offers they can make for us to get more involved, followed by debate, and questions from service users and carers. The speakers for April are as follows:
10th April we have some more from New Leaf Smoking- this will be a presentation on tools to help people quit smoking. This links to the Trust’s healthier lifestyles activity and should be an interesting presentation. Our second guest speaker on 10th April is Helen Watkinson, the newly appointed modern matron for mental health and learning disabilities at Rampton Hospital. In the past we have worked with the modern matron from these directorates, they have helped us work with patients on recovery and interviewing. We were also able to join the patient groups and support them whenever possible. We are keen to continue our link with Helen and look forward to her presentation this will be about how she hopes to include service users and carers from Involvement and how we work with patients at Rampton.
17th April our guest is Tracey Rowe, also from Rampton. She is the recovery lead across the whole hospital. She will be presenting what is happening at Rampton relating to recovery and hopefully will bring an invitation for our service users and carers to become involved in any activities relevant to us here at Rosewood.
24th April the new general manager for local services, Adele Bryan, will be attending the centre. Adele was the modern matron we used to work with at Rampton, forming a partnership which was ground-breaking and very successful. We are looking forward very much to working with her in local services and await the opportunities that she will undoubtedly bring. The same day we have the new ward manager from the Lucy Wade Ward at Millbrook, Joe Fox. We were delighted to find out that Joe had been promoted to ward manager since we have worked with him in the past on the Patient Feedback Challenge. Joe was instrumental in making the project at Millbrook successful.
The other core day at Rosewood is Monday when we run our communications, feedback, and media group. This group normally meets from 10 until 3pm. On 27th April it will be slightly different because in the morning we are delivering core training for the service users and volunteers. This is about confidentiality and safeguarding. This kind of learning develops confidence and helps service users and carers to engage with involvement opportunities. With an understanding of safeguarding and confidentiality our volunteers can feel confident when representing Involvement.
We will be attending the Executive Leadership Council meeting on 21st April. The Executive Leadership Council is a monthly meeting of all the top directors and managers in the trust. It is just great to see that service users and carers are invited to attend such an important meeting. We will also be attending the new Trust website launch on 22nd April.
We are hoping to go to Millbrook on 8th April to gain feedback from patients on what a ward round is like for them. This is one of the projects that both Rosewood and the Duncan Macmillan House Involvement centres are working on. Rosewood will be covering Millbrook hospital and also Bassetlaw hospital (ward B2). The idea of this work is to gain feedback from patients, carers and staff to see if ward rounds can be improved.
We will be starting a new piece of work in April for the forensic division linking in to a project called Restrictive Practices. This looks like being a large piece of work for the forensic division and it is important that service users and carers are involved in this. This work will be looking at, for example, isolation, seclusion and blanket restrictions. We will be reviewing the policy and hoping to improve things for patients and for staff.
The Community of Interest for carers will be held North of the county this month at Bassetlaw hospital on 9 April. This group is a great way for carers to be part of helping produce the carers’ strategy for the Trust. The head of Involvement normally attends this meeting and it is of great interest for carers to hear the plans and development opportunities across the whole Trust.
Some of our volunteers at Rosewood have become Care Programme Approach (CPA) champions. They spent several months learning presentation skills with the CPA office staff. This enabled them to confidently present their lived experience of CPA. On 7th April there is an opportunity for these volunteers to be videoed and make a film about any questions likely to be asked about CPA.
When anyone becomes Involved with Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, a whole new window of self esteem, value and importance is opened. I was enlightened and I have seen it happen to many others. I can introduce to some lovely people who were in a very poor mental state when walking through those doors. One of them was me. Many are now outgoing people and some have jobs. Soon you become part of a fellowship, of people and staff who want to do good things and to achieve a better lifestyle for those with mental health problems. We all need part of a gang but this is not like NG3 or NG6. We stopped attacking volunteers from Rosewood after the first couple of exchanges. They were bigger anyway but I hasten to add not the ladies, who are attractive.
As part of this gang, suddenly you have an importance. There is a large part that you can play in giving your skills and talents into improving the work and decisions of the Trust and hence better treatment for their patients. I always feel patient is a better word than service user. Everyone is a patient at sometime, even the Queen, so the word patient is egalitarian whereas who would call the Queen a Service user? The Tower would beckon the first to suggest that. So I always try to call myself a patient which in some ways is strange as I am not patient.
You should see me on a bus, raging with those who can’t find their bus passes, pay the fares in two pence pieces or ten pound notes. I want to do things in a hurry and the Trust is the right place for that. Please don’t get into discussions about the right word to use for ‘patient’. It goes on for ever. I think it will reach Parliament or the Law Courts eventually.
You are given the opportunity to play a role in the workings of a large organisation. Soon on speaking terms with important leaders. You will be listened to, because you are a service user in their terms and therefore useful. It is rare for most of the staff and particularly psychiatrists. psychologists and nurses to see a patient who is well. You can speak of your experiences and make a change. Most of the staff welcome information, even complaints as does the Trust. This is very sensible as this is the way that we learn. If the Trust are not told what they are doing wrong how can they learn to do it better. They are very good but no one not even I are perfect (hard to believe but true), one of my faults is too much modesty. So everyone can improve in some way.
So please get Involved. You will be wanted, useful, valued and can help others. Those along with wanting to be liked are all the things that we desire. If you can also improve your health you will have everything. The Trust did that for me and many others. Happy Involvement. Michael.