Publish date: 10 October 2018
The Grenfell Health and Wellbeing service (made up of the Outreach Team, Children’s Service and Therapy) continues to offer support and evolves to do so.
The Night Service was set as an emergency response and has been running from the Notting Hill Methodist Church for over a year – usually with one nurse available to talk to people; originally there were also staff from Hestia there and counsellors from drug and alcohol agencies. A very small number of people – 8 – used the service (though we did have more people who came on the night of the anniversary). Therefore due to low level of attendance and the fact we are moving into the recovery phase of the response we felt it appropriate to create a more targeted service for those who need it moving forward.
We’re proposing to make this a dedicated telephone service (directly to two nurses on the Grenfell Outreach Team) as we know that talking to an NHS professional is a very good way of supporting someone; if a crisis response is needed and a home visit we will organise a visit to see them.
We are speaking directly to the people who have used the service about how they can be supported from here.
Like many other services in the emergency phase, we set up a table at The Curve for people to drop-by during the day. We usually had one person – sometimes two. However its use has fallen considerably to virtually no one. As part of the recovery phase, six months ago we set up a therapy service on the top floor of The Curve that is staffed five days per week, Monday to Thursday 8am-8pm and Friday 8am to 5pm. In addition the Outreach Team continue to have a presence in The Curve where they provide groups and therapy as well as supporting the delivery of activities. The Curve also wanted to use the space differently and we were the last to move.
Anyone can still go to The Curve and ask our staff, on the second floor, or Curve staff to contact us, or better still, people can contact Outreach direct and we will respond speedily - 020 8962 4393.
We have expanded our service to support the witnesses at The Inquiry (to see them before during and after their testimony). https://www.cnwl.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/Grenfell_Hestia_InquiryDoc.pdf
We have people in complex case management by the Outreach team; people with mixed psychological and social issues, or mixed psychological and physical health issues and people who are not yet ready for therapy but still need support. At any one time we will have around 115 – 150 people in this category.
We have some patients under our care who had existing long-term mental health problems prior to Grenfell and whose mental state was adversely affected by Grenfell. There have been 126 of these to date.
Screening involves using a short standardised set of questions to identify people who are likely to have trauma spectrum disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Up to the end of August we have screened 2,674 adults and 463 children; 1,108 people have entered psychological therapy for trauma related conditions and/or complex grief.)