Mental health champion, Cllr Michael Lilley, shares this latest news. Ed
Today (1st February 2018) is Time to Talk Day, organised by Time for Change, a national programme calling for change in taboo attitude towards mental health.
Michael Lilley, Green Isle of Wight councillor for Ryde East, has been a campaigner for improved mental health services in the United Kingdom and Worldwide for over 40 years and continues to campaign on the Island. This week he attended a meeting at Aspire community project in Ryde of a group of local residents who had lived experience of mental health issues. He was moved to talk out.
Our mental health services are broken
Cllr Lilley says,
“Time to Talk is an opportunity to talk the truth, and the truth on the Isle of Wight is that our mental health services are broken. There has been a past denial within the public sector for many years and Islanders have paid a serious cost and infringement of their basic human rights.
“One thing we should celebrate from this grim truth is that at last the public sector, the IW NHS Trust, IW Clinical Commissioning Group and Isle of Wight Council are now publicly saying this. It took the CQC (Care Quality Commission) to rate our mental health services as Inadequate last year for the truth to come out.”
New blueprint for mental health services
The NHS IW Clinical Commissioning Group presented a new blueprint for mental health services to IW Council’s Adult Social Care and Health Policy and Scrutiny Committee at its 22nd January meeting. This plan, if implemented, would radically change services.
Councillor Lilley calls for Truth, Reconciliation, Listening, Apologies and Hope:
“I celebrate the new team of committed mental health professionals who are starting to implement changes, but I still hear daily tragic stories of how Island citizens have lived with poor services for so long they have lost any belief that things will improve.
“They have lost hope. The reality is all these changes are being made in a backdrop of major cuts to services. We need a truth and reconciliation Citizen’s panel on the Island where people can really talk and share their pain and real lived experience. We need the heads of services to publically apologise for the past so that people can move forward.
“We need not just change, but revolution and the people need to be in charge of their own services and lives. We have to start giving back genuine hope.”
Share your stories with Mental Health Champion
Isle of Wight Council in 2017 signed up to the Local Authority Mental Health Challenge which states the Council proactively listens to people of all ages and backgrounds about what they need for better mental health.
IW Council appointed Cllr Clare Mosdell to be the Council’s First Mental Health Champion.
Cllr Lilley, who advocated for the Council to sign up to the challenge, calls for all local residents who wish to talk and have a story and view about mental health services to contact Claire as she is there to listen.
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