What We Do

Our Mission Statement

Our aims are:

• To give a voice to mental health service users in the Canterbury and coastal locality;
• To educate the public and promote awareness of mental health problems;
• To make community care work.

Patients Council

Holding ward meetings with patients in St Martin’s Hospital, Canterbury; – A chance for patients to record comments, or make proposals and inform the managers on what’s needed to improve the quality of their time in hospital.

Representation

We get mental health service users involved in decision-making, so that service users views are represented in service planning meetings; -improving how people with mental health problems are cared for. The Forum is commissioned by Social Services to enable the need framed in Section 11 of the Health and Social Care Act 2001. which obliges NHS Trusts and Authorities to make arrangements to involve and consult patients, either directly or through representatives, in service planning & development.

Research and Lobbying

On mental health issues. We have organised Evaluation projects on aspects of service provision. Through this work, Service users can be empowered by taking the key role of identifying what needs to change ~ & thus help meet statutory services’ declared aspiration for “a patient led NHS” We lobby the Canterbury MP, and others, on issues around mental health provision, and the draft Mental Health bills.

NSUN

Canterbury & District Mental Health Forum (CaDmhf) have been commissioned by the National Survivor User Network to support and run a south east region service user network. We will be seeking to ‘map’ the user ‘movement’ in the south east; we will produce a south east region network Newsletter to share information and gather views and we will enable further capacity building through a Media training event for mental health service users.