By Geoff Brennan, Executive Director, Star Wards Unless you have been on a trip to Mars, you will know there is a major review of the mental health act going on. If you follow us on twitter you will have seen us tweet about the survey for patients and their carers. We have also posted […]

By Nic Higham – Children and Young People Lead, CAMHeleon   This week is Children’s Mental Health Awareness Week (5-11 February 2018). This year’s campaign is all about inspiring children, young people and adults to celebrate their uniqueness. Being at-ease with who they are is so important which is why the hashtag #BeingOurselves is being […]

By Nic Higham, Inpatient Care Project Manager At the end of last year (2017), we were thrilled to present not one but five Full Monty trophies in a single day! Yep, that’s a new Star Wards record! The brilliant Full Monty achievers, all of which are part of Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust […]

Another year has passed, and this gives us a perfect opportunity to reflect on what content in this site resonated most with our visitors in 2017. We’ve checked out the site stats and here are the most visited pages, blogs and downloads (cue drumroll). Throughout the following content (as well as the entire site) you’ll […]

  By Nic Higham, Inpatient Care Project Manager   Well done Akenside for achieving the Full Monty award! Akenside is a mental health inpatient unit with 18 beds providing assessment, treatment and rehabilitation in Newcastle. The ward is part of the Campus of Ageing and Vitality which is operated by Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS […]

Guest Blog Hi, I’m Jim Armstrong. I’ve been working in mental health for over 25 years. Before this I worked in heavy engineering from leaving school (quite a career shift, hey!). I wanted to work with people, while being hands-on and practical. For the last year I’ve been working as part of Lowry and Collingwood […]

Congratulations goes to Newton ward on completing their 75 Star Wards ideas benchmarking sheet and Full Monty report! Newton, which is a unit for men over the age of 18 years, is based within Urgent Care Services at St Georges Park in Northumberland, includes assessment and treatment and rehabilitation. The ward has a specific role […]

By Nic Higham, Inpatient Care Project Manager   Congratulations to Kinnersley for achieving the Star Wards Full Monty award! Kinnersley encompasses a range of independent living bungalows and houses in a homely “close” within St Georges Hospital in Northumberland. What a fabulous concept. A 6 bedded core house is also provided for males who require additional […]

  By Geoff Brennan One bite of Vincent’s Almond and Vanilla cake told me I was in a special place. I can taste it now, rich, not too sweet with a perfect balance of flavours. Fabulous. But I am getting ahead of myself. Blue Nile House, based in Chase Farm Hospital in North London was […]

Guest blog by Steph Beale-Cocks, (mental health service user at time of writing – now an Eating Disorder Clinician) I have to be one of the worst people for taking meds. It doesn’t matter what it is I will either forget, not care, fear it, hide it, take too much, etc. – and for so many […]