MHCN CARER PEAK ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Transcription

1 MENTAL HEALTH CARERS NSW Vol. 1, Issue 3, September 2016 MHCN CARER PEAK ADVISORY COMMITTEE SEPTEMBER 2016 BULLETIN FAMILY & CARER MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM MEETING Mental Health Carers NSW was proud to host the NSW Family & Carer Mental Health Program (F&CMHP) information meeting on Friday 29th July. Along with guest speakers, Sage Green, Craig Parsons and Tim Coombs, we were delighted to welcome a range of family & carer coordinators from various LHDs and CMOs. The all-day event was an informative session, as participants were able to share their community development initiatives, challenges, action plans and how to co-design carer support in implementation stages. Moreover, there were discussions surrounding open dialogue, carer engagement, carer surveys, carer forums and developing evaluations. Sage Green presented on the One year On: Update on Strategic Plan for Mental Health and Update on the Lived Experience Project. Craig Parsons gave a presentation on Primary Health Networks and Tim Coombs presented on the Australian Mental Health Outcomes and Classification Network carer experience survey. Overall it was a positive turn out with 17 representatives from local LHDs in attendance. Participants requested for another F&CMHP meeting in November which MHCN will organise again. The participants found the meeting a valuable space to network, share ideas, look at upcoming directions affecting the program and provide feedback. Key issues identified: Develop a standardized carer survey questions amongst CMOs For carers to participate in carer design forums How to draw a line /expecting carers to do so much for the LHDs The missing carers the elder, adults with children Designing frameworks with carers input Need for staff to feel inspired within their job positions Seek good relationships with acute units Hold accountable, family inclusive practice Changing culture working with families is core business Ask clinicians and partners to step up their responsibility Some carers are hesitant to ask in

2 terms of service delivery Acknowledge the complexity and trauma carers they go through, value their expertise and knowledge Key challenges identified: Lack of budget or funding surrounding consumer peer role Lack of meaningful carer participation in all aspects of involvement Lack of funding towards family therapy Lack of funding towards training of staff How to incorporate open dialogue in future frameworks and action plans The need for more frequent Family and Carer Mental Health Program meetings What is the retirement age for carers? Enhance service delivery in providing carer experiences to clinicians The next Family & Carer Mental Health Program meeting will be on the 11th November. Please contact with enquiries. An agenda will be circulated at a closer date. FETAL ALCOHOL SPECTRUM DISORDERS WORKSHOP 8 NOVEMBER Earlier this year, our Alcohol & Drug Peak Advisory Committee (ADPAC) members raised the issue that fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) are not recognised as a disability in Australia, and that it will be highly problematic and unlikely that these families and carers will be able to access the NDIS to support their loved ones. Close to 90% of people with FASD end up developing a severe mental illness, meaning their families and friends will at some stage become mental health carers. ADPAC Committee members encouraged MHCN to contact the National Organisation of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (NOFASD) to extend an offer of advocacy support. An initiative to emerge from this partnership with NO- FASD is a 2 hour FASD awareness workshop which will be run in MHCN offices in Woolloomooloo on the 8th November. This workshop is free for families, carers and consumers, and is $40 for clinicians. Please click on the flyer if you wish to register your attendance (registration is essential to attend). 02 UPCOMING MHCN Carer Leadership Training Day Two, 9 September 2016 MHCN Sausage Sizzle 2 October 2016, Bunnings Mascot Wellness Walk 16th October 2016 Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder Workshop, 8 November 2016 Family & Carer Mental Health Program Meeting 11 November 2016 Mental Health Carer Support Workers Forum 18 November 2016 NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION WEEK 5-11 SEPT In honour of To Write Love on Her Arms theme this year And I Kept Living we asked people affected by suicide, suicide loss survivors and suicide attempt survivors alike, to share why, despite their challenges, they keep living. Click here to read the 46 reasons. We would like to thank our ADPAC members for their fantastic advocacy work! We are very excited to be working together with NOFASD and to get involved in future activities which support this important cause.

3 03 CLINICAL ADVISORY COUNCIL: PATHWAYS TO COMMUNITY LIVING INITIATIVE MHCN Policy Officer Richard Baldwin attended the most recent Clinical Advisory Council (CAC) meeting on 26 August The following updates were received: RESPONSE FROM MENTAL HEALTH BRANCH, NSW HEALTH The NSW Government is undertaking a 10 year whole-of-government enhancement of mental health care. These reforms focus on putting the person at the centre of the mental health care system, and providing recovery-focused care in the least restrictive setting. The Mental Health Branch will play a key role in guiding and coordinating many of these reforms, in partnership with Local Health Districts, consumers, carers and nongovernment organisations. A key component of the mental health reform is a commitment of $5 million per annum to enhance Specialist Mental Health Services for Older People community teams across NSW. This enhancement has been developed using populationbased planning models (noting that new national and NSW mental health planning models have been developed over the last few years), with the principle of improving equity of access across NSW. Pathways to Community Living The presentation received from the team responsible for the Pathways to Community Living Initiative focused on Stage 2 of the program. This Stage focuses on the group of long stay (over 365 days) patients (approximately 300) that are not appropriate for aged care services. This group includes adults with challenging behaviours, personality problems, co-morbidities related to intellectual disability and/or drug and alcohol problems, and psychotic disorders that are resistive to treatment. The meeting discussed the challenges in alternative placements for these people. The ministry of Health needs to make a submission to Treasury by the end of January 2017 on the cost of the range of service needed for this group of residents. The project is currently conducting a number of workshops with carers and providers to educate stakeholders on the program and get input on possible directions. The project anticipates continuing care for up to 80 inpatients plus three levels of specialist living support and need for 100 residential aged care places for future needs. Emerging Strategies for Engaging Senior Mental Health Leaders in Clinical Benchmarking This discussion focused on the challenge faced by mental health clinical leaders in attending the various benchmarking workshops held each six months for the different speciality areas of Older persons, Long term care and Rehabilitation, Children s and adolescents and acute care. Senior clinicians in management positions find it difficult to devote a full day to these meetings (at least 8 a year). The meeting looked at alternative mechanisms for exposing this group to the information sessions and promoting discussion on the usefulness of the IN- FORMH reports. Official Visitors Program The Principal Official Visitor and the Coordinator of the Official Visitor program resented to the meeting the nature of the program and efforts to develop a more collaborative approach to the role of official visitors. In late 2016, the Mental Health Branch will also commence work on the development of a new NSW Service Plan for Older People's Mental Health Services. This plan will aim to bring together the significant policy and planning work undertaken to develop models of care for older people across the spectrum of care, many of which you have noted in your correspondence. The Plan will also aim to set directions going forward for services and service development in older people's mental health over the coming years.

4 MCHN PARTNERSHIPS & DEVELOPMENTS Partnership Projects MHCN are partnering with a number of other organisations on joint projects, such as: We have just finished a 12 month MoU with Bipolar Australia where we supported that organisation to develop a number of resources for carers and consumers with our student placements Toni Garretty and Dr Annamarie Bickerton will be delivering the Staying Connected When Emotions Run High (for clinicians) at Collective Purpose on 5th October 2016 (Proceeds to help the BPD Conference) The Australian BPD Foundation on the 6th National BPD Awareness Day Conference on 6th October 2016 Youth Action and Helping Minds on a project to offer combined, Youth and Teen Mental Health First Aid along with Friend2Friend, YA s training workshop for young persons mental health peer support at high school. National Organisation of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is to deliver FASD Training for parents and clinicians on 8 November 2016 MHCN to help MH WorX (Doug Holmes) with the auspicing of a number of projects and in particular looking at the So You Want to Change the World Trauma training for organisations from Kansas dealing with people working with experience of mental ill health (in our out of health services). Other Developments The engagement of consumers and carers in the commissioning and design of new PHN funded services and even LHD mental health and AoD services offers hope to improve service design. MHCN is keen to develop supports for such consumer and carer commissioning participants. MHCN is working to help develop networks of carers engaged with LHDs and Primary Health Networks ( PHNs ) in service management and improvement processes. MHCN will link carer representatives and activists through its e-news letter, forums and training to connect and support the better development and effectiveness of such activists. MHCN is supporting both the recruitment of a Carer Reference Group for St Vincent s. To help recruit local carers a Carer Expo will be held at St Vincent s inviting Aftercare and other carer support organisations on 21 September As a result of this work it has become clear the specialty networks (St Vincent s and Westmead) receive specific (if limited) access to the F&CMH Programme and that many are not aware of this. All local support services have been invited to provide promotional materials relating to their local services for this exercise. MHCN is keen to support a community leadership development project being delivered by Sandra McDonald of Beautiful Minds. MHCN is auspicing Lyn Anderson, a carer who has received funding for this activity through the Peer Ignition Project. Suitable carer peers have been invited to participate in training which is designed to assist carers in the development of their own local Beautiful Minds style projects. This training commenced on the 2nd of September and continues on the 9th at Collective Purpose. We all share Sandra s vision for Beautiful Minds fund raising and awareness raising groups to get started up across NSW to progress reform by the grass roots. Advocacy and governance training will also be available for carer leaders who want to work to improve services in their local communities and MHCN is working on a number of additional training and other projects to expand our offerings. Activists who may not wish to participate in such training but who would like to be part of this network are also welcome to joint the list to facilitate participation. admin.arafmi@arafmi.org. WHAT IS LIFESPAN? 04 LifeSpan involves the implementation of nine evidence-based suicide prevention strategies, at the same time, within a community setting using a collaborative, integrated approach. The evidence suggests that implementation of the LifeSpan model will reduce suicide deaths by at least 20% and suicide attempts by 30%. The nine strategies are suitable for any group within the Australian population. However, the strategies do need to be tailored to the needs of local communities and high risk populations. For the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, this may mean specialist training for GPs and other gatekeepers as well as inclusion of Aboriginal health workers and community members within local suicide prevention teams. In each region delivering LifeSpan, community leaders and organisations will work together with Black Dog Institute to tailor the approaches to ensure they are culturally relevant to and led by the local community. Lifespan is being initially implemented in four NSW sites: Newcastle, Hunter New England LHD Illawarra Shoalhaven, South East NSW PHN Central Coast, Central Coast LHD Murrumbidgee, Murrumbidgee PHN

5 REPORT FOR OPMHWG & SMHSOP ADVISORY GROUP AUGUST Suicide Prevention Australia July 2016 Conference Report 1. Aboriginal suicide rates are twice the national average. Research demonstrates that self-determination is what makes the difference Countries that have it have less suicide 2. The project that we should all use is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention Evaluation Project (ATSISPEP), at It gives case studies that we can use to partner with Aboriginal Medical Services, and others, to reduce suicide. Across the nation there is consensus among elders about what needs to be done. Dr Yvonne Luxford, the Executive Officer for the project, will soon be given clearance from the Prime Minister and Cabinet, to release all the details of this project. A Meta evaluation found that factors for success are: peer to peer mentoring/education on suicide prevention, counselling and safe places for people to discuss their concerns, community site specific training using community organisations and Aboriginal faces, support materials such as DVDs that make no assumption of literacy in participants, connecting to young people through sport, country and culture, connecting young people to elders, diverting youth from negative influences, addressing cannabis use, awareness of critical risk periods such as Christmas that create isolation, 24/7 availability of the programs, using community engagement/empowerment model to address negative social determinants of health and to support wellbeing, gatekeeper training and post-vention programs. 1. Some people object to suicide being framed as a mental illness. Other countries do it differently for example Finland and England. 2. The Look Do model for suicide education is too simplistic. We need training that lets people pick up on the slightest nuance or hunch or gut feeling that something is wrong. Warning signs are only crystal clear in retrospect. 3. Current policies of locking up asylum seekers are creating mental illness and suicides. 4. The Papageno Effect positive media stories can reduce suicide 5. Masculinity the characteristic most linked to suicide in males is self-reliance. 6. In A.C.T. employing psychologists in police stations has reduced trauma and the need for police to be involved in assisting people with mental illness. CONTACT US PHONE: MHCN ADMIN@ARAFMI.ORG ADDRESS: SUITE 501, LEVEL 5, 80 WILLIAM ST, WOOLLOOMOOLOO, NSW, 2011 OFFICE HOURS: 9.00AM 5.00PM, MONDAY FRIDAY WEBSITE: