Caithness Network Newsletter
2nd Edition - Winter 2003

Welcome to the Winter Edition of the Caithness Network Newsletter!  The focus of this season’s edition is the redesigning of Caithness Community Health Services.  Plenty of work has occurred since our initial newsletter and we very much want to share the great progress we’ve been making!

Continuing to improve Communications locally!

Getting our news out in better ways remains an issue we want to continually improve.

The first obvious step we’ve taken is to partner our community distribution with our local community paper E’scorrie. This means we can use an already trail blazed great distribution network created by E’Scorrie. We are very grateful to E’scorrie for this opportunity and thank them very much.

The second development since our first newsletter is the website www.farnortherners.net . This site is designed to carry useful information, as well as get news out quick and to enable people to become more involved in their health locally, in a positive way.

Planning Our Way Ahead -TOGETHER!

Caithness.org and Bill Fernie has also agreed to work closer with us, enabling us to use a very successful, nationally award winning site. Thank you for your help Caithness.org.

And finally, we now have the Caithness Strategic Redesign Group, more about this over the page.

Caithness Patients, Public & Professionals
partnering to redesign Caithness Community Health Services

Caithness Strategic Redesign Group
Supporting the active involvement of the people of Caithness in the redesign of their Community Health and Social Work Services.

Currently, there are four service areas being worked on:

• Mental Health

• Learning Disabilities

• Older Adults

• Children’s Services

• …more about these later…

The Caithness Strategic Redesign Group is made up of those leading on each of the above service areas. This should ensure communication and co-ordination across the service areas. Furthermore, Highland Health Council is represented by it’s two Caithness members, as too Caithness Community Care Forum, Caithness Highland Council elected members, Caithness Area Highland Council, Caithness Social Work and Caithness Local Health Care Co-operative.

We’ve tried to make this group broad as well as workable with recommendations being made through consensus.

And how will these recommendations be known? Through Caithness Network Newsletter, www.farnortherners.net , Caithness.org and minutes to group members, staff members, Highland Health Council, Caithness Community Care Forum and press releases.

Every two months the Caithness Strategic Redesign Group will review the progress made in the four service areas currently being redesigned.

This group will be looking at progress made, project proposals and for potential project overlaps.

Overall responsibility will rest with the Caithness Strategic Redesign Group in making sure that all the redesign projects being worked on are in line with local, regional and national strategies and policies. The Group will also take responsibility for the prioritisation of projects and making recommendations for the allocation of funds.

The Caithness Strategic Redesign Group will be providing a Caithness focus for the redesigning of Caithness Social Work and Community Health Services. The group will ensure that Caithness patients/clients, public and practitioners are actively involved in the development of the plans for the redesign of Caithness Services. Furthermore, that the plans developed from this redesign process are coherent, transparent and integrated, ensuring a consultative process for these plans to be utilised by the statutory agencies locally

Place of Safety
Place of safety to be fully operational in the New Year.

People have been recruited to staff the place of safety in Caithness and are currently undergoing further training.

The final ‘walk through’ of each of the two facilities is planned to take place in the next few weeks.

The Place of Safety planning group working on this project need be commended on their hard work over the last two years in setting up these places of safety - very well done!

Housing & Accommodation
The Caithness Area Committee recognises that housing is an issue for someone with mental health problems.

Accommodation will now be provided in line with an allocation policy that builds on joint working with the Caithness community mental health team.

The Housing & Accommodation planning group have decided to visit Birchwood Housing to benefit from Birchwood’s experience and approach to mental health issues.

Also proposed by this planning group is the development of a handy person scheme for people with mental health problems. This was agreed as a very useful and much needed local service.

Social Inclusion
Mental health users in Caithness with help from the Community Mental Health Support Group are developing their own web site.

Currently bids are in for the cost of the site and for the IT Equipment.  We hope to hear soon if they are successful.

The next stage will be an open meeting with key stakeholders and mental health support groups in Caithness to further develop the web site including: agreements on content site and “chat” facility monitoring.

A training plan has been developed with Training And Guidance, with an identified link person, to provide training for service users on how to use the internet and maintain the web site.

Respite Services for those with Dementia
Those involved in older adult and respite will soon be asked for their comments to the draft business case for the development of this service.

Caithness Learning Disabilities Planning Group
Service users, carers and staff continue to drive the planning of Caithness Learning Disabilities Services with great energy and enthusiasm.

Two current service users and a community nurse have recently represented Caithness and provided a presentation at a Highland wide event. The presentation was about their experience of being part of the Caithness planning groups for Learning Disability Services.

The “Services for People With Learning Disabilities in Caithness” questionnaire will allow a further opportunity for people with learning disabilities and their carers to inform the picture of how learning disability services in Caithness will look in the future. Funding had been secured for the Caithness Learning Disabilities Nurse to assist people with the completion of their questionnaire on a one-to-one basis.

Work on the Grant Street property had been agreed and will provide respite services for people in Caithness. A proposal to utilise the top floor of the premises as a short-term hostel was also discussed and will be discussed further at the Housing & Social Work Committee in November.

Rapid Response
Rapid Response hopes to give people what’s needed to remain at home, when at all possible, during short bouts of illness. Those over 65 will gain from this new service.

A survey was undertaken over a four-week period to find out what services would need to be offered locally. We are now waiting for the results…

Multi-disciplinary Team Day Care
Working together Day Centres & Health Professionals are developing opportunities for health within Caithness Day Centres. Examples of this are; continence advice session, music & movement and are currently looking at preventing falls and nurse led clinics.

Joint Equipment
The old changing rooms adjacent to the Physiotherapy department at the Dunbar Hospital have been highlighted as an area for a joint Health Social Work store in Thurso, with somewhere in Wick still to be located.

On completing training all staff carrying out Single Shared Assessments will be able to access some equipment without referral to an occupational therapist avoiding duplication for patients and allowing occupational therapists to focus on more complex assessments.

Home Care
Foot care sessions for Home Carers is due to start in October, further improving the Podiatry Service for Users in Caithness with these sessions being available in the future to family/informal carers and other organisations.