This last month has been a time of intense activity for SPN as we continue to develop funding bids as well as fulfill our existing funded work obligations. Tayo, our new Executive Officer, continues to act as the lynchpin of the SPN team which consists of Raza Griffiths and Vicky Nicholls, the Joint SPN coordinators.
Now that we have grown from a network to an independent charity, funding is quite key on our agenda. Click here to find out more. Please make sure you read the note from Peter Cohen, our Treasurer on the same page.
As well as meeting our existing obligations and establishing a firm financial foundation as an independent charity, we are thinking creatively about our working arrangements as a central team, because we are having to move again from our (only recently established) office space in central London. Click here to find out more.
However, much continues to happen. This month, for example, Raza spoke on a panel debate at Afiya Trust’s road show event in London on the New Horizons consultation, with a little help from SPN Executive Committee member Daisy Bogg and Trustee Terry Bamford (whilst he was on holiday in sunny Barbados!) at a Pavilion conference on personalisation.
What has been especially gratifying recently has been the extent of input of SPN members – many thanks to all those who responded with comments for inclusion for the SPN response to the New Horizons consultation (watch this space for the SPN response which will be submitted before the 15 October deadline). Again, Committee member Daisy Bogg successfully negotiated a deal for authoring a personalisation workbook with Pavilion which should be out by June 2010 in our work programme and SPN will continue to assist her in smoothing the way for this proposal.
Something also very key is the effective interaction with our membership In the very near future, we are going to look at how we can liaise with our membership even more effectively and this may include some changes to the format/frequency of the newsletter. Rest assured we will consult our members first before we make any changes.
Until our next communication, we remain faithfully yours – The SPN Team
Tayo Richards – Executive Officer
Vicky Nicholls – Joint Coordinator
Raza Griffiths – Joint Coordinator
SPN submitted a joint bid with NDTi for a £150K SCIE tender around producing up to date case study examples of Personal Budgets for Older People as well as for people with mental health issues.
Just as this month's newsletter was circulated we have been informed that our bid was not selected. We take consolation in the fact that we were amongst the few shortlisted.
Back to a more positive note, we are currently putting together an evaluation framework for our successful City and Parochial Fund bid to develop the capacity of the voluntary and community mental health. We will also be writing a job description for the London Development Officer post which will have the primary responsibility for developing this programme of work, with some help from the SPN team of Raza, Vicky and Tayo. We need to do this before the funding can be released.
A MESSAGE FROM THE TREASURER
Since the abolition of CSIP and the loss of the grant SPN received from them, SPN's financial position has become more precarious than it was previously. We do have enough money to see us through the current financial year. We also have funding for some contracted projects into the next year. However, we have to be on the lookout for continued funding opportunities to secure our mid- and long-term future. The management committee, staff and trustees are all aware of this situation and we are making our own efforts to find new sources of finance. However, we would appreciate any suggestions that our wider membership can provide.
We therefore would be grateful if readers could let us know of any sources funding of which they become aware. Whilst a grant that would allow us to build up our reserves, continue our traditional activities such as our workshops and research briefings, and respond flexibly to future developments in the mental health field would be ideal, we would also be interested in hearing of any invitations to bid for projects in line with our philosophy and aims and objectives.
Please do not hesitate to email SPN at spn@scie.org.uk with any suggestions you have.
Thanking you in advance,
Peter Cohen
Treasurer
The SPN AGM took place this year in the buzzing atmosphere of the London Voluntary Service Council, which is now known as The Resource Centre. The event was attended by 45 people. One key aspect of the meeting was to usher in our new executive group. So it gives us great pleasure to welcome our new Executive Committee members Rosie Buckland, Laurence Butterfield (likes to be called Lol, Amber Chidakashi, Neil Connelly, Rukshanda Esat, Jacqui Lovell and Jane Shears - as well as welcome back the members who are continuing their support from last year. Their profiles will be posted on the website by the 19th of October.
As part of the Co Chairs’ Report, Alleyn gave special thanks to Terry Bamford for all his work with SPN as Director as well as his continuing work in key parts of the SPN work programme, such as negotiating the funding for the London personalisation workshop. This work had been done when Terry was not formally an employee of SPN. She also thanked Terry for staying on as a trustee. Next, staffing matters were also discussed. Jean Healy, formerly SPN administrator, had now moved on and Tayo Richards has now joined as the new executive officer to enliven the SPN office and ensure that Raza and Vicky, the SPN joint co-coordinators, keep SPN on target with the evolving SPN work programme, particularly in the search for funding.
Alleyn acknowledged that this was SPN’s first AGM as a charity. This was specifically significant, because although SPN had lost a number of government aided funds, as a charity SPN could now spread its wings and develop its own work programme and explore new avenues of funding.
Alleyn moved for this report to be accepted. This was supported by Terry Bamford.
Finance Report and Budgets
Peter Cohen went through the finances. Now that SPN is a registered charity, it was explained that funds would generally fall into 2 main categories – restricted funds and unrestricted funds. Overall there has been a 20% decrease in funding. Also a lot of the network’s funding falls into the restricted category. The trustees will be spending a considerable amount of time looking at how to increase the unrestricted funding category. Alleyn made the point that SPN would only enter into alliances with organisations that shared SPN’s values.
Alleyn moved for the treasurer’s report to be adopted. Vicky supported the motion. Alleyn moved for the audited accounts to be adopted. Jerry supported the motion.
Nominations
Jayasaree Kalathil was nominated as co-chair. Alleyn asked for a formal nomination. This was backed by Jerry. There are 16 places on the executive committee with 4 co-opts. 14 incumbent members are being carried forward – not including the chairs leaves us with 12 incumbents. Currently we have 8 nominations to fill 4 executive places and 4 co-opt places. It was agreed that the 12 incumbents would meet soon after the meeting to formally agree.
AOB
Since there was no other business, the formal part of the meeting was declared over and the 2008/09 executive group met to agree the 2009/10 group.
Personalisation Debate
To liven up the AGM a panel debate was organised entitled Making Personalisation Happen. The panel was chaired by Raza Griffiths (SPN Joint Co-ordinator). Members of the panel were Ruth Allen, Director of Social Work for the South West London & St Georges NHS Trust, Peter Ferns, an independent Training & Research Consultant, Claire Helman, Director of New Initiatives at Together and Kevin Lewis, the Personalisation Lead at the National Mental Health Development Unit. The Chair posed a number of hot topics in the Personalisation Debate, asking the Panel to respond and also took questions from the audience. A number of delegates responded with their own tale of personalisation and their testimonies suggested that there was still a lot of work to be done to make personalisation a reality in many areas.
Just as we began to get ourselves comfortable on the second floor in Goldings House and have finally worked a majority of our IT issues, we are told we are going to have to move again! However this time, it is not to any of the floors above, but completely out of the building!!
Right now, we are aiming to move out mid November and will be discussing issues likely to affect us. Fortunately, Tayo our new executive officer is a ‘dab hand’ at working virtually and has been doing so for the last five years or so. She assures us that all is well and that it will be yet another opportunity for SPN to be able to work more flexibly and really see the opportunities open to us.
The next SPN study day on personalisation takes place on 2nd December in London. It will be entitled Personalisation and Recovery. The day will explore the crossover between personalisation and recovery.
A flurry of studies and initiatives round personalisation in mental health has left many people breathless at the sheer pace of developments. Click here to view more information about this event What is sometimes neglected is looking at personalisation in terms of a recovery journey, and the links between social capital, personalisation and recovery. This study day looks at how personalised choices can facilitate service users’ journeys of recovery, and what needs to change, systemically and culturally, to ensure that they do – for example, around assessment. The day will also look at the complex interface between health and social care, asking how the two can work better so that they facilitate rather than hinder service users’ recovery journeys.
The day will explore some of the theoretical implications, and look at the evidence base and some outstanding on the ground examples of best practice around personalisation from a recovery perspective. Keynote speakers and workshop facilitators at this event are leaders in the development of the mental health personalisation agenda, and include service users, carers, mental health providers, academics, researchers and commissioners to give a 360 degree view of developments from a range of perspectives. You are advised to book early. Please note that there are a number of free places at this event for service users and carers.
"Does the media stereotype black mental health service users, making them, in effect, doubly marginalised, both as service users, and as black people"?
This was just one of the themes that were brought up at a lively panel debate I was part of looking at BME communities, mental health and media coverage.
The debate was part of Afiya Trust’s New Horizons consultation road show, which is aimed at raising awareness of and encouraging BME people to respond to the New Horizons Consultation which ends on 15 October (www.afiya-trust.org). Tackling stigma is high on the New Horizons agenda, and this includes addressing stigmatising media coverage of BME communities. The other panelists included Melba Wilson, National Director of DRE, Lyn Eton, Editor of Mental Health Today magazine, Matthilda Macattram, Managing Director of BME Mental Health UK and Joy Francis, journalist and Managing Director of Creative Collective media consultancy and PR.
I remember, way back in 1981, when there was widespread rioting in inner city areas across Britain, the front page headline of The Daily Mail ran: “The black face of hate”. Underneath, just in case you did not get the point, was a photo of a black man, presumably involved in the rioting. We would like to think that such overtly racist reporting is a thing of the past. But when it comes to mental health coverage, media organisations continue to highlight the ethnic origins of BME service users when reporting crimes and this comes on top of the highlighting of mental health diagnosis – despite the fact that people with a mental health diagnosis are no more likely to commit crimes than people who do not have a diagnosis. So is mental health coverage one of the few areas where overtly racist coverage is still allowed to go unchecked?
Some of the things that could be done to challenge racist and stigmatising coverage of this sort include more organised and consistent leadership by BME organisations to challenge stereotypical portrayals of BME service users. Hanif Bobat, one of the SHIFT anti stigma campaign’s BME service user advisers, suggested that one CDW per region could spend some dedicated time around media liaison work. I also think we need a ‘mediawatch’ to look out for and respond to negative coverage – as well as praising the (very few?) examples of positive coverage of mental health issues in BME communities.
One of the most powerful ways people can raise awareness amongst the general public and help to humanise the issues, is for service users to be able to confidently tell their stories – for which ongoing support and training may be needed. And we shouldn’t forget that we have to liaise with journalists too – both mainstream media and BME media outlets – through
delivering mental health awareness training which also looks at race issues. Currently, such training is not part of journalism training courses, although race awareness is.
SPN, which has a remit under its City and Parochial Foundation grant to develop the capacity of BME communities to campaign around mental health issues, is seriously considering at working with allies like Afiya and other media and BME organisations, to develop a programme of work around challenging stigma in and through the media.
It’s a good time to be thinking of doing this, as there are two reports (due to be made public November/December) by SHIFT, the Department of Health’s anti stigma programme. DRE was involved in the commissioning process and so – under its continuation under the Equalities Programme within NMHDU – should be interested in what becomes of the recommendations. The two reports look specifically at media coverage of BME communities and mental health issues. Not only do the reports help to form an idea of media coverage of BME mental health issues, but they will – so I understand – include recommendations around how best to challenge the stigma in the media that BME service users face.
SHIFT has informed SPN that the two reports referred to will be made public in November/December 2009. The first report is entitled Examining the relationship between the media and Black mental health issues Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health foundation Trust and Getting the Message Across, Ethnic Communications.
Here is a link to the SHIFT website www.shift.org.uk
SPN Executive Committee member Patsy Staddon is cautious about an NHS Confederation report which promotes stronger partnerships between mental health and substance misuse services. You can read the full report, Seeing double - meeting the challenge of dual diagnosis by clicking here www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Seeing_double-briefing.pdf
Before the NHS attempts to join together two unsatisfactory systems for governing human behaviour by medical means, i.e. that of mental health ‘treatment’ and that of substance misuse ‘treatment’, it might do well to consider the following factors
1. Most people use ‘drugs’ to help them manage their lives, whether they buy them over the counter, on the street, or on prescription.
2. Mental health service users may need more help in managing their lives, so are more likely to use more ‘drugs’.
3. They are likely in any case to be already on prescribed drugs, and seeking to ameliorate their negative effects.
4. Defining ‘misuse’ is extremely difficult, and highly individual. It is often done on a moral basis rather than a health basis.
5. The most popular treatment for ‘misuse’ of illegal drugs or alcohol is morally focused and abstinence based, and is frequently experienced as damaging and unsuccessful.
6. Although long-term success rate is hard to measure, it is estimated as being similar to having no treatment at all.
7. Consequently, given current methods of ‘treating’ substance users, joining together this system with the unsatisfactory mental health system is likely to keep more people in treatment longer, to no good long-term effect, other than improvement in the prospects of substance use treatment agencies.
8. It might be more helpful to develop an holistic understanding of WHY some people need to use ‘drugs’ and to give them better information on the short and long-term effects of starting, stopping and continuing. Education for mental health and substance use workers in the sociology of health and illness might also be helpful.
Patsy Staddon, PhD.
(Survivor of alcohol services and mental health service user; Executive Committee member of Social Perspectives Network)
What the report says
The report says a third of patients who use mental health services, half of those who use substance misuse services and 70 per cent of prisoners have a dual diagnosis of both a mental health condition and a drug or alcohol problem.
The report says people who have developed problems with alcohol or drugs because of a pre-existing mental health condition, or have had a mental health condition caused by substance misuse, use services more and cost the NHS more.
A study of services in south London cited in the report showed more patients with dual diagnosis used community psychiatric nurses, inpatient care and emergency clinics.
This cost the NHS £1,362 more per patient in “core” psychiatric service costs, and £1,360 in non-accommodation service costs compared with patients without dual diagnosis.
Useful links
The full report can be read here www.nhsconfed.org/Publications/Documents/Seeing_double-briefing.pdf
Here is a link to an article about the report in Health Service Journal www.hsj.co.uk/news/mental-health/call-to-link-up-mental-health-and-substance-misuse-services-for-dual-diagnosis/5006532.article
Here is a link to a website about Alcohol Awareness Week
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