Articles

ISPS UK Day Conference - Good Enough Psychiatry

Good enough psychiatry:
What makes psychiatrists effective for people who experience psychosis?

Tuesday, July 2nd 2013
The Human Rights Action Centre, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC24 3E

The conference is about how psychiatrists can have a positive impact through the way they relate to service users and families and through the way they talk back about psychosis.  The day will focus on these issues rather than on specific intervention such as medication and therapies.

Bipolar IAPT SMI Site

Caring for Yourself

If you have used the Caring for Yourself self-help manual we would be really grateful if you could take a few moments to complete a feedback sheet.  Your experience of using the manual will help us to review and develop the content.  You can access the feedback sheet by clicking on this link

Feedback Form - Final.pdf

Caring for Yourself

Rethink Mental Illness and the Meriden Family Programme have created a new resource called Caring for Yourself which has been developed to help carers, family and friends who support someone with a mental health problem.

Caring for Yourself is a self-help workbook in eight parts that can be used in an entirely flexible way. Launched in Carers Week in 2012, the workbook is now available as a very useful information and educational resource designed to help carers. It will also be helpful for professionals who work with carers so that they can refer carers to the resource where appropriate.

Team Travels to Nova Scotia

Dr Grainne Fadden, Meriden Family Programme Director, and Chris Mansell, Deputy Director, held two full-day workshops on June 21st and 22nd in Nova Scotia, Canada. The themes for the 2 sessions were "Developing Collaborative Practice between Consumers, Family Members and Service Providers" and "Information Sharing - Training the Trainer".

Dr. David Shiers, GP and family member, also made up part of the Meriden Family Programme presenting team. The sessions were extremely well received and plans are underway for the Programme to return in 2012.

The Capital Health  newsletter "Mental Health Happenings" reports on the visit.

Supporting Parents with Mental Health Problems

On 22nd September Paula Conneely and Julia Smith, Clinical Specialists with the Meriden Family Programme will be presenting at the Pavilion conference "Supporting parents with mental health issues and understanding the impact on their children "

In a recent article in the Guardian, Rhian Beynon, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Family Action commented:
"Up to 450,000 adults with mental health difficulties are also parents. Parental and child mental health are closely linked...While adults may succeed in obtaining treatment for mental health difficulties, health and social services often fail to consider the impact upon their family members – and often don’t want to pay for family-focused support.
Both a large body of clinical evidence and the experience of Family Action shows that parents with mental health difficulties can be great parents providing they get support to manage their condition, run their household and care for their children.
The prevention of children’s mental health difficulties, therefore, starts more often than not with integrated health and social services support for their parents.’ Source: www.guardian.co.uk

This conference addresses how services need to work on behalf of both parent and child in order to manage the impact on the child, whilst supporting the parent. Speakers also include representatives from Family Action, MIND, Barnardos and the Department of Health.

conference programme.pdf

Carers Matter – Everybody’s Business (CMEB)

CMEB has been developed in partnership with carers, carers organisations and major stakeholders including the Meriden Family Programme. It was commissioned by the Department of Health to provide a set of common core principles and national standards for working with carers. CMEB is a free at the point of access learning and development framework with supporting resources for general and specialist use across a wide range of organisations.

Opportunity for Family Work Training in Manchester

The Meriden programme is pleased to offer an exciting 5-day training opportunity in family work in Central Manchester, 10th October - 14 October, which we hope will appeal to clinicians who are unable to attend training in Birmingham.  For more details please see the event document under the Training and Conferences link.

Newsletter - August 2012

The latest volume of the Meriden newsletter (August 2012) has been published and you can find a copy of this on our  website.