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

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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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