NEWS
More mental health support for young people
Thousands of young people across England will benefit from new mental health support – including counselling, mentoring, and arts programmes in their communities, backed by a multi-million pound Government investment. As part of the government’s
commitment to transforming mental health care – backed by an extra £2.3 billion per year through the NHS Long Term Plan – Mental Health Minister, Nadine Dorries (pictured), and Public Health Minister, Jo Churchill, announced in mid-August an investment of a further £3.3 million in 23 local community projects across England. This will allow more children and young people aged 25 and under to access local services to support their mental health. The projects have an emphasis on improving access to support outside of NHS services, including for groups such as LGBT young people, or those from black, Asian, and minority ethnic backgrounds. Projects receiving funding include:
l The LifeLine Community Projects in Barking and Dagenham will receive over £298,000 to expand their work with young people most at risk of poor mental health.
l York Mind will receive £50,000 to expand its Arts Award programme, which ‘connects young people to the arts’.
Steel coating’s anti- bacterial properties proven in trial
l The Proud Trust’s Peer Support Project in Manchester will receive over £23,000 to support more LGBT young people ‘through life-changing events’.
The funding will come from the Health and Wellbeing Fund, part of a programme of government investment in the voluntary sector.
Minister for Mental Health, Nadine Dorries, said: “We know that children and young people today face many pressures at home and in their social and academic lives, but giving them easily accessible mental health support at an early age can help them thrive later in life.”
‘Digital transformation’ in physical security
Abloy UK has launched a new RIBA- approved CPD training course, ‘Digital Transformation in Physical Security’, which attendees can complete to achieve double CPD points. It says the course ‘provides insight
into the disruptive world of digital technology, and how it is impacting on conventional physical security with the introduction of mechatronic locks and keys’. Delegates will learn how the technology can be deployed ‘to achieve an innovative, integrated, future-proof locking solution’. Abloy UK added: “The course
explains the technology’s benefits – which include improved levels of security, traceability, and management of assets, and how improvements in efficiency can reduce an organisation’s carbon footprint. It will examine how digital technology can be integrated into operational systems and processes to deliver a safer, more efficient workplace, with rapid ROI, and how the data from a locking system can be shared with health, safety, and staff competency processes to contribute
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towards seamless corporate compliance. We will also focus on why this technology is more cost-effective and quicker to deploy, and more aesthetically pleasing, than many conventional access control solutions.” Attendees will work towards a number of learning outcomes, such as how to improve the design and usability of buildings by including digital, future- proof mechatronic locking solutions to help achieve ‘smart solutions’.
University of Birmingham scientists say they have created an antimicrobial coating for steel surfaces which has proven to rapidly kill bacteria that cause some of the most common hospital-acquired infections. Developed by University of Birmingham researchers, patented by University of Birmingham Enterprise, and to be commercialised by a new company, NitroPep, the coating is also called NitroPep. Working with the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and the Royal Navy, the researchers conducted a trial which saw NitroPep coated on steel surfaces – including door handles, an operating theatre, and part of a communal toilet – on board a Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship. Both the surfaces coated in NitroPep, and ‘control’ surfaces not treated, were subject to standard daily cleaning regimes while the ship was at sea for 11 months.
The surfaces were swabbed weekly, and the results analysed at the University of Birmingham showed the coating was effective against five different bacteria responsible for hospital-acquired infections – Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Enterococcus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli. The coating killed bacteria within 45 minutes. The trial results were published in Materials Science and Engineering C: Materials for Biological Applications, with the research undertaken by scientists at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of
Microbiology and Infection and School of Chemistry, the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, the University of Nottingham, and
Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Research is underway to apply the technology to ceramics, rubber, and silicone. NitroPep is currently targeting healthcare items including door hardware and handrails, ‘high-touch surfaces’ on hospital beds and other medical equipment, air and water filtration systems, plumbing fixtures, lavatories, and kitchens.
OCTOBER 2019 | THE NETWORK
©The Department of Health & Social Care
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