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The Christmas period can be lonely and depressing for people who are
homeless or without a family. For the past 36 years, Crisis has provided
residential Christmas centres across London to provide some respite.
Under the banner of “Crisis Open Christmas” the centres provide
accommodation, hot food and a wide range of essential services that are
not normally available to homeless people and those who are vulnerably
housed.
Crisis was born as a charity 36 years ago to help the homeless. In 1971
COC volunteers took over a disused church in central London and provided
five days of food, warmth and companionship to over 1,000 people.
In the decades since then it has expanded its work significantly, doubling
the number of people helped to 2,000. Over the years COC has expanded
the range of services — especially health care services — available
to different groups, including vulnerable women and guests with alcohol
problems.
By 2003, Crisis had introduced learning and skills activities, transforming
it into a gateway to opportunity, which encouraged guests to engage positively
with support and to build a better life.
When I first volunteered in 2004, COC operated one main centre at the
London Dome, with three smaller satellite centres: one for women, one
for alcoholics and a quiet centre. The main centre offered medical services,
including primary health care, first aid, referral to secondary care,
access to opticians, podiatry, dental services and tuberculosis screening.
Supported
by a pharmaceutical team, the medical services were based in the main
centres, but a team was sent to the others daily
Last year COC provided seven centres to cater for different needs, staffed
by 6,000 volunteers. The main shelter of previous years was split into
four smaller “regional” centres, three of which offered overnight
sleeping, while the fourth was a day centre. There was a women’s
centre, an alcohol-addiction centre and another separate day centre,
making seven centres in all.
Each centre provided opportunities for guests to access specialist health
care and housing advice, and to learn new skills such as IT, numeracy,
literacy and arts and crafts. Help was provided for guests who wanted
to write CVs and find employment.
A health care logistics team co-ordinated medical and addiction services
from its base in the south regional centre. The centre was responsible
for ensuring that guests at the seven COC 2006 centres received suitable
health care through the use of mobile, multidisciplinary health care
teams. These consisted of doctors, pharmacists, general nurses and specialist
nurses.
Each day the teams visited the centres and the optical, podiatry and
dental services provided a mobile service staffed by qualified and experienced
volunteers. 2007: can you help?
This year we will operate the same system with the health care team
located in one of the larger centres offering a 24-hour service and sending
out teams consisting of reception staff, doctors, nurses and, we
hope,
pharmacists to the other centres up to twice a day.
The health care
centre will house the
dispensary and the teams will carry drug boxes, under the responsibility
of a pharmacist, along with dressings and other medical equipment.
Having retired from full-time work to become a part-time locum pharmacist,
I am now responsible, along with Ann Page from Bradford
University (see Panel below), for co-ordinating
the pharmaceutical services for COC 2007. We need help in three key
areas:
• Medicines We operate a restricted formulary consisting of a restricted
list of antibiotics, pain relief, asthma relief, skin preparations,
symptom relief for minor ailments, and a small amount of emergency
drugs, but
no benzodiazepines (except rectal diazepam) or hypnotics. We hope
to use only patient packs (that is 16s of paracetamol) where possible.
We need donations of drugs and containers to use as drug boxes.
• Cash donations If we cannot get sufficient medicines donated we
will need to purchase our medical supplies.
• Volunteers With seven (or possibly eight) centres this year, we
would like to be able to send a pharmacist out in every medical team.
With
a restricted formulary the expertise of the pharmacist in deciding
the most appropriate medicine is vital. Feedback from pharmacist volunteers last year was positive, and doctors,
nurses and guests appreciated their advice. We need specialised volunteers,
including pharmacists, doctors (and other prescribers) nurses, and reception
staff.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact
us.
Pharmacists are key players in
the Crisis health teams
Pharmacist Ann Page, joint co-ordinator for COC 2007 pharmaceutical
services, writes:
“I volunteered to help at Crisis Open Christmas
for the first time in 2005. I live in Leeds, so COC in London might
not be the obvious place to spend Christmas, but I wanted to use
my skills and Crisis gives me the chance to do that.
“I stay with friends over the COC week or in the subsidised
volunteer accommodation that Crisis organises. The work is fun
and very rewarding.
I have learnt a lot and made a lot of new friends.
“Pharmacists fulfil a really important role on the team. It
involves more than dispensing medication and offering advice to prescribers.
We are often the logistics person on the team: the one who knows
how to fill in the paperwork and where you might get hold of bottles
of saline for irrigation on Boxing day.
“We would like to have enough pharmacist volunteers so that
no health care team is left without our advice and input when prescribing
for and treating guests, so if you can spare a couple of days over
Christmas this year, please get in touch.” |
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The
Pharmaceutical Journal