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Popular Bailey’s café saved thanks to new partnership

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We’re joining forces with the Water Lily Project to give the popular Bailey’s café a new lease of life and save it from closure.

The Water Lily Project (WLP) is a Christchurch based charity which offers outreach support to local and vulnerable women to help them cope with and overcome whatever difficult situations they find themselves in.

WLP will be taking over the running of Bailey’s Café from Richmond Fellowship’s East Dorset Community Service.  Due to a change in the contract to provide services from the premises in Barrack Road, Richmond Fellowship needed to find a partner who could take the café on.

WLP project manager Lynn Chisadza said: “In addition to this venture that we have taken up, WLP is also pleased to have the opportunity of opening its first residential home in early 2015. We’re so excited about the potential that running the café will bring. This will enable the project to give training opportunities and provide a useful resource for local residents.

“We are so grateful for the support we have received thus far from Dorset County Community Fund, Round Table, Seedbed Christian Community Trust, local churches, local people and the local borough council who share our dream.”

Richmond Fellowship will continue to run its mental health community services from the Barrack Road offices and will be extending the groups and activities it runs in the Christchuch, Purbeck and Wimborne areas, under the terms of its new three year contract with Dorset County Council.

RF locality manager Doug Low said: “We’re delighted to be working with the Water Lily Project to keep the café open to the general public, including those people with mental health issues, and to be taking our services out to local people through our new community service contract.”

We’re named as provider of new crisis services in Leicestershire

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Richmond Fellowship has been awarded the contract by Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) to provide mental health crisis services to support people in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.

The service will provide short-term intensive support for individuals who need additional help during times of mental health crisis.

Service user and members of the public were consulted in shaping the specification for the new service which will provide:

  • Access to telephone and face-to-face support in times of crisis
  • Facilities to accommodate short residential stays for people who might otherwise be admitted to hospital because no alternative is available.

Our crisis support will enhance the NHS Trust’s existing acute mental health care pathway and forms part of wider service development plans to increase access to timely and effective care in the community, and help avoid unnecessary hospital admissions.

LPT project manager Zayba Joondan said: “The evaluation panel was very impressed with the submission from Richmond Fellowship. Their organisational commitment to recovery and inclusion and the innovative ways in which these values will underpin their model of service delivery for the crisis house stood out in their bid.”

Richmond Fellowship locality manager Christine Lawrence said:”We’re really excited to be working with Leicestership Partnership NHS Trust to provide this new crisis service. We’re commited to playing our part in creating joined-up services that can truly provide the best possible care to people with mental health problems, especially in a crisis situation when individuals ae at their most vulnerable.”

The new service is due to launch in January 2015.

We launch new services in Leicestershire and Bristol

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Today we launch two new services which means we’re able to help make recovery a reality for even more individuals.

Our new Leicestershire Life Links community based service will provide drop-in, inreach and peer support services across the county.

And our new Bristol Mental Health Employment Service has also gone live as part of an innovative new integrated mental health system in the city.

A broad range of integrated services is being provided by nearly 20 organisations with specialist expertise and experience, coming under the umbrella of Bristol Mental Health. This includes community mental health (including assessment and recovery, crisis support, early intervention in psychosis and complex psychological interventions), community rehabilitation, dementia wellbeing and assertive engagement.

Our employment service is one of the first elements of the new system to go live. We’re working in partnership with Mental Health Matters, Windmill Hill City Farm and the Bristol Somali Resource Centre to provide specialist employment support to people with a mental health problem that is affecting their ability to retain, or seek, employment.

 

We sign up as a supporter of the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat

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Today Richmond Fellowship signed up as a supporter of the Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat and pledged to play our part in improving care for people.

The Mental Health Crisis Care Concordat is a national agreement between services and agencies involved in the care and support of people in crisis. It sets out how organisations will work together better to make sure that people in crisis receive urgent mental health care.

The concordat focusses on four main areas: access to support before crisis point; urgent and emergency access to crisis care; quality of treatment and care when in crisis; and recovery and staying well.

At Richmond Fellowship we already run a number of crisis services across England, providing support for people in the community as either an alternative option to an admission to hospital or as a step-down between an inpatient stay and returning home. We’re in discussions with a number of NHS trusts about working in partnership to provide more of these services around the country.

And our services on the ground are working with the local NHS, police and local authorities to develop joint plans of action for how we’ll work together to improve services.

Richmond Fellowship chief executive Derek Caren said: “We’re committed to playing our part in creating joined-up services that can truly provide the best possible care for people with mental health problems, especially in a crisis situation when individuals are at their most vulnerable.

“We know there is a lot of pressure on emergency and inpatient provision but at the same time we know that many individuals could be effectively supported in community settings. We’re keen to forge strong partnerships with local agencies on the ground so that together we can provide effective services that meet people’s needs.”

For more information about the concordat visit: www.crisiscareconcordat.org.uk

More than 90% of people using our services said they would recommend Richmond Fellowship to others

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More than 90% of people using our services said they would recommend Richmond Fellowship to others – that’s the findings of our latest service user satisfaction survey.

This is the third time we’ve organised the survey and the feedback we’re getting is helping us to continually improve our services.

A summary of the results called Listening and Learning has now been produced and highlights where we’ve done well and where we need to improve.

Positive feedback from the survey included:

  • We listen to individuals about their needs
  • We help them to make progress with their individual support plan
  • We help them to improve the quality of their life.

Areas where service users said we need to do better included:

  • We need to make it easier for people to give feedback or make a complaint
  • We need to respond more quickly and effectively to repairs and maintenance issues
  • Although most people said they feel safe and secure in our services, we need to do more for those living in our care homes and 24hr residential schemes.

The survey was open to anyone using our services and we received around 1,600 responses, nearly a quarter of all our service users.

Grazina Berry, our director of performance, quality and innovation, said: “Given that our philosophy is to put the people we support at the heart of everything we do, we’re especially pleased that most of of the people we support felt listened to about their needs. However, we know we’ve still got work to do to improve the way we handle comments, complaints and feedback and to make our property services better at organising repairs. We’re investing in both these areas to get things right.”

Stockport to pilot scheme to embed ‘People Powered Health’ principles

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Richmond Fellowship Stockport is piloting a scheme with the local council to embed ‘People Powered Health’ principles locally.

The team has been awarded £8,000 for three months by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council to help reduce the number of people with long term conditions needing an emergency hospital admission or presenting at A&E.

The pilot aims to ensure that the ‘People Powered Health’ principles of co-production, increasing peer/volunteer workforce and encouraging providers, service users and commissioners to work together to provide services that communities need, are embedded locally.

It also aims to improve people’s quality of life, reducing demand for formal health and social care services, including investment in the third sector and test a more cost effective model of working. The idea is to improve pathways to access support, including social crisis services.

Find out more about our Stockport services.

 

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Richmond Fellowship is part of Recovery Focus, a group of charities with the shared aim to Inspire Recovery Together www.recoveryfocus.org.uk

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