September 2013

In this month’s edition:

Countdown to cycle is on

Responses to your views on stratgey

New training calendar out

Ryan’s new blog

Experiences from the archive

Editor’s NoteDear all

We’ve been lucky this year with a glorious summer, but as it’s now September, there is a ‘back to school’ feel that signals that summer is sadly coming to an end...

With the holidays, brings slow or no news, so this is a slimmer edition than usual. But this won’t last for long as the next few months will be busy I’m sure. (Plus there’s only 113 sleeps until Christmas!!!)

In this issue, read about and show your support for our brave cyclists taking on the 54 mile challenge this weekend, but its for a good cause - our service users. Plus read the latest update on the new strategy and how your views have been used to shape the strategy’s objectives, as well as an insight into the archive office.

Make sure you keep telling us what you and your colleagues are up to - whether its organising an event or good successes - keep us informed and we’ll share it with everyone. Bye for now...

Laura WebbDevelopment and Marketing Officer

KCA Today

To make a suggestion or

contribution please contact:

Laura WebbDevelopment &

Marketing Officerlaura.webb@kca.org.uk

01795 594082

www.kca.org.uk@KCAUK

Equality & Diversity: September events5 - Rosh Hashanah (1st day) (Jewish )Jewish New Year. A two-day festival during which work is not permitted.7 - Fast of Gedalliah (Jewish )Fast in memory of the assassination of Gedalliah Ben Achikam, the Governor of Israel during the days of Nebuchadnetzar, King of Babylonia.8 - Nativity of the Theotokos (Christian ) Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Christian )Orthodox Christians celebrate the birth of the Virgin MaryRoman Catholic and Anglican churches celebrate the birth of Mary, mother of Jesus. 11 - Ethiopian New Year (Rastafari )14 - Yom Kippur (Jewish ) The Triumph of the Cross (Christian)Day of Atonement - the most solemn day of the Jewish year.Catholics and Orthodox Christians reflect on the salvation they believe inherent in the symbol of the Cross.19 - Sukkot (Jewish )Sukkot or The Feast of Tabernacles, commemorates the years that the Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land.22 - Autumn Equinox (Pagan )This day is celebrated when day and night are of equal duration.23 - Saint Pio of Pietrelcina (Catholic )Catholics honour the 20th century Italian stigmatist, popularly known as Padre Pio.25 - Hoshanah Rabbah (Jewish )The 7th day of Sukkot.26 - Shemini Atzeret (Jewish )Shemini Atzeret can be translated as “the assembly of the eighth (day).” In Israel the festival is combined with Simchat Torah.27 - Simchat Torah (Jewish )“Rejoicing in the Torah” - marks the completion of the yearly cycle of weekly Torah readings.29 - Michaelmas/St Michael, St Gabriel and St Raphael’s Day (Christian )A feast day in honour of the archangel Michael.

KCA Today September 2013

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Countdown to cycle is on...

• It’s back to school time. Make sure your kids (and your own) packed lunches are waste free by using tupperware instead of foil or cling film. • Take advantage of the last of the warm, light mornings and evenings and walk or cycle to work. • Use both sides of the paper in your notebook and you’ll get 50% more use out of each sheet!

Green Hints and Tips

Karen Tyrell, Director of Development and Marketing, said: “My name is Karen and I’m relatively new to cycling – the London to Brighton will be the furthest I have ever been in one day. I have two kids who love riding their bikes and I am pretty sure I will be thinking about their cheeky grins on the ride - they’ll be waiting for me at the end. It will be nice for them to be proud of their mum for something they love doing too. Any support you can add to theirs would be great – as I am a bit scared I might fall off!” http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/KarenTyrell Ryan Baigent, Specialist Prescribing Practitioner (Medway), said: “Hi there, I’m cycling to Brighton from London, I’ve set myself this challenge (foolishly!) to encourage myself to get fit. In doing so, I’m using this opportunity to further the lives of the service users of KCA. This is a great cause that can really help to improve the quality of life and the quality of service that we as an organisation are able to deliver. So please sponsor me!!! http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/RyanBaigent

Dr Michael Lowe, Clinical Director, said: “The last time I did anything involving exercise and charity giving was participating in a sponsored Night Moon Walk to raise money for Thurrock Mind in Essex. I remember the generous hospitality of non-alcoholic refreshments (tea and buns) at various community centres and church halls on the way and the surreal experience of Grays Beach at 3 a.m. The next day I was shattered probably because of the psychological effects of sleep deprivation! So raising money for Mental Health again during daylight hours has got to be better and I have been testing my children’s bikes in preparation for the big day. Please give to a very deserving cause.” http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MichaelLowe3

Karl Willams, former clinical lead for the Havering and Kent Prison’s IAPT services. Although Karl no longer works for KCA he is committed to taking part in the bike ride. He said: “This will be the first time I have completed the official London to Brighton run though is a keen cyclist and previously (when a little younger, fitter and possibly dafter) used to undertake occasional commutes to places as far away as Bath.” http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/KarlWilliams4

With only a few days to go, our keen cyclists are geering up for the 54 mile route to raise vital funds for service user activities.

The London to Brighton fundraising bike ride is on Sunday 8 September and we have four brave people taking part. We asked them to put together a few words about why they’ve taken on this amazing challenge. If you’re feeling generous, please follow the link to their fundraising pages and sponsor them – they will really appreciate anything you can give and your support will spur them on towards the finish line.

KCA Today September 2013

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KCA Today

Ryan’s new blog If you haven’t seen it yet, our very own Chief Executive is now writing his own blog to give us and the general public a unique insight into the challenges and issues that the charity and voluntary sector face.

The blog is a way to keep our service users, clients, stakeholders and partner agencies, and anyone else with an interest in Ryan and KCA regularly informed.

You can also add your comments and feedback on Ryan’s blog updates by using the comment function at the end of each blog entry.

Please have a read on our website and share amongst your colleagues and partner agencies if possible. You can also share it with your social media accounts to make sure it’s read by the masses.

Preventing the harmful use of drugs and alcohol through intervention initiatives and routes to recovery is a multi-factorial approach to effective treatment and is tightly linked with principles of innovation.

In order to meet these challenges, we have been revisiting our Innovation and Research strategy to enable us to actively develop a holistic innovation culture. Current projects that are progressed are sexual health, prescribing clinics for novel psychoactive substances (NPS), anger and irritability group treatments, long term conditions, rapid detoxification models, e-learning, the simultaneous cessation of smoking and use of alcohol, cannabis or opioids.

This last project is a perfect example of an innovative approach to a common topic. Smoking, goes beyond the physical addiction, it is also contextually conditioned. In this way, an attempt to give up smoking in isolation may be counter productive, other substances may be abused as an over-compensation, triggering re-commencement or weakening the resolve to quit smoking. Following a review of existing research, using the Cochrane methodology, we uncovered that while there is a body of work dealing with smoking cessation, there is a paucity of research with regards to simultaneous cessation techniques for tobacco, cannabis and/or opioids. This area is one of significant opportunity for future work using an innovative framework.

We firmly believe that the driving force behind innovation should come from KCA’s core, the people that make it possible daily and who have an insight into the service. Therefore we hope we will be hearing from many of you soon and would like to invite you all to take part in this exciting opportunity by sending your contributions to pavlo.kanellakis@kca.org.uk.

Thanks, Mike Nistor

Innovation and Research

September 2013 September2013KCA Today

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If you haven’t seen it yet, our very own Chief Executive is now writing his own blog to give us and the general public a unique insight into the challenges and issues that the charity and voluntary sector face.

The blog is a way to keep our service users, clients, stakeholders and partner agencies, and anyone else with an interest in Ryan and KCA regularly informed.

You can also add your comments and feedback on Ryan’s blog updates by using the comment function at the end of each blog entry.

Please have a read on our website and share amongst your colleagues and partner agencies if possible. You can also share it with your social media accounts to make sure it’s read by the masses.

Experiences from the ArchivesI thought the role was for an archaeologist – I like a bit of history and I didn’t mind getting my hands dirty. I thought digging for a few old bones might be interesting, if I were taught what I was looking at?! But I was sent to a warehouse in Ashford (in actual fact an old Nestle ice cream factory) and shown pallets and pallets worth of dilapidated boxes – some spilling out onto the floor, some damp and some containing a ceiling that had fallen through onto them whilst being stored at No. 38 in Ramsgate!

That was sixteen months ago and having realised the role was for an archivist and seeing that actually, I was still dealing with history, the only old bones I became aware of were my own – aching from the lifting of boxes and working in a cold environment day by day.

It took nine months to wade through the boxes and archive them to a retrievable standard (and for a good five months this included being helped by a team of

people at the warehouse). To paint a bit of a picture –in the first nine months, approximately 98,000 files were data cleansed, packed, bar coded, boxed and added to a web based database. Despite the relentless effort to achieve this, and having to create my own ‘Motivational Wheel’ to keep going, 98,000 files did not seem a lot, until my Line Man-ager pointed out that if I were to put a file on every seat at Wembley Arena, I would get the gist of how many that looked like!

Doing the work created a mix of emotions: recognising Managers’, Keyworkers and Service Users’ names and the memories attached to these names. It was hard to archive the files of those clients who had died but the odd finance box pulled me back to the current moment!

Today, we are a team of three, myself, Lynne Hunt and Christine Gordon. We are currently working on client files and other organisational data requiring to be archived as a result of the loss of the East Kent Tender – at least another 500 boxes to get through! Once this is complete, we will be undertaking an annual ‘clear up’ to free up storage space at each of the localities.

The system for retrievals has been successful for some time now and I believe there may be some system developments ahead. All in all, despite hours of relentless and mind numbing work, I feel that we are achieving a long awaited system for a client/data storage system. Hopefully the next step involves a bit of ICT and who knows, eventually achieving a paperless system! As for Archaeology – it would probably have proved to be a dead end job!

Sue Hood, Administrator – Archiving Team

A detailed response to the comments received to the Moving Forward strategy discussion is now available on the staff intranet.

There were a huge number of responses received, with many staff, and a small number of external agencies and individuals, giving their views on what they thought our services and priorities should focus on in its new Strategy for 2014-2017.

Many of the comments and ideas received have been incoporated into the new strategy. The corporate objectives have now been agreed by the Board of Trustees and the full strategy document will be available in the autumn.

Moving forward with the new strategy

New Training Calendar If there’s training you still want to do as part of your role, your induction, or for your professional development, now’s the time to book, as the new training calendar is out for September to December.

It’s jam packed with training ranging from Bomic, FIP, Induction and Safeguarding, just to name a few. See the new timetable which is now available on the staff intranet and download

Just complete the application form and email it to training@kca.org.uk and copy in your line manager. Places will be alloacted on a first come, first serve basis.

GoodbyesCarrina SuttonKCA waved goodbye to one of its longest serving employees, Carrina Sutton, Data Manager at the end of August.

Carrina was part of KCA’s furniture after working here for more than 17 years. She had worked in various roles and locations and was instrumental in the set up of Wandsworth IDAS.

Zara RahemtullaAnother leaver is Zara Rahemtulla, Substance Misuse Practitioner for Young Persons’ Services, who is off to embark on a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology with the University of Essex (only 8 people were selected out of thousands of applicants!).

Zara was also instrumental in establishing our Young Person’s Participation work (service user involvement). For such a little person she leaves big shoes to fill (we will miss her).

Zara Rahemtulla

What is Ask the Directors?For a number of years, we have given all staff, volunteers and service users the opportunity to speak directly to Directors of the organisation with any questions, comments or concerns regarding the organisation. Here’s a reminder of how it works…

Every month, a different Director hosts an open forum which enables you to ask them anything you like. You can pose your questions anonymously and there are no repercussions for tricky or awkward questions; the goal is to find out about your concerns and issues so that these can be tackled, not ignored or hidden. We encourage all staff and volunteers to use the forum and to promote it to our service users. Details of all the scheduled forums and the hosts are available on the ‘Ask the Directors’ tab on the staff intranet. After the event, any Q&As raised are posted (anonymously) on the intranet and, from now on, will also be included in KCA Today.

There are a number of ways that you can get in touch. You can phone it to the monthly forum or you can send in your questions at any time via the online form on the intranet, or by email to askthesmt@kca.org.uk.

Full information can be found on the Ask the Directors briefing paper, on the intranet. This month, Ask the Directors will be hosted by Dr Michael Lowe, Clinical Director and Caldicott Guardian on Tuesday 10 September at 3pm.