Thursday, October 14, 2010

Live It Well final strategy published

October 10th, World Mental Health Day, saw the publication of the final Live It Well strategy for improving the mental health and wellbeing of people in Kent and Medway. The draft strategy was circulated earlier this year, and changes were made as a result of feedback received.

Read the final Live It Well strategy

Read about the consultation exercise

Thursday, September 30, 2010

GP commissioning

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has written to GPs to clarify the implications for GP commissioning in the July white paper on health.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

What do we in Kent think about the planned changes to the NHS?

In their recent white paper, Liberating the NHS, the Government have set out their plans for improving the NHS. They are interested to hear from members of the public about how these plans should be carried out.

The Kent LINk (Local Involvement Network) has produced this summary of the biggest changes and would like to hear what you think about them. You can give your views by answering the questions in this online survey.

The Kent LINk will then put all the views together and give a combined response to the Department of Health on behalf of the people of Kent.

Or, if you prefer, you can go to the Department of Health website to see the full white paper and give your feedback directly. The deadline for giving your feedback to Kent LINk is Wednesday 22nd September.

The Care Quality Commission publishes the views of 17,000 community mental health service users

This substantial survey has recently been published, and a short extract from the press release is shown below. Read the full report here, or the entire press release here.

Some people who use community mental health services in England are still not getting the care and support that fully meets their needs, according to a survey published by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) today (Tuesday 14 September).

The CQC survey captures the views of more than 17,000 people aged 16 and over who had contact with specialist community mental health services between July and September last year. They had been referred to a psychiatric outpatient clinic, local community mental health team or other community-based service. The survey covered 66 NHS trusts.

People were generally very positive about the health and social care workers they had seen most recently for their mental health condition. The vast majority said workers listened carefully to them, gave them enough time for discussion and took their views into account. Also, most people said they were treated with respect and dignity and had trust and confidence in their health or social care worker.

But many reported that they had not been involved as much as they would have liked in some aspects of their care. Significant numbers of people said they would have liked more explanation of, or more say in, their treatment and support, such as their medication or care planning. Nearly half of those surveyed did not know who to contact in a crisis outside normal office hours. Of those who said they wanted some form of talking therapy, 73% had received it but 27% had not.

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Chaucer Homecare AGN

Chaucer Homecare announce their Annual General meeting, to take place at 7pm on Monday October 4th at

Northgate Ward Community Centre
Military Road
Canterbury
CT1 1YX

All are welcome, and light refreshments are available.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

CIH Level 3 in Supporting Homeless Persons Certificate

Dear Colleague

You may be interested to know that Porchlight is running another “Engage to Change” course, starting in October 2010.

Porchlight was the first centre in the country to be accredited to deliver this course, which leads to the “CIH Level 3 in Supporting Homeless Persons Certificate”. It has been developed by the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH), Homeless Link and Broadway as part of the government’s “No-one left out: communities ending rough sleeping” strategy. This new level 3 qualification has been developed specifically for people working directly with homeless people. It covers the mainstays of key working and aims to support workers in developing their approach to gaining successful outcomes for their clients. It is aimed at staff who are experienced in this sector, and is therefore not an induction programme.

We are offering places on the course to external agencies at a cost of £495.00 per student, which includes all course materials, support, CIH registration and student membership.

Course dates are 12th and 13th October 2010, 17th November 2010, 19th January 2011 and 23rd March 2011 and it is essential that students are able to attend on all five dates. The course will be run at our offices in the centre of Canterbury.

For further information about the course content, individual modules, support that students can expect and what we expect from the students, please follow the following link:

http://porchlight.org.uk/about/training/engage-to-change/

As we are expecting more interest than available places, acceptance on the course is by application. An application form is available from the above link.

Applications must be returned to us by Monday 13th September 2010. If successful at this stage, we will invite candidates to come into our Head Office on Monday 20th September 2010 to discuss their application and complete a literacy and time impact assessment.

If you still have any queries about the course, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Beverley Callaghan
Interim Head of HR

Porchlight
2nd Floor Watling Chambers
18-19 Watling Street
Canterbury
Kent CT1 2UA
Direct Line: 01227 813195
Reception: 01227 760078
Fax. 01227 453331

Research Volunteers Wanted

Hull University - Research Volunteers
Would you like to help to improve our understanding of mental health?
Have you a few minutes to spare?

An NHS mental health professional is seeking volunteers to complete some online questionnaires. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have experienced problems with your mental health – everybody can make an important contribution and anyone aged 18 or over can take part.
Payment is not offered but you will be entered into a free £250 prize draw.

To request more information, please email
volunteer4research@googlemail.com