THE NUHSPAPER

APRIL 2012ISSUE 2 VOL 1

THE NEWTOWN UNION HEALTH SERVICE INFORMATION NEWS SHEET

ILLUSTRATED EVENTS

MEETING NOTICEA public communtiy meeting is to be held at the Newtown School, the pro-posed date is Thursday 3 May. The focus of this meeting will be to discuss the change to service fees and cut’s to services. Local MP Annette King will be present at the discussion. DATE AND VENUE TO BE CONFIRMED.

MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING

NUHS once again had a stall at the annual Newtown Street Fair on 4 March, surviving the blasts of wind and the squalls of rain. It was good to be seen (and heard!) as part of the Newtown community.

Hundreds of balloons were giv-en out, and entries in a draw for a free basket of fruit and vegetables attracted people to the stall, where we promoted health screening – breast, cervical and heart checks.

Thanks to Kellie Poutu and Louise Beckingsale from WellHealth, and Lesley Shaw, Cindy Schmidt and Bryony Hales from NUHS. Areta from Strathmore won the fruit and vegetables. See you next year!

Last March Anzac came to the clinic for his 4 year old immunization injections. Sometimes these appointments can be quite upsetting and kids get offered something to take home like a sticker or an occasionally a small toy. A few weeks later Anzac returned with his Mum to donate a bag of toys to NUHS, Anzac had gone home and found some of his toys to gift. He also thought he didn’t have many ‘girl’ type

toys to gift. His mum said he made her go to the $2 shop with him to pur-chase some ‘girl toys’ before they came and dropped them off. A huge Thank You to Anzac for being so caring.

In each issue of The NUHSpaper a different team from NUHS will be in-troduced to the communtiy, and iden-tify some of the jobs they do. In this issue the Mental Health(MH) team is under the spotlight.

The MH Team centres around nurses Cindy Schmidt and Kieran Monaghan, and doctors Pauline Horrill and Jona-than Kennedy. Monitoring a register of almost 400 people, the team works to help people with past and present ex-periences of signifi cant mental illness access the appropriate care for both physical and mental health. A lot of at-tention is given to physical health and wellbeing, as the consequences of some of the medications prescribed can be increased risk of developing diabetes and increased weight gain for example.

Outreach clinic’s are held at The Hope Centre and The Clubhouse, to improve access to health care to this population.

Dr Paul French, a psychiatrist from the South Community Mental Health Team, visits NUHS twice a month to hold clinic appointments, assessment and medication re-views. This is an effective way to help people manage in the commu-nity, in the familiarity of the NUHS clinic, and maintain continuity of care with the clinic’s clinicians.

The MH Team works alongside many other services: housing, speciality health, emergency and justice, advocacy, exercise and employment services and more.

Ua o gatasi le futia ma le umele.We must be of one mind in the undertaking.While the fi sherman swings the rod, the others must assist by paddling hard.

NEWTOWN FAIR

THANKS ANZAC!

The SENDAM Orchestra, a health initative explor-ing spontaneous and composed music and mental well-being every Friday at the Clubhouse in Newtown, performs at the closing of the adventurous music venue FRED’S in the Wellington inner city.

THE MANAGER’S CORNER

BOARD TALK

FOOD, FITNESS AND FUNMarch has been a busy month! Since the last newsletter the Capital & Coast DHB have notifi ed NUHS they will not be renewing one of our funding contracts to the value of $273,949. The impact of this is we have to reduce services to patients and we will be increasing patient charges from 1 May 2012.

Currently the service is looking to see what services we will have to reduce or stop to cover this cost. We are holding a public community meeting (Proposed date: Thursday 3 May at 5:30 - to be confi rmed. It will be propmoted in the media and waiting room) where we will pres-ent more information and the com-munity will have an opportunity to

ask questions. As a commu-nity not-for-profi t organisation we value your sup-port and input to the service so look forward to seeing and meeting you at this meeting.

We will be advertising this meeting (and the patient charges) with more details over the next couple of weeks so please look for these details in the local paper and waiting room of the NUHS clinic sites in Newtown and Broadway, Strathmore.

Fiona Osten

Learning to make a healthy boil up will be part of the programme.

Our local community dietitian, Louise Beckingsale, is running a 10 week Healthy Eating and Exercise programme every Wednesday for the Newtown Community in term 2 (starting on 1st May.) The pro-gramme is FREE for anyone who has diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol or high blood pressure and wants to learn more about healthy eating.

Each week a different part of healthy eating will be discussed including ways to include more fruit and vegetables, portion sizes and ways to include your favourite foods. The programme is fun and practical and participants will learn affordable ways to cook and stay healthy over winter months.

Each week an exercise instruc-tor will demonstrate ways to keep fi t while also having fun. Family, whanau and friends are also invited to attend free. The programme starts on Wednesday 1st May, 10am

at the Daniell Street Hall in Newtown. Please call Louise on 380 2422 to book your FREE place or leave a mes-sage on the answer phone.

Louise Beckingsale

STAFF UPDATESWe welcome Dr Victoria Scobie, who will be working at Pacifi c Health Centre and NUHS as locum for Andy O’Grady.

NUHS continues to provide educational placements for nursing and medical stu-dents, you may notice new faces around the building from time to time.

FLU CLINICSKeep an eye on the NUHS notice boards for dates of Flu Clinics in the fi rst two weeks of April.

If you miss these times for the Flu shot, you will still be able to book into one of the nurse clinics for the vaccine, please ask one of the staff about this.

There is a charge of $20 for the Flu vaccine. However, for those with certain health conditions, such as Diabetes or severe respiratory illness, this cost may be able to be covered by government funding.

NUHS is facing major challenges and changes. It is vital the commu-nity we serve is kept informed and people have their say.

The Community Advisory Group was set up and at the recent Annual General Meeting all NUHS regis-tered members were able to register their interest in joining this group.

The Advisory Group is open to all ser-vices members and the NUHS Policy Board hope it will represent the wide and diverse popula-tion we serve.Already 15 people have put their names forward, and the fi rst meeting will be on Tuesday April 3 where discussion

will focus on the proposed fee changes at NUHS. A report from this meeting will appear in the next NUHSpaper.

The newly elected Policy Board held its fi rst meeting on Thursday 29 March and appointed Glen Baron as Chair-person, Linda Hobman as deputy Chair, James Sleep in the Human Resources role, with the position of Treasurer yet to be fi lled.

The NUHS Community Advisory Group