Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust Arts Spinner

Winner

Of the 2007 UserWatch competition for the most

truthful poem goes to :


xxxxxxx, xxxxxxxx

Sorry patient confidentiality applies , a trick we copied from the professionals who like to conceal truth and hide behind pretty slick devices which look as though others are being protected .... However we can reveal the poem below which we hear is being prepared for a grafffiti fest on Trust property ..

CBT came to town

Bulldozed me when I was down

Now I have

TWICE the frown

Gimme back my soul dead pill

Otherwise I am shure to kill !

Get that dozer away from me

I don't want no CBT ....



(Chorus)

Hammmmmm
Hammmmmm
Hammmmmm
Hammmmmm


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Escape Velocity ? Can Mental Health User-Arts Lift Off ?

We have been aware of Mental Health Users Arts for some time and the way the UK Mental Health services have been showcasing User Arts here and there .....

The NHS services have seen them as a mixture of enabling Users to feel some value through showcasing itself and/or doing something to engage the world a bit more : to be within life and not to isolate like some Users feel they have to do ..

But from a User Perspective is showcasing all there is to art and life ? Its an exercise we think that wears out to be honest, although it does appear to have some promo-benefit for NHS Trusts, charities and others seen to be doing something a bit more colourful and "inclusive" ..

The question is with the dominant recovery model invading all services nowadays - is it going to work ? Or rather make Users work .. After all the recovery model is an invention of the DWP and other more "internally" functional middle class mental health theoreticians...UserWatch must still report mental health services are imbalanced because their concentration is not on patient-preferences of help but on a national political drive to get people back to work . Dependency is all too readily seen as a problem too .. Patient's in Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust Services are not really in the driving seat at all .. It was never allowed .. Staff dominate the agenda and have a large amount of power ..

Some Users in Birmingham and wider afield are looking at the system with dismay because its too black and white for them and is not being shaped by them still - they are supposed to be shaped by it in fact .. So if User-Artists cannot effectively stop being mis-shaped by the system with its own agendas how can they reach escape velocity from it ? You see the the more authentic rocket fuel equation involves the paradox of remaining partly dependent on the system while needing growth or creative function they can take more autonomy over . This is harder than it appears in financially lean Trusts with an eye on selecting performance measures that make them look good and compliant to DOH targets .

The NHS system we think does not have the answer in fact paradoxically it may hamper Users by using them to promo how it good it is at creating "new services" based on corralls of Users that now exist still within the province of the NHS mental health colonies ..

The problem is the right equation of growth cannot be struck by the system if it is in charge and in fact the system itself may also have to accept that it cannot push all Users away from it but must remain as some partial help ..

The most serious problem though that hampers many Users is they need to be part of a different socially securing system that is not middle class blinded to their serious mind-difference and quality of being . The best way to manifest that is to alter the benefit system so its not threatening them but in fact remains as pro-active non punitive support - that for instance tops-up some benefits if activity for a day say is possible ... The recovery model is partly false because it is overgeneralised upon and neccesitates a more black and white anti state benefit approach . The system needs another half way approach of accepting attempts at growth by some Users whilst not reacting by undermining them and by expecting them to be more "normal" and stable than they can ever actually be..



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The Importance of Deep Witness And Self Witness : Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust

UserWatch and those who circle around it, and contribute to it, has included a film here from YouTube - We certainly hope it lasts for a time on YouTube . It makes good points within its choice of a sense-fracturing style. Its the film story of a young lady "fashionite" and fashion model who came through 60's and was abused by others , and it uses many film and sound techniques to weld together a sense of some personal completion in her. The value of it feels to be the honest and joined up self echoes and that is the way it reaches into all of us ..Its good art we think .

One might say for a generation of some people who can use it to self reflect that it is a kind of personal and social therapy of witness-self-witness.

We have honestly not seen very much depth to therapy practiced in Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust Arena's. A few patches exist. For the main part we have heard more of practioners locally and in the NHS missing the way to resolve the very large imprinted damages in many Service Users .. And those imprinted damages go back for generations in some of them . But the avoidance of emotional damage and the "emotional historic self" in the way services treat Service Users is a wide strategy .

Talking to a number of Black Service Users and being with them and feeling into their family lives and backgrounds, UserWatch discovers abusive family patterns all the time. Cases of rape of trauma . No its not a drum to bang on, it's just a hard bullet in the face or soul-fact for many .

For the main it lies un-discussed or if discussed in the NHS not resolved, or given a place of a few years of grief-hearing...That would cost money .. Better to spend it on new elements of bureaucracy rather than improve the depth and reach and community acceptance of many that are seriously damaged by culture and family practices . Be damaged and shut up .

So instead the Services help to cover up - de-historicalise patterns - tinker with the fractured feeling and remaining thinker...And see the broken "Feeling Self" as something to suppress rather than hear out into deep feeling witness...

No wonder mental health systems are so loopy and rotational to some of their repeatedly admitted clientele who can barely navigate themselves . No-one is helping them navigate and we doubt most of the quality of the so called practitioners of "therapy" out there .

We agree with New Zealand Psychiatrist John Read's wide assessment of studies into psychosis and his pointing to the causes in a substantial percentage of psychosis that people as adults are the manifestations of fractured and often crazing ill treatment or very bad "care" patterns. Psychosis is an understandable reflexive and defensive outcome in some traumatised people . And we would add some of these patterns of abusive treaments are just culturally passed down as unconsciously bad (without reflective thought or feeling) ways to rear people ..

We also think forms of therapy, which include cogntive elements, but are not solely based around the more superficial Cognitive Behavioural Therapy CBT applications which are being popularised in the UK for cheapness, can be helpful ..

But put poetically, if you were to play the "unmade film" of many Service User's and even show it to them - they would take years to recover from themselves . Years to finally glue themselves together after deep self witness and assisted grief and crying .. ... Now that is equivalent to a deep human authentic therapy effectively, and that is not that available in Birmingham and Solhull Mental Health Trust . Why ?

A complex answer boils down to the National Health Service character and those who run it who in the main can cope by ordinary suppression of feelings and personal pain . The big mistake in the NHS's own mass projections on patients is that over-suppresive feature of our own UK culture is also embedded. Thus we have not developed a deepening culture, and it manifests in a lack of deep therapies for people too. Its hinges too in the NHS economy on the belief that it's cheaper and also better to chemically ice and cognitively tinker about alone...

Well that may well be helpful in the short term, but in the long term the cost is massive because it does not support the echoing damaged real self that is always waiting to be heard and given its place of grief underneath massive fractures and distortions of memory, feelings, and consciousness .


SEE ALSO THE FILM OF: THE HIGHCROFT LIFEBOOK PROJECT

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Dept Of Health Helps NHS Trusts Avoid Lawful Patient Consultation Rights - The Stoning In Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust U.K.

We are not sure there is a cure for being Foundation Stoned . In fact there are many new sub categories in the mental health arena for being stoned and rolling-up to meetings and rolling out staggering new policies and ofcourse walking around with new mental health illusions that promise this and that but never end in real patient (User) power and individuating choices of recovery and management strategies.

Instead there is continued goverance made remote by centralising "local" bureacracy which likes to believe with its control now over some User and ex-User internal colonies that it is somehow "patient centred" ...

We know it isnt ... Its staff and patient-bureau-assimilative and worse, its more illusory.. ..Still, that goes with being subtley stoned ... There's nothing more narcotic than a User Party set up by the health authorities with free flags of new user-ideologies being rolled up and waved about . This has been the case for a few years now ..

We are astonished (no we are not) how we have heard that the concept of "stigma" in mental health Art for instance is being used to highlight that the the term "mental" should not be applied to Van Gogh , Sylvia Plath , and others .

Why not ? What's wrong with being "mental" ? Everyone is, and we have a crazy and crazing society , come on, lets be socially inclusive about this, especially those that think they are not .. Instability and neurosis and delusion is just part of the human condition in a sick world of power, dodge and deceit - we have seen it in mental health circles of the service deliverers themselves . Its a weaving spectrum through all of us and maturity dictates that it also can bring vision and breakthroughs as well as craziness, pain, and chaotic being ...

But has the Dept of Health joined in the stoning of patient power ? Oh yes it has - it has watched the "locality" like hawks along with the politico's and the moaning CEO's who have been reporting back through their own channels at how hard they have been having it and wouldn't it be nice if we could have "Watchdog's" which were nicer ... With bureau-cream and scones ...And made up of cake liking networks they already know and feel safe with ..

So they got their way .. And the Blairite soon to be Brown agenda of making the NHS comfortable for the middle classes and a power base mainly for them is set to spawn the new circuses of NHS futures .. NIMHE was one such pseudo-podium - it has favoured a new mental health middle class structure many of which have buggered off to get new careers now ...

Patient Forums (B. 2003 - D. 2008 ) or PPI's as they are just about still known, held out the hope of some independent checking "patient power". In reality many are burned out and have made only modest gains and have been strongly resisted even with Dept of Health connivance regarding Patient's Section 11 (Health and Social Care Act 2001 ) consultation rights, according to Parliment's : Health Committee's

Report on Patient & Public Involvment In The NHS (June 2007 )

Userwatch like most of the health circus community knows the PPI's are going in March 2008.

Quote From the Health Committee June 2007

"Recommendation 24 (Paragraph 271)

In theory there is a good system for consulting about important local proposals for change. In practice, there is much frustration and disappointment. Too often it seems to the public that decisions have been made before the consultation takes place.

Too often NHS bodies have sought to avoid consultation under Section 11 about major issues. Unfortunately the Department of Health has supported those NHS organisations in trying to limit the scope of Section 11. "

( End Quote )

In mental health the PPI's had the power to visit NHS premises . That will not be the easy case with the newly proposed Local Involvement Networks LINks ....They will have to seek permission from part of the Dept Of Health . The Health Service Journal with its damn good health sharpies flying about have seen the evidence in a DoH regulation circular .. LINks are set to become a post PPI mish mash of pre-existing networks including the all too friendly Mental Health Charity Third Sector which already favours and earns some of its keep off the NHS bureaucracy with its dominant ownership of the patient's landscape ..

Quote From Health Service Journal :

LINks scrutiny system to bar patient networks from access to key services

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Local involvement networks, set to replace public and patient involvement forums, will be denied access to mental health facilities, children's care homes and non-communal areas of residential care homes.

An internal Department of Health draft policy document, seen by HSJ, includes a table of where LINks members will and will not be allowed to visit. The representative bodies are set to replace patient and public involvement forums next year.

The document says that LINks will not be able to enter social care services establishments and institutions for children; patients' homes to see services provided by social services or through individual budgets; group homes for those who are disabled or have mental health and leaning disabilities; and care housing for older people.

The DoH confirmed it was planning limitations and this is also backed up in its response to the health select committee's report on patient and public involvement, which states: 'A change in the mechanisms for patient and public involvement has been made necessary by significant changes in the health and social care system.

'It is no longer appropriate to have a system based around scrutiny of individual institutions. We want this new system to consider both health and social care.'

(End Quote)



The health politico's and Dept of Health bureau-expansion-planners know what is good for them, so here comes the new circus ring of the Stoning of more patient power ....

One of the biggest problems for patient democratics UserWatch feels will be the Foundation Trusts who will have internal firewalls of the newly hypnotised "joined-up" public to protect them. This is just a sad cycle unfortunately .. The governors in Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust mainly will be those who are seeking influence and power and will bung in a few rituals of public concern. They will because they will be partly concerned but the juggernaut will roll on crushing many more of its believers or those who are chained to it ..

There will be few real critics and a clean eye with a good arrow shot at the Health bull .. There will be a handful however in Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust like Dr Lynne Jones MP (the MP Governor) who reportedly has tried to be robust regarding patient's rights for Section 11 consultation and follow up of their satisfaction when Mental Health services changes happened ... But the resistance around this has been big enough and culturally deep and has also as we have seen been encouraged by the Dept of Health itself ..

Its also a good thing for patients to remember that the NHS services in mental health now are DWP driven political instruments - they are pro patient-colonies too, but not pro-patient choice

That would re-divert power, cash and career chances, back to the patient ....Its the nightmare the DoH particularly and Govt wants to keep politically stoned....

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FEE-DOM OF INFORMATION UK

Its a wonderful open democracy in Britain where Public Services are in charge of so much and get by without too much open view and criticism into them ... There's no doubt there is some good democratic practice too..........Somewhere ....

The facts though go something like this : if you use the Freedom Of Information Act be very aware that there is growing culture of resistance in Britain to opening to view .

Mass disengagment has been mollified by giving out small amounts of power into bodies that actually do not command much support - its a kind of pretend UK democracy . We are all in it okay - up to our newly browned off necks ..

The FOIA held out some hope of more citizen action and joined up digital groups but we wonder how these things might be weakened with the bureau-tendency to dampening down on FOIA rights and without accurate information what's left is the resultant monopoly of manager-speke reporting, that most of us without control over our own fates and services have to listen to numbly ..

Its astonishing in an age of digital capture of information that authorities all over the UK have made such a song and dance about limiting information to the public. But there it is . Services like to manage the view that others have about them - we know they even employ their own public image promoters in Birmingham. Image-therapists perhaps ? To make the bent look straight . Lord Faulkner was called in to head the FOIA review to basically defend the politicians right to remain invisible. More extensively though the political fear from them has made sure authorities across Britain can also try to stop the public from prying into things they are paying for ... You know services ...

The fees that can be attached to FOIA requests are large for ordinary people to bear although they don't kick in if the requests are simple . It is clear that training is being given for authorities to deal with FOIA requests and the Dept of Constitutional Affairs is the advisory peak of the white snowy bureaucratic mountain with the wonderful diamond on top of it called "Fair Dealing Summit" ......Oh yeah .......Most of us will need oxygen to get there ..

Go and have a study HERE (free yawns included) and feel free to be amazed in this digital age of mass internet communication and freedom which the politicians , the services , even parts of the media, would love to translate as putting us all back into the cosy offline days where we and the images within our minds are managed .......State-opolistically and jointly by them ..

Maybe the end of the "State" is a-coming with the internet, and the age of individual is partly here and that begs new systems which the Offline State wants to feed back into itself .. Watch the tension ...

Finally as result of various FOIA requests UserWatch is aware that one of its sources has contacted the Audit Commssion. The matter we understand is an issue about wasted money on a mental health initiative. So sometimes the UserWatch free-thinkers are not just taking the piss . They mean business ....

We hope there's a cartoon coming soon out of this ..... We hate advertising Govt ..

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Exactly What Was Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health's "NIMHE" Role With The Dept Of Health In 2001 ?

*******

We show a document as a (photo) here sent to UserWatch showing very close connections between the UK Govt run National Institute For Mental Health Education in England and its apparent co-string designer the Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health - a charitable foundation in the UK


It appears to Userwatch UK that Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health with its reach across the UK and very close support of relationships with other Mental Health charites - like Mental Health Media , Rethink , Mental Health Foundation and others, really needs to open itself up to more transparency ..... We are not confident that it or other related bodies are particularly good for the "patient".....

Its almost the case that SCMH have acted as some kind of exteriorised civil service planning dept which had its visions finally ratified by the Dept of Health .. There's been no deep critique by the Guardian newspaper in the UK on the patterns of cross organisationality and the way Mental Health charities are double or multi faced now - trying to please their constituency whilst working so close with the Govt on "reform" that they have slid into "becoming like Govt. "

Service Users in the UK are not stupid and have woken up to SCMH's social engineering involvements. From 2001 from the document above supplied by Des Curley In London we see SCMH was involved in "preserving the domain name" for the National Institute For Mental Health In England (NIMHE) .

Why ? What was wrong with the Dept Of Health doing this ?

Could we interpret this as the costly NIMHE (probably 100 million by 2008) is more or less a SCMH creation ?

Many Service Users across the UK that Userwatch contacts now think so .. The so called reform of Mental Health trumpeted partly by SCMH has seen Trusts cutting services and creating "mainstreaming" or pushing for the exteriorizing of mental health services partly it seems on the back of advice from SCMH figures .. (See SURREY USER CAMPAIGN STORY) ...

We know from experience across the UK that many Service Users cannot even get proper supports for trying to engage into the social world ...Theory and miss match of funds going to the top figures in charities , or groups orientated around them, and not flowing enough to the bottom for locality enablements is still the case.....The Top Down "we know best and represent you" centre-ism is toxic for localities ...

The driver of real change "PATIENT CHOICE" is not high on the agenda of the various bags of MH Charities and the Govt, because Govt and Charities appear to be anti market .

UserWatch is politically independent but sees the patient in recovery and management terms as the real driver of what is necessary for their mental health management. The UK mental health patient is still inside the shackles of the NHS mental health services and charity establishment we feel .. It must be opened up and not re-morphed back into the hands of those who just change their jobs and join the new charity type "Third Sector" bodies - something else dreamed up by politicians and the already well positioned charity establishment

SCMH though does have close connections to Govt. One of its former heads who is still closely conected to them was a civil servant from the DoH .. One of its current top staff seconds into the Dept of Work & Pensions to advise and work out policy practice on getting MH Service Users off benefits....The MH charity Rethink closley connected to SCMH is currently headed by Paul Jenkins a former DoH career civil servant who recently joined them .. There is some repositioning going on at the moment with the former head of Rethink Cliff Prior who has joined part of the Big Lottery so no doubt certain charities can get perhaps more favourable treament for their social agenda ..

Third Sectorisation is New-Labours answer to the political schitzophrenia it suffers from knowing it cannot supply real CHOICE unless it marketises health more, so it has helped to create the groundwork in mental health for a quasi market of "choice" which in fact will be dominated by new charitable type social businesses..

UserWatch using good old chaos and string theory is aware of ex-NIMHE staff who shaped up as "Service Users" who have now because of the their privileged information set up or joined social business's in User Consultancy and even Cognitive Behaviour Therapy supply . (you can do a certificated course in that for about 400 - 500 pounds)

In the main these people are middle class and university trained. In the UK some Service Users feel that means the sneaky and still existent class structure is morphing its way snake-ily about as the economy alters its laddering chances .

CBT ofcourse was lauded first at a Sept 2005 conference by Lord Layard at the Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health . SCMH and all the other MH Charities cautiously thereafter balanced on pushing CBT until that is, a 10000 + petition on the PM's own e-petition site headed by Shelia Haugh a "Person Centred Therapist", occured . UserWatch covered that.

Now we are seeing SCMH and the MH charities jumping on the bandwagon with their version "WE NEED TO TALK" . Who to ? We rhetorically ask ... UserWatch knows the MH charity sector previously knew the Service User constituency across the UK needed more therapy choices, rather than merely cheap versions of CBT. So its all about protecting their own face which partly and politically turned away from Service Users needs .

At UserWatch we note the e-petition on the PM's site was absolutely open and peoples names were shown whereas the Charities are as usual playing it all secretively. We dont know who is signing up for it ...

At UserWatch we are concerned that Big Govt and the Charity establishment are still trying to slice up the cake with pre-determined needs and designs of what will be the reshaped mental health colonies of the future for those in the know to have careers off ..

Who really created NIMHE ? An establishment of the know it alls ?

Are we cynical ? Ofcourse we are . We go with Service Users democratised needs to have freed up MH recovery choices which includes the market and we say there are plenty of supplies of help and therapies out there in the open market community that can be driven into further quality by experience, GP. performance review and real patient choice . It needs to start ..Lets use the money NIMHE has been wasting ... Lets get the money back to the patient and away from the establishment orientated organisations that keep telling Service Users they "Care" ....

Not only that - they are clearly organising realities often with their agenda's in mind .......

In Birmingham And Solhull Mental Health Trust we are not stupid either we are watching the curl of flow of Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health and their local involvements...

Sainsbury's never was a supermarket for the working class, it always created good supplies for the middle classes though ...

We will see you later by the trolleys eating bad old cake out of the bin with our pet crows.....

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Will CSIP (NIMHE) Be Toasted By The Dept Of Health ?

No-one can quite tell if the National Institute For Mental Health in England (NIMHE) experiment originally set up partly by Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health (whose agent was PIPEX Communications Hostings LTD) that registered the Domain name of NIMHE on 3rd April 2001 will be kaput-ed soon. There are rumours cooking that CSIP (Care Services Improvement Partnership) a NIMHE morphling, is going to be toasted by the Dept Of Health .....

This cannot happen too soon for some of us . NIMHE by 2008 is likely to have cost 100 Million pounds .

That is a lot of lost opportunities for real front line recovery strategies and managment strategies of some User's mental health conditions ..

NIMHE itself was staffed often by ex university types who had a bout or a few of depressions with a few other MH assortlings thrown in. They were not all bad folk either - many became disenchanted having been sucked into the "experimental new NIMHE diet" which became a meetings culture and a paper churn ..

Rumours suggest that far from really attracting Services Users from all walks of life into it, NIMHE eventually lost the innovation plot it started with and Users walked away from it.

NIMHE partly resurrected its energy in 2005 by using more of the "Carer" side of various "Service Users In Partnership" (SUIP) regional groups whish formed the idea for CSIP and also cross organisationally adopting some of the Mental Health Charities "Anti stigma" stances with its creation of SHIFT.

SHIFT duplicated efforts being made by RETHINK with its own over-egged anti stigma pudding mix and failed Churchill straitjacket statue bid to turn around their idea of "public stigma" againt mental illness .....

Its clear, the Mental Health Charities now rapidly repositioning themselves for "Third Sectorisation" of the Mental Health colonies have had advantages of belonging both to NIMHE Advisory Boards where they "advised" the DoH but also have had an influence on the outcomes of policy . They really were well positioned and Govt encouraged it over and above a reform of real patient choice .. Real patient choice in mental health has never been trusted - probably because many folk would want a genuine therapy post crisis rather than a NHS void ..

The real sell out strongly NIMHE generated, has been the centre-ist ideas about Patients being shunted off into maintsreaming whilst often they have never had quality treatments and longer term supports afterwards . In the UK the poverty of therapies and approaches developed by and around the managing-patient as per usual have avoided the difficult job of unraveling causes , creating robust present supports, and creating a new form of habitability inside many conditions that have been worsened if not caused by atrocious early developments in what becomes later "patients" ...

NIMHE (CSIP) has been a systems delivery vehicle that took away money from the people it pontificated to do good by while putting some of them into as volunteers where their benefits were reviewed which created hardship and distress . UserWatch knows of cases of this ..

Yes.........We at USERWATCH hope its all toasted by the equally wasteful Dept of Health ....When the toasting comes we'll be there ...

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More Paradoxology At Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust

Ahhhh the stories we come across in Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust practices and we have realised time and time again the mental health services were the advisors to Joseph Heller.....

Probably Machiavelli too .....

Here's a true story about a Service User that goes to the services to ask for some psychological therapy .

They've been abused in their earlier lives. Post trauma is a heavy feature of their perceptual life in the world. Even the sky feels like electric punishment sometimes to them . Their life has been partly stabilised at least by purchasing some private therapy outside of the NHS because the supply of service in the NHS in their locality simply did not exist ...

In the "interview" it is suggested that the therapy they pay privately for is something they should stop now because it is reportedly said it is not ethically right to see two therapists i.e one on the State and the other privately. The Service User promptly explains that they can work effectively with more than one therapist and that is not unknown at all (in group practices) ......

The issue of "Trusting the Patient" is even mentioned at this juncture..... Ahhh yes, that uncomfortable agenda that mental health services have a great deal of problems with because State institutionalised system delivery approaches are still culturally dominant in the UK and not subject to the quality driver of real "Choice" enhanced as it could be by the competitive market and other supply sides...Its not popular to frighten the patient with this scenario nor the staff but State supermarket UK-NHS has to alter and stop depressing patient need ...(mainly with voids and pills) .

Third sectorisation of supply may mean an additional element of supply too .. although patient-beware because some staff are morphing towards that arena knowing the New Labour Govt want a cheap supply of Mental Health services and not necessaily a deep change in the institutional culture of who knows best for the recovering or partly managing patient ...

NHS blunderment or private sector shunderment never ceases to amazes us - Or is that even guzunderment in old UK chamberpot vernacular ..? Because the issue of the State interfering with the patient's right to purchase and have State help to make up a management programme are paradoxical points worth pissing on with contempt and also debating - you know , debating on the razors edge of the patient's soul ..... In the complexity of this case that we know about we have someone who had to adapt to a lack of services over time by paying for some and the amazing later assumption that the NHS can even control what services it gives if the patient elects for some survival methods outside of the NHS that they have never even been offered previously by the NHS... Sorry we are repeatedly paradoxing ourselves ....Its a disorientation thing you know ..

UserWatch nearly wrote again "WE ARE AMAZED" ..... But we feel rather "WE ARE ACRAZED" or would be in that patient's position ....Anyone would be ..



Take a look at an extract John Reid's speech of 16th July 2003 taken from the Dept Of Health site . The wrappers on patient-sweeties were so glossy ..

Speech by Rt Hon John Reid MP, Secretary of State for Health, 16 July 2003: Choice Speech to the New Health Network

This work will look at all aspects of the patient experience. Fast access, certainly. But also good information about your illness. Real choice of when and where and how you are treated. Attentive staff. A clean, comfortable, friendly place to be. Safe, high-quality, co-ordinated care. And all done in a way that makes people say: 'they treated me as if I mattered', and 'they took time out to explain what was wrong'. This is what staff want to provide, this is what patients want from their NHS.

And in the coming months I want patients, patient organisations, and NHS staff to contribute to a debate on how we take the next steps forward. 'Trust me, I'm a patient' should be a guiding principle of this new agenda.