>>Shirley McNicholas: I am Shirley McNicholas and I am the Women’s lead for Camden and
Islington Foundation Trust and the Founder of Drayton Park Crisis House. I started working
in mental health in 1987 in a big old psychiatric hospital and really through my training and
through my experience did not feel that any of these ways of working with people was the
way I’d work with people. So I worked and I as a Ward Manager and I ran a day hospital
and various things and I was fortunate enough and in 1994 I was approached to develop two
crisis houses, one of which was Drayton Park.
So I founded an advisory group of women who use services and men who were committed to
providing women an alternative to hospital.
>>Dr Stella Fremi: I’ve been working at Drayton Park for almost seven years and what I like the most is that
we treat each and every woman as an individual, not as someone who occupies a bed.
>>Shirley McNicholas: I think there are some real benefits in having an alternative to hospital for many people
who prefer to stay in a residential crisis house as opposed to staying in hospital but
they are not in competition with each other. So crisis houses like crisis teams are alternatives
to hospital admission they are not an equivalent of an in-patient admission.
>>Dr Stella Fremi: There are some women who suffer and endure mental health problems that might need to
either need to go to a hospital or any other crisis house and they are not able to do that
because they don’t have the female only option to feel safe.
>>Shirley McNicholas: Luckily, in terms of the Trust, no body in the Trust has ever said, actually there should
be a mixed team. Why is it a woman only team. There’s never been an appetite to create
women only teams in other service but there hasn’t been any challenge about a woman
only team. There are kind of myths about, men aren’t welcome here, men aren’t allowed,
everybody here is a lesbian or laughed at the notion as we do a lot of body work here.
We have two massage therapists who are fantastic trauma informed massage therapists who do
really good body work and made comments about you know ‘ I suppose massage cures schizophrenia’
that kind of thing - which really has stopped but we really had to kind of put up with that
till we proved that we are a robust, safe service.
>>Andy: They don’t treat you like a diagnosis, they treat you like a person. They want to hear
about your story rather than what’s wrong with you.
>>Shirley McNicholas: 12 women can stay at Drayton Park at any one time, up to 4 children can stay here. Obviously
there is a turn over so in an average month there would be at least 20 women who would
come to stay, because obviously people are staying for a shorter time as far as possible.
The admission process really we have to start with a referral process so throughout the
day anybody can pick up the phone and self refer or make a professional referral to Drayton
Park. As a crisis house you need to take referrals 24 hours a day. The team are hearing about
the referral and doing that within the trauma informed model that we work from and if we
feel and hear from that referral that a woman is in crisis then we would offer an assessment
as soon as we can. As a crisis house and as any crisis house, you cannot work very much
with people who are feeling like hurting someone else because women come and stay voluntarily
with capacity and consent. So really most of the time all the women who are staying
at Drayton Park are feeling like they’d like to end their lives or they are depressed
to the point where they can’t take care of themselves in the moment and lots of women
have experienced urges to self harm.
>>Resident: They collaborate well, very professional, give you one to one sessions where needs to
be. They are kind and responsive and they look out for you during your course here.
Every woman who stays here is offered two one-to-ones during the day. The cornerstone
to any therapeutic intervention is one to one time not so much group time. To do kind
of group time or pure group work, you really need to establish people getting to know each
other. In a crisis house, there is a high turnover. So the model is, all the women,
if you were staying here, all the women are offered a one to one in the morning and then
in the afternoon and all those one to one sessions will be about ‘ I am losing my
housing benefits..’ really intense practical things that are incredibly stressful but also
might be revealing details of childhood sexual abuse, talkign about current domestic violence.
The one to ones are therapeutic and practical really what the woman needs to talk about
to recover from the crisis.
We try and think outside of the mental health system, so in Camden and Islington area it’s
a very rich, resourced area with lots of creativity, lots of alternative services. So really trying
to enrich that woman’s life and introduce new ideas because really that’s how we can
take care of all our mental health.
>>Resident: I do recommend it immensely and people take advantage of it because we want as many clients
coming through it as possible so the system doesn’t get stopped or closed down.
There is a new time, a new culture where the CQC being interested in sexual safety and
new drive to the women’s mental health taskforce strategy document has just been released.
So I think it;s time for relooking at how we provide women’s mental health services
and I hope there will be more Drayton Parks.