By Sharon Sharman, Learning & Evaluation Manager, VOICES The VOICES citywide partnership learning programme continues to engage professionals and services from across Stoke-on-Trent.  In 2018 we achieved delivery of: Working with Expert Citizens C.I.C. we also codesigned and co delivered bespoke workshops with specialist teams:  these included engaging with Consultants, Nursing Teams, Administration and Occupational Therapy Teams within the Accident and Emergency Department at Royal Stoke Hospital and, more recently, the Stoke and Staffordshire Adult Safeguarding Board.   All our learning events offer delegates the opportunity to provide feedback, including ideas for future events.  People who attended last years’ events requested further opportunities to better understand mental ill health and ‘trending drugs’ as well as preventing death by drugs.  We have responded to these requests by commissioning high quality courses that meet these requirements.   New courses can be viewed on the VOICES website at https://www.voicesofstoke.org.uk/learning/   If you have requested your details to be added to our learning contact list, you will receive automatic notifications of new opportunities.  If you are not currently on our list, you can request to be included by contacting me directly at [email protected]    … Continue Reading

By Steven Talbot Steven is an independent deliverer of training, who contributes to the VOICES learning programme It is often the case that when we attend training, we hear anecdotal stories of customers and service users and what we, the ‘WORKERS’, have done or could do to support them.  We’re frequently told by very clever people what we can do to support people.  We nod along, munch away on our buffet, (‘delightful!’) and make our notes and think, ‘Well wasn’t that nice’ and return to work.  Sometimes we put what we have learned into practice and other times we revert back to type, we’re stressed, we’re ambivalent, we’re set in our ways and anyhow, we remind ourselves that we do a very good job. We hear on the news of the hundreds of people left waiting in corridors at A and E and it leaves us feeling that the NHS is in dire straits.  We read about chronic under funding and we are enraged.  Then we vent on Facebook and Twitter or sigh and tut and discuss with our friends, ‘How has it got to this?’  To put it bluntly, it is quite difficult to empathise with a statistic. When we hear the… Continue Reading

Author: Dean Spruce, Comms & Media, VOICES Naloxone Training Last week the VOICES team received vital training from Stoke on Trent Community Drug and Alcohol Service alongside NHS Combined Healthcare about Naloxone, the emergency antidote for overdoses caused by heroin and other opiates/opioids (such as methadone, morphine and fentanyl). The main life-threatening effect of heroin and other opiates is to slow down and stop breathing. Naloxone blocks this effect and reverses the breathing difficulties. Naloxone is a prescription-only medicine and cannot therefore be sold over the counter. It can however be supplied without prescription by drug services and can be used by anyone to save a life in an emergency. Delivered by Stuart Fisher, Steve McDonald and Allan Sargent the training talked the team through how the antidote works on the body and what to do in an emergency situation, including the safe administering of the drug. Following a short test all who attended were issued with a certificate and an emergency Naloxone kit to be carried whilst working on the front line and out in the community. Since December 2016, 500 kits have been distributed by the trio and to date there have been 13 known (recorded) reversals from overdose. In addition to… Continue Reading