Press Release: Trust and campaign agree to work together to improve mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk

You can always find a door to suit your property

Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust and the Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk have agreed to work together to ensure the services provided meet the needs of both counties.

The Trust’s Chief Executive, Michael Scott, and Chair, Gary Page, met representatives from the Campaign in July to listen to services users’ and carers’ concerns about mental health services.

They both stressed the Trust encourages feedback from its service users and staff and agreed to meet with the campaign regularly to discuss areas where improvement could be made.

Gary Page said: “We share a common objective with the Campaign to improve the quality of care we provide to our service users. By listening to their experiences as well as those of carers and staff we want to work with the Campaign to address those areas where we acknowledge improvements need to be made.

“In order for this to happen and for a constructive relationship to develop, we would urge it not to personalise the Campaign and to ensure that information presented on the website is both balanced and accurate.”

The Campaign added: “We believe public accountability is central to the effective delivery of public services. While we disagree with the Trust on some issues, we do agree the need to work together for the good of mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk; to focus on specific areas of concern is a good start. The first of these foci is access to mental health services.

“We all agreed that gathering as much data as possible from service users, carers, members of the public, members of staff and indeed other health professionals (be they positive or negative) should help better shape the future.

“We would therefore like to invite people to visit our website at www.norfolksuffolkmentalhealthcrisis.org.uk where we have created an area for experiences, comments, ideas and suggestions. What was great? What could be improved? What needs to be changed? We look forward to reviewing access to the service with the Trust.”

5 thoughts on “Press Release: Trust and campaign agree to work together to improve mental health services in Norfolk and Suffolk”

  1. Whilst I whole heartedly agree with the trust working with any group that can help them improve mental health services, I would ask the trust to listen very clearly to public consultations such as the one on the ‘closure’ of beds a Carlton Court. Teams are being inexorably worn  into the ground, and have been for over 18 months, trying to make the impossible work.  And the response from management has been to work harder, do more, and more, ‘oh and we now want you to do this’,’ and this’…..and so on.  I and my colleagues cannot work anymore than what amounts to  fifteen hour  plus  shifts, (paid for 13hours), than we already do.  Often without breaks, and putting our own health in jeopardy, we continue to try and give clients and their families a service that WE would expect for our families. I’m sure this is true across the Trust.  Unfortunately, its not enough, and of course it cannot continue. Its time to announce RR is to stop, and design a new strategy. One that the trust, its staff, clients and their families can ALL sign up to.

  2. Year on year the help and support my son receives has gotten worse.  Frequent changes of CPN, a six month gap when he had no CPN at all, well over two years waiting for talking therapies, phone calls never replied to, CPA’s not scheduled on time or scheduled and then cancelled without notice.  I have lost count of the CPN’s that have been allocated to him, I regularly have to remind those that are supposed to be the ‘care coordinator’ what ‘care’ and ‘coordination’ actually mean. I have had to become very familiar with the NICE guidelines on how paranoid schizophrenia is meant to be treated, I have to be persistent and forthright in my requests for him to receive services.  I am not sure how it can get worse really, but in the main, I have given up on it getting better.  I strongly believe that if he did not have me to advocate and argue for him he would be dead by now.  And formal complaints get absolutely nowhere with professionals protecting their colleagues and  poor practice.

    A recent example, my son was feeling suicidal, with little or no control over his thoughts and becoming exhausted by how busy his voices in his head were – he rang the CPN’s team 3 times in one day to speak to his CPN, she was too busy to speak to him that day, it took almost 48 hours before anyone had time to talk to him.  Not sure how they sleep at night at all.

    I believe in the NHS, I believe in public services, but they have to be better than this.

  3. Ah… Gary ‘Wide-Boy’ Page, the King of Flim-Flam is at it again. And I’m rather surprised that the Campaign has fallen for this smoke and mirrors routine.

    I’m rather reminded of Aesop’s fable about the scorpion and the frog…

    A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks: “How do I know you won’t sting me?” The scorpion says: “Because if I do, I will die too.”

    The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp “Why?”

    The scorpion replies: “Because it’s my nature…”

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