Tag Archives: mental health
Norfolk mental health call centre set to hire extra staff to cope with demand
Mental health chiefs in Norfolk are set to begin a recruitment drive after being surprised by the volume of patient referrals to a new service.
Adam Gretton, Health correspondent Tuesday, February 11, 2014
6:30 AM
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust (NSFT) started its access and assessment service almost a year ago to create a singe point of contact for GPs across the county.
But the mental health trust is looking to boost staffing numbers at its call centre at Hellesdon Hospital after missing referral targets.
The organisation, which has been redesigning services over the last two years, is looking to hire two band 6 level staff and two band 5 level staff to extend the opening hours of the service from five days a week to six.
Caring for the ill can cost you your freedom
It was 1996 and I had travelled to Bordeaux in France, with my sons, for a family wedding. My husband, Richard West, chose not to come along. That was OK by me: we were not one of those couples who did everything together and family weddings were not his gig. Richard’s gig, preferably, was being in Vietnam, or the Balkans, or anywhere, really: he’d been a foreign correspondent and wandering reporter all his life.
This was just before the era of the ubiquitous mobile phone, so I am not quite sure how the message reached me: but family networks were alerted and I received the instruction to ring London because Richard, then aged 66, was in hospital after a stroke. He was not in any danger but I needed to return to England as soon as possible. I remember thinking, “Our life is going to change: but I am not going to let this take over my life.”
Shock Norfolk social care shake-up after serious concerns raised
Serious concerns over the social care provided to adults with mental health issues has led to Norfolk County Council taking action
Dan Grimmer Monday, January 27, 2014
1:38 PM
Serious concerns that social care for adults with mental health issues in Norfolk is not good enough has led to the county council taking responsibility for the service away from the mental health trust.
Norfolk County Council’s cabinet agreed to the move at a meeting today, which will see just over a hundred staff who had been transferred to the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust five years ago go back to being managed from County Hall.
Issues around the service were aired at a meeting of the council’s community services overview and scrutiny panel in November.
Councillors at that meeting heard how, at one point, council bosses could not be confident the authority was fully meeting its legal obligations around care.
Bosses admitted then that the social care service for adults with mental health issues in Norfolk was not good enough, as they pledged to make improvements.
