Welcome to the first edition of Oxleas News, providing news and information on Oxleas' services and events.

Over the past couple of years, we have changed significantly, taking on community health services in both Bexley and Greenwich boroughs, alongside our existing mental health and learning disability services across Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich. We've also won new contracts such as the Community Gynaecology Service in Greenwich, and we are now providing integrated healthcare services in prisons and forensic units in Kent.

As there has been so much change, we have set up this newsletter to keep people informed. It aims to guide local groups through how we are organised. 

We have more changes being planned - details are included in this newsletter - click here to read.

We plan to produce these updates every few months. Please let us know if they are helpful or what other information you need.

Jo Mant

Head of Stakeholder Engagement

Tel: 01322 625700 x 5857 or email jo.mant@oxleas.nhs.uk

 

Jane Wells, currently Service Director for Greenwich Community Health Services will be the new Director of Adult Community Health Services. They will both take up their new posts on 1 October 2012. 

 

Adult learning disability services will join our Adult Complex Needs and Recovery directorate under the management of Iain Dimond, Service Director.

 

Click here to view our current executive team structure. 

 

Click here to see Stephen and Jane's new structures from October 2012.

There's a lot of concern at the moment about the future of South London Healthcare NHS Trust. Oxleas provides a number of services on their premises. We would like to reassure you that our services will not be affected by the current situation. Please click here to read more.

At Oxleas, we are really committed to improving our patients and service users' experience of our services and getting feedback.

 

Our patient experience programme is overseen by our trust Patient Experience Group, chaired by Dr Keith Miller who is Head of Psychology and Psychological Therapies. Each directorate has its own Patient Experience Group, a patient experience lead and a workplan.

 

There are a lot of ways we seek feedback. One example used across our services, is our Oxleas Patient Experience Questionnaire. This initiative sees volunteers, such as our service users and Governors, visiting services to talk to other service users to get really good quality feedback, as a service user will be more open when talking about their experience to another service user. It also provides an opportunity for our volunteers to feedback to the trust on their own observations such as the environment in which the service is run. 

 

Promoting care, compassion and engagement 

Discussions earlier this year around how things could be improved within Adult Acute Mental Health Services have led to an exciting new initiative that aims to put the trust's values into action.

 

Led by Service Manager Angus Gartshore, Care, Compassion and Engagement aims to improve the services that patients receive

Angus Gartshore

by ensuring that the staff who deliver them are fully responsive to patients' needs. It was launched at Oxleas House, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in April 2012.
 

Feedback from recent patient surveys suggests that interaction between staff and patients and carers is not always as good as it could be. Complaints have also led to the conclusion that staff attitudes could be better. 

 

Our plans to address this include implementing the principles of care, compassion and engagement right from recruitment and only employing people who share the trust's values. For example, we will be holding group discussions as part of the interview process for nurses.

 

To read more about this project and another exciting initiative, experience based co-design, click here.

Our community health services have been working hard to support patients in their own homes, and also to support colleagues in our local acute trusts.

 

In response to the increasing need for phlebotomy services for housebound patients and the resulting pressure on our district nurses to provide this, we are now setting up a phlebotomy service in the community.

 

We now have a team in Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Darent Valley Hospital to ease pressure on acute services by working with patients to prevent them from being admitted to hospital unnecessarily. 

 

Therefore, if you arrive at the Accident and Emergency Department, Urgent Care Centre and/or Acute Medical Assessment Unit with an illness or injury that may not need acute or medical treatment, you will be assessed, and if appropriate, referred to the care navigation team. They will then suggest or refer an alternative treatment that may avoid an unnecessary hospital admission.

 

On our Step Up, Step Down Unit at Queen Mary's Hospital, bed sensors have been introduced to alert nurses to patients' movements, particularly at night, to reduce the number of falls on the unit. 

 

Spotlight on...

The Stroke Rehabilitation service, which started on 2 April 2012, aims to ensure the safe and timely discharge of patients from the Stroke Unit (or Hyper-Acute Stroke Unit) at the Princess Royal University Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital.The service provides a seamless transfer from hospital to home, and enables stroke survivors to receive stroke specialist rehabilitation in their own home.This is a twelve month pilot (which is being reviewed at the end of September).

 

The service is also available, via GP referral, to Bexley patients who are about to be discharged from the Stroke Unit at Darent Valley Hospital. 

 

The specialist stroke team will:

• contact the patient within 24 hours of their discharge home
• carry out an assessment of rehabilitation needs within 3 days of discharge home
• commence treatment programme within 7 days of the assessment.

Click here for more information about this service.

 

Read the personal story of Kim Garnham, who suffered a stroke at 49, here.

 

Our telehealth service was set up last year at Erith Health Centre by Bexley Community Health Services. Through the telehealth system, nurses can monitor patients' vital signs, health and wellbeing in their own homes without them having to go to hospital.The patients are able to manage long term conditions - such as heart failure, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) effectively at home. Patients are able to understand their illness and take a more active role in their own care.

 

Regular monitoring also reduces GP visits and unplanned hospital admissions and allows nursing staff to see more patients.

 

You can watch a video about telehealth and Ellen Lawson, who suffers from COPD or read Ellen's personal story here. 

 

Working in partnership...with Broadway

A charity for homeless people is working closely with Oxleas to support people with mental health problems in Bromley.

 

Broadway is a London based homelessness charity, providing a full range of services to help people get accommodation, improve their physical and mental health, gain training and employment and to live successful, independent lives.

 

Dave Feast

Dave Feast is a Welfare Rights Officer for Broadway and his patch is the Bromley borough. Based at Bromley Mind's office in Orpington, Dave's specific role is to advise and support people with mental health problems and with their social security benefit issues. To read the full story, click here. 

We have been commissioned to provide a new Integrated Children's Service in Greenwich, which we'll be launching later this summer. The new service will work closely with existing services and provide a team of children's nurses working alongside other health professionals including dieticians and psychiatrists in clinics and family homes. It will help prevent children having to go in to hospital unless they need to.

 

This will be an extension of some existing services currently provided by Oxleas and South London Healthcare NHS Trust (with some staff due to join Oxleas) and also three new specialist services for children with epilepsy, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and a dietetics service. The service began operating on 1 July and will develop to become fully operational over the course of the year.

 

This new service will mean better, more joined up care for children and young people with complex health needs and their families in the borough. It will establish a broad children's services network which will provide high quality child centred care. The team will work very closely with other services in Greenwich including schools, children's centres, Demelza Children's Hospice and local voluntary sector organisations. They will also work with specialist children's hospitals.

 

Greenwich Community Health Services, in close collaboration with the Cardiac Network and Greenwich Business Support Unit, have been awarded funding to set up and deliver cardiac rehabilitation in the community in Greenwich.

 

Greenwich community learning disability team, previously based at Civic House have moved to the Woolwich Centre. Contact numbers remain the same, however patient appointments will be at the outpatients building at Memorial Hospital in Shooters Hill. This is a temporary move until clinical space is secured nearer to the Woolwich Centre.  

Dr Jane Dickson promoting the service

Community gynaecology services are now provided by our Greenwich CASH (contraceptive and sexual health) medical team. Many women's health problems can be helped without the need to be referred to hospital. If patient's symptoms are not serious and do not require surgery, Greenwich GPs can refer them for diagnosis and treatment by our specialist community gynaecology team.

 

The CASH Community Gynaecology Service can assess and treat a wide range of symptoms and conditions such as

• Heavy or painful periods
• Premenstrual syndrome (PMS/PMT)
• Problems with menstrual cycle which cause other medical conditions to get worse, ie migraines
• Advice and treatment for the menopause
• Irregular or abnormal bleeding (unless the GP suspects something serious)
• Assessment of fertility
• Hormone imbalance
• Abdominal pain or pain or difficulty having sex
• Pain or itching in the vagina or vulva
• 'lost' IUD (coil)
• Help with prolapse (lump in the vagina).

To find out more about the service and how to access it, click here.

 

A new peer support group for teens who hear voices or see visions was launched by Greenwich Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) in May.

 

Interesting Minds will hold weekly groups on Mondays between 4.30 and 5.45pm at the Tramshed, Woolwich New Road, London SE18.  The group is open to young people in Greenwich aged 12 to 18 with personal experience of hearing voices, seeing visions or having other unusual sensory experiences.

 

It offers a safe and confidential space to meet other young people with similar experiences whilst remaining relaxed and flexible.

 

To join, or to find out more, please call Gemma or Slobodanka at Greenwich CAMHS on 020 8331 4170, or email greenwich@voicecollective.co.uk

Working with travelling families

Our Bexley and Greenwich Oral Health Promotion team are working closely with local travellers to improve their oral health care. With the support of a family worker from Robert Owen Nursery, Claire Benzies and Gwen Jerrom, Oral Health Improvement Practitioners, recently visited the travellers site on Horn Link Way in Charlton, SE7 to hold a dental session in one of the family's trailers (the dental service having previously provided the family with dental treatment). The family provided lunch for everyone and the team were visited by other family members and families from the site.

 

To read more about the team's visit and the travellers' visit to a dental clinic, click here.

 

In addition, Sally Ghiglieri, who is a health visitor working in Crayford, participates in a travellers group at the local Children's Centre which is facilitated by a staff member, Bernadette. The group meets every four to six weeks and Sally goes along to speak or answer questions on the children's health needs, check that their immunisations are up to date, do developmental checks, weigh the children, and discuss any issues or concerns.