Annual Report 2010-11 - West London Mental Health NHS Trust

Care for the Carers
It’s not just our staff who’ve been involved in the roll-out of our values this year. Carers in
our Ealing services gave us an insight into how they want us to treat them, to enable them
to perform their caring role to the highest standard. They used our values as headings for
suggestions on how they’d like to be treated when they come into contact with our services.
For example, under the value of responsibility, they said: “Because we’re often under pressure
it’s important that you don’t keep us waiting too long. Take responsibility for making best use
of time.” Under the value of caring they told us: “Always introduce yourself and also ask for
our names, so that we, and those we care for, feel valued.”
We’ve shared the thoughts of our carers with staff by putting them onto posters and into our
staff magazine for all to see.
Professor Allan Young, Clinical Lead
She encourages us to look after our physical health through healthy eating, cooking sessions
and exercise. She shows us through her actions how much she cares and always listens to
what we have to say.”
New service offers hope to patients with the most
complex mental health problems
We’ve recently established a new specialist service offering hope for people with treatment
resistant mental illness.
Working in a research partnership with Imperial College, we’re developing and delivering
proven, evidence-based, emerging treatments for some of the most complex and enduring
mental health problems.
Our specialist Affective Disorder Service is a ‘tertiary service’ providing assessment and
treatment to those complex and treatment resistant patients who need something more than
what’s offered through established secondary care pathways. Patients benefiting from the
service would normally have failed to have responded adequately to a number of evidencebased
interventions provided in mainstream specialist mental health services.
A caring role-model
Kay Maloney, carer with Margaret Rioja, Service User and Involvement Co-ordinator
Dione Simpson is an Activity Co-ordinator in our West London Forensic Services. She picked
up the award for ‘Caring’ in our annual Quality Awards after being nominated by the patients
she works with. They said of her: “Dione brings the sunshine and lights up the ward as if
she is Florence Nightingale. She touches our hearts with warmth and kindness. Dione spends
time listening to service users and explains changes happening here in a way we understand.
Professor Allan Young, is the clinical lead for the service. He holds the Chair of Psychiatry at
Imperial College London where he is also Director of the Centre for Mental Health within the
Division of Experimental Medicine.
Allan says: “I’m a passionate advocate of the view that no individual or condition is beyond
help.” He has worked with patients all over the world on treatment innovations that help them
realise improved quality of life through better sustained health and well-being.
“In offering this pioneering new service to our patients we hope to make recovery a real
prospect, for them,” says Allan.
Annual Report
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2010 2011