News & Events

We're offering two half-day Practical Dementia training days aimed at helping medical professionals and carers improve the lives of those with and affected by dementia across Wales.

The events will follow the similar successful events on the same subject which we delivered earlier in 2012 and each 3-hour course costs £30 per delegate which includes free on-site parking.

Both these practical courses are CPD events aimed at the following mental health roles with attendees provided with an Attendance Certificate and will take place in Cardiff and Wrexham this Spring:

• GPs
• CPNs (Community Psychiatric Nurses)
• Practice Nurses
• Consultant Psychiatrists
• Health Board Officials
• The Care Home Sector
• The Alzheimer’s Society

Both events begin at 1pm for lunch and registration with South Wales training taking place at the Novotel Hotel in Cardiff on 7th March 2013 from 2pm until 5pm with the second North Wales training day being held at the Ramada Plaza in Wrexham on 18th April 2013 from 2pm until 5pm.

Please note that each course concentrates on practice and not theory in relation to dementia and the proposed agenda for each event will cover the following issues:     

• Memory clinics and the interface with Primary Care
• Social Care – Interface Issues
• Vascular Dementia
• Dementia from a Carers Perspective – Interaction with Primary Care

To register for either event please fill in our Practical Dementia Training Application Form and return it to our Project Manager Lesley Hills at the following address along with your a cheque for £30 made payable to RCGP Wales:

Royal College of General Practitioners Wales,
Regus House,
Falcon Drive,
Cardiff Bay,
Cardiff CF10 4RU.

Alternatively, for further details or if you have any questions please contact Lesley on 029 2050 4516 or email at lhills@rcgp.org.uk. 

A grant of up to £3,000 aimed at improving the detection of mental health problems and access to mental health support has been opened to applications from practice nurses across the UK.

The funding comes courtesy of the Charlie Waller Memorial Trust (CWMT) which is offering its Ted Fort Project Grant to fund a practice nurse to undertake a project to investigate and improve an aspect of mental health within their health practice.

The funding is available for a year and can be used to help nurses improve their approach to mental health problems and cover backfill and study leave support.

Outside of these requirements there are no other restrictions and no requirement for applicants to have pre-existing mental health training.

The grant also comes with available support and mentorship for projects which will run from 1st April 2013 to 1st April 2014.

The application deadline is 1st March 2013 with full details and the application form available on the Ted Fort Project Grant for Practice Managers Document.

If you have any enquiries about whether or not to make an application or what to include please initially contact Dr Maryanne Freer via email at Maryanne.freer@pcpartners.org or on 07960 718 764.

Subsequently, if you have an enquiry or problems with your application please contact Mrs B Sutton at the CWMT Office on 01635 869 754 or via email at admin@cwmt.org.

The Charlie Waller Memorial Trust was founded by Charlie's family shortly after he committed suicide at the age of 28 in 1997.

Charlie was suffereing from depression at the time and through the Trust his parents, family and friends have worked to increase awareness of the symptoms and dangers of depression and remove the stigma attached to mental illness.

A leading medical research centre in Wales is calling on volunteers to come forward and help it gain a greater understanding about the causes of mental illness.

The National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH) brings together world-leading researchers, healthcare professionals, patients and carers to improve and supoprt our understanding of mental health and illness.

The Centre is looking for people aged between 18 and 65 years who do not personally have a mental health condition to take part in their Neuroimaging Research programme.

Neuroimaging - or brain imaging - covers a range of methods which provide a snapshot of a person’s brain through the use of MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and MEG (magneto-encephalo-graphy) techniques.

In turn, this helps define the structure of the human brain and how it functions when someone performs a task and NCMH hopes to use this information to find out how genetic risk factors affect our mental health.

The Centres hopes this help it to better identify those at greatest risk of suffering from mental health problems and develop treatments targeted at biological causes rather than only the symptoms of mental illness.

The research is set to take place at Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC) and if you're interested in taking part please email Lisa Brindley at brindley@cardiff.ac.uk or call her on 029 2087 6506.

Established in 2011, NCMH is Wales' first biomedical research centre and is part of the Welsh Government's research infrastructure funded by National Institute for Social Care and Health Research (NISCHR).