Into Autumn and Exciting Times AheadI hope like me, you have returned to work after a refreshing holiday energised and ready for what the remainder of the year has in store. Whilst many friends and colleagues braved temperatures of over 40 degrees, I spent my time in England - climbed Blencathra, cycled a few tracks in the Grizedale Forest, and… (not wishing to be labelled a wimp by the rest of my clan) put on a harness and did the ‘Tarzan Leap’ at the Go Ape Centre near Windermere. All immense fun and I was grateful for the time to rest and reflect, time with family and friends, time to be bold and “be a little healthier”.
Feeling fulfilled and being healthy are aspirations for so many and WISMS works every day to help clients achieve the “best of health”. This is, as we know, so much “more than methadone” – it’s about supportive families and relationships, having stable employment and feeling part of a strong community; yet for many complex clients suffering health inequalities and exclusion the task may only be achieved through expert professional guidance and partnership working with and between a wide number of agencies.
Our Services, Our Future, Your Say – Whilst I was taking a much needed break the WISMS Admin Team, Sarah and Ursula, service users from the newly established WISMS “User Forum” and our project manager, Bridget Gill have been working hard to prepare for the WISMS Social Enterprise Stakeholder Event on 7th September 2007…. Click here for further details. What do we hope the event will achieve? The core function of the day is to come together and share the findings of the service review, consider our accomplishments and discuss aspirations. The messages from the review can be summed up in the three Es –  Engagement
Enthusiasm Energy All in plentiful supply and this, we hope will help us meet our aims and tackle the inevitable challenges ahead The event is a significant milestone in the WISMS journey and we are delighted so many of our partners are able to join us in shaping the project and contributing ideas… But we don’t want the involvement to end here. The event is just the catalyst for the creation of a project mandate and what will eventually be the outline business case and options appraisal for a new provider model. The project mandate will serve as a focus for service users and carers, community groups and professionals who through the website links and other modes of communication will be encouraged and signposted to access information and updates on project progress, post contributions and feedback during what we hope will be an interactive and inclusive staff consultation period Many of the attendees at the event will have contributed to the overarching service review, the results of which have been published – Click here to see the exec report We are grateful to the consultancy team at Elision Health for their expert facilitation and we look forward to hearing more about their leadership development course which will be open to a number key professionals working in WISMS later in the year.
So what have we all been doing since my last blog?The drugs field continues to be a focus of intense political and social debate. There are currently a number of important national and local consultations of direct relevance to our client group including the Home Office led consultation on the new drugs strategy snappily titled “Drugs - Our Community Your Say…” (Ring any bells?!) WISMS will be contributing to this along with the consultation on the National Clinical Guidelines Update 2007 to which I have had the privilege of contributing. Our Service User Forum goes from strength to strength and as well as making a significant contribution to the stakeholder event on 7th September 2007 the service user led research project on diverted medication has been very positively received by commissioners and several articles and an abstract have emerged from this work – (fingers crossed for names in lights in the journals and conferences this year). My thanks to Dave Evans and Gill Dunnington for their work on this. I look forward to many more such user led projects.  Pats on the back all round – first to all for the contributions made toward our Grade 3 in the recent Health Care Commission Improvement Review (Harm Reduction and Commissioning) and on making such significant improvements in NDTMS reporting, especially care planning targets. Early indications are we are on course for another significant uplift in numbers in treatment.
.Congratulations to Turning Point whose new ‘CarePath IT’ system has delivered an almost flawless first NDTMS reporting for the partnership. Other highlights are the commencement of the Alcohol Treatment Requirement in partnership with Turning Point and West Yorkshire Probation – supporting early access to treatment for harmful and dependent drinkers who have committed an alcohol related criminal offence and our above target response in the Local Area Agreement for Alcohol in the district.
Over 16 practices participated in the RCGP Alcohol Screening and Brief Interventions training and are now working with WISMS to implement an alcohol local incentive scheme
The Mental Health Partnership Board has been shortlisted to access a leadership for change programme that will offer resources and investment to support mental health specific service development for Wakefield’s BME community. Turning Point’s BME worker has been identified as best practice and WISMS will be contributing to the panel visit If it’s been quiet in the prisons recently it’s because the team members of the Substance Misuse Unit, headed up by Gail Coupland, have been working with the PCT and The Health Informatics team to become one of the first prisons in the country to implement the NHS Connecting for Health compliant System 1. WISMS will follow suit later in the year with System 1 implementation for the NHS component of the integrated care pathways I could go on and mention the Well Being Nursing Team who, on completion of their a well being training through Lilly, have developed an action plan to implement their new care pathways Find out how progress is being made to improve the hepatitis screening and vaccination targets in the link under ‘Service Views’. Our thanks to Pat Deakin at the PCT who is assisting us develop Patient Specific Directions and John Coates and Viv Richardson at Lilly for sponsoring the training programme Congratulations to Ceri Evans who will be our first Pharmacy Supplementary Prescriber having graduated in the Summer. The pilot scheme which is a partnership with the Shared Care Team and Rolands Pharmacy will commence in October 2007. Good luck to Sandra Mcdade who is hoping to qualify as an Independent Nurse Prescriber for the Alcohol Team later in the year and join the other independent nurse prescribers in WISMS - specialist midwife Caroline Weldon and Nurse Specialist to the Secure Environment, Gail Coupland. Tosh Owen, WISMS Liaison Nurse to the Acute Trust, is currently representing myself and the RCGP in a piece of work with the Medical Council on Alcohol who are redesigning their successful but now out of date ‘Alcohol Handbook for Doctors’. Tosh will be feeding in his work with Mid Yorkshire where he has developed an alcohol detoxification and aftercare pathway Finally for this blog I must mention Sean McDaid, the WISMS Nurse Consultant in Dual Diagnosis, who is leading on the South West Yorkshire Mental Health Trust response to the NICE psychosocial guidelines for opiate misuse. I will also take this opportunity to mention the leadership he has shown in managing the Residential Rehabilitation Panel now in its fourth year which has enabled numerous clients to access the necessary funding to support personalised packages of care. This key multi-agency panel often goes unnoticed but is about to have the spotlight placed on it as next years healthcare commission review will be focussing on residential care for substance misuse. If you would like to find out more about service development across WISMS since my last blog you will find a comprehensive overview month by month in my back catalogue of Clinical Director Updates to the Commissioning Board by clicking the link at the top of the page Kevin Holdridge and his web design team at Kent House have been working to a tight deadline to update the website and enhance its functionality. I hope that once you have read this you will take time to navigate the site and spot the new additions. Our soon to be implemented monthly website “clinics” will serve to keep the site – YOUR SITE – up to date and I am grateful to all who have and continue to contribute to make the site as interactional and informative as it can be. The autumn is a time of change so it is fitting that WISMS enters an intense period of change heralded by the rich colours of autumn – I am confident that we will rise to the challenges ahead and thank you for all the hard work that is being done to help individuals across WISMS achieve their goals After the rainiest season in living memory, let’s hope for a well deserved ‘Indian Summer’! Linda |
