Healthcare policy increasingly points towards more care in the community. The language is positive. Collaboration. Partnership. Co-production. Person-centred care. Recovery. But I wonder, do we really understand what community care looks like now? How can we improve something if we don’t properly understand its starting point? Community care is not just a policy. It is parents lying …
A Family’s Journey Through Mental Illness, Loss and a System That Failed Him There are moments in life that divide time into “before” and “after.” For my family, that moment came when we lost my brother to suicide. Years later, we are still living with the consequences. Not only the grief of …
I was just navigating the system on my own. No-one explained the risks to me. When it gets to crisis, it’s too late. Mrs Calocane’s testimony is devastating to hear. But are we truly appreciating the cumulative effect of years of a loving mother trying to navigate an opaque, fragmented system? This is not …
I didn’t find out until after my daughter died that she had taken six overdoses in the weeks before her death and asked for help. I didn’t know she had phoned the crisis team to tell them she had tried to take her life. I didn’t know that she had …
I get jealous sometimes. The freedom my friends have when talking about their children. Justifiably proud mother hens, their pride gentle and understated. No one is judging them. No one is second-guessing. If they walked up to a stranger and said, “My children are wonderful,” it would probably be met with a …
New resources for people bereaved by suicide: please pass on these details to anyone who might benefit. Each year, more than 700,000 people die by suicide worldwide. In the UK, it is around 7,000 – making it the biggest cause of death for people aged 20–34 and for men under 50.
Since working with Making Families Count, writing blogs, presenting webinars, helping to run training sessions, even appearing on the radio, people have said to me they don’t know how I do it, even that I am brave to do so. That surprises me. I don’t consider myself the slightest bit …
Making Families Count is running two events for families on 18 or 27 November. The events are for families to help to shape our agenda to improve the NHS. For further information and to book a place, please click here.
We are excited to announce that the Board has decided we should focus our future efforts in 2 key areas: The Board appointed Julie Kerry as Chair and Dorit Braun as Chief Executive to drive this work forward. We will be recruiting further Board members and establishing initial online discussions …