Meeting held on Saturday 17th March 2007, Bullion Hall, Chester le Street

Thirty people came together as part of an agreed process of Patient Partnership with the Northern CFS/ME Clinical Network.

Group discussions and a plenary session took place to consider CFS/ME service development over the next few years and how to engage patients to ensure their views are heard and represented at a decision making level to inform future services.

General consensus was the CFS/ME Network should continue to work across the region, implementing training programmes and sharing best practice to ensure all the Local Multi-Disciplinary Teams (LMDT’s) are delivering an equitable service that meets the needs of patients, and to continue to press for total regional coverage including Tees Valley.

More detailed information needs to be available to give people a comprehensive guide of what to expect from LMDT’s, how they operate, and how patients can access services.

Audit of services and evaluation from patients/service users on the benefits of treatments must be shared.

Special needs groups; young people and the severely affected need to be included in LMDT’s.

Requests to include welfare benefits support, and complimentary and alternative treatments as part of the LMDT were discussed.

The need for more CFS/ME research was discussed and all present welcomed the regional research presently underway.

A range of views on how best ME North East can service the needs of people with CFS/ME, their family and carers highlight the diversity of services needed, and how we can continue to fulfil our duty to represent patients and their local representatives were expressed.

As result of this feedback we will be preparing to host local multi-disciplinary teams meetings in each area of the region over the coming months. Members will be invited to meet the teams and discuss the future service developments in their locality. We are also asking each team to provide a written outline of their services to produce in Focus. The first of these is from the County Durham and Darlington Team and can be found here by visting this page: (Durham and Darlington Services)