Star Wards praises Trafford's Moorside Unit
Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust’s Moorside Unit in Trafford was recently praised by a national campaign group for its work to improve inpatient care.
Star Wards, which works with mental health wards to discover, celebrate, share, publicise and inspire excellence in inpatient care, described Moorside’s Recovery-Based Activity Team, based at Trafford General Hospital, as ‘wonderful’.
A Star Wards spokesman said: “We love activities on wards – mainly because we know that patients and staff get so much good stuff from attending and hosting them.
“Good stuff like feeling part of a community, getting some relief from boredom, making connections with others and just good old fashioned fun. We are always on the lookout for people who share our passion and go about tweaking what they offer to patients. We hear that there are interesting things going on in Greater Manchester with their wonderful Recovery-Based Activity team. Good luck to your wonderful and inspiring team.”
Sarah Holtom, In-patient Senior Practitioner at GMMH’s Moorside Unit, explained some of the work going on: “We are lucky to work within Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, which is an organisation that is recovery-focused and supports recovery-based activity. We have a Recovery-Based Activity Team on our unit, responsible for facilitating and delivering an activity programme for our service users.
“Volunteers play a significant role in the delivery of activity on our unit and are valued members of our team. The volunteers facilitate activities in the activity room, supported by our Volunteer Co-ordinator.
“People who currently use our services, or have used them in the past, also have the opportunity to join our volunteer team. The remainder of the recovery-based activity team consists of support time and recovery staff, occupational therapists and ward staff, who also run activities on our wards.
“The unit and ward-based activities that we provide are evaluated in monthly recovery-focused activity meetings, using feedback from our patients about activities in ward meetings, and other feedback methods.
“We are also currently in the process of setting up structured recovery groups, run by our practitioner for personality disorder, drug and alcohol services, other external support agencies, peer support mentors, and staff trained in psycho-social interventions.
“Service users in our monthly Patient Council meetings also requested monthly mutual help events with guest speakers. These sessions involve someone from the Trust or external agencies coming to the unit to present information about a topic relevant to the patients.”
To read more about the unit, click HERE.
Some members of recovery-based activity team (from left) : Phillipa (Volunteer), Vicky (OT), Rhona (Volunteer Co-ordinator) and John (Support Time Recovery Worker).
A message left by a patient on one of the wards as part of the Safe Wards initiative
