Helen
As part of our #PeerSupportMeans blog series, Peer Researcher Gary Hind interviews Helen Hampton, Lead Clinical Nurse for Blood Borne Viruses for With You, about her work.
Describe your role and where you work.
I am the National Blood Borne Virus Lead for With You, which is a drug, alcohol and mental health charity in England and Scotland. I co-lead the national Hepatitis Elimination project with Emma Lamond and I am also the Clinical Lead for the Cornwall With You service. A large part of my job is to work strategically and closely with our external partners and other external agencies on the hep C elimination programme, as well as providing clinical cover at a national level and locally for Cornwall. With You has 13 services nationally that are commissioned to provide BBV testing. Our target is to micro eliminate hep C within all services by December 2023 and then move on to full Hep C elimination nationally by 2025.
I’m also the Viral Hepatitis Specialist Nurse for Cornwall and a Queen’s Nurse. Within this local role, I have an honorary prescribing contract with RCH Hepatology at Treliske Hospital. This allows me to provide all of the Hepatitis C Treatment in the county, whilst working in close partnership with Hepatology and The South West Peninsula Operational Delivery Network.
My Queen’s Nurse title is one of the most meaningful and dearest things that I have achieved. I was awarded the title through patient feedback, for providing hepatitis C treatment to patients in the community. It’s a huge honour because it is about improving health and bringing services closer to patients.
I am delighted to say that since May 2022, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly now have their own dedicated Peer Lead, so I feel very lucky. We also have an ‘army’ of seven peers that do an unbelievable amount of work in raising awareness around hepatitis C through peer workshops and street outreach.
What are the objectives of your work?
In my national role, the primary objective is to ensure that everyone who comes into our services is offered a dried blood spot test (a simple finger prick test that draws a small amount of blood and is then screened for hep B, hep C and HIV). I work with the regional coordinators and service managers to ensure and train the recovery workers so that all are able to carry out these simple and lifesaving health interventions. I also make sure that the BBV pathways are in place and as streamlined as possible, so that when people are diagnosed with hepatitis C, they are referred straight into treatment. We follow through to confirm that treatment has been arranged- we do a lot of liaising and a lot of external work with treating hospitals and the Operational Delivery Networks.
Everybody that steps foot into our services is offered BBV testing, regardless of what substances they are using. This ‘opt out’ approach is in place to reduce stigma, as we know that for various reasons, people don’t always disclose their risk factors. Also, we might have someone engaging for support around alcohol use and will have totally forgotten that, many moons ago, they tried injecting and have potentially contracted the virus. People have really busy lives and sometimes they forget, so we need to be offering it to everybody that comes through the door. This way, the barriers to testing and makes it simple. And we offer it in an ‘opt out’ way, where we say ‘when did you last have your BBV screen?’ rather than ‘would you like a BBV screen?’ We found that it works better.
I’d like to see the peer model implemented into broader health issues, in other disease areas, but most definitely within harm reduction and needle exchange provision.
How do you work with The Hepatitis C Trust?
On a national level, we meet with regional leads at The Hepatitis C Trust and work to make sure that there are enough Hepatitis C Trust Peer Leads and Peers’ within all locations to support our services. We know that we can just pick up the phone and talk to each other if there are any issues. I also sit on the HCV Action steering group.
To be honest I don’t think we could do our work without the peer model for a number of reasons. Peers have a different set of skills, they come from a place of a lived experience that allows a different style of communication and understanding. Peers also have the capacity to actually get out and about talking to people and bringing them in to us. There is a comfortability with carrying out street outreach that not everyone has the skill or confidence to do. We would like to think that we have those skills, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t. So peers are essential for that type of engagement work.
I’ve worked with the Cornwall & IOS Peer Lead, Sarah, now for a number of years and I have observed how she interacts with patients that means they stick with taking their treatment. She is able to build an almost instant rapport and trust with people and encourage them to stay safe, to bring their friends along to get tested and to just break down the stigma around it all.
That rapport, that relationship building, that trust, it’s different to the rapport that I have with either the patients I treat or the clients that I work with; I can’t really put my finger on why it is, but it’s definitely different.
Where would you like to see the peer model go in the future?
I’d like to see the peer model implemented into broader health issues, in other disease areas, but most definitely within harm reduction and needle exchange provision. Nationally, these services are not as resourced as we would like them to be and then there are specific challenges with certain geographical locations e.g. rural areas like Cornwall where having peers would be really beneficial.
From an NHS perspective, hospitals are absolutely bursting and more needs to be done within primary care. But, although some GPs are great, there is a capacity issue, and I don’t think people are getting what they need. More needs to be done in primary care and there is room there for the peers to do something that is more health related generally. They are already doing health intervention work, so why not something else within health? The peer model is amazing, it’s been going for years and has proved that it is an effective model time and time again, which is why it shouldn’t stop when hepatitis C elimination is achieved.
This interview was conducted by Gary Hind,
one of our peer researchers.
