Stonewall's Weavings Into The NHS And The Mental Health Charity Tapestry

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USERWATCH COMMENTS

Stonewall the Gay activist Group is creating a survey about Gay Staff's experiences in the NHS and the circular above, obtained from Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust shows that ...

Some people think Gays are perverted and unnatural we just think everyone is perverted and unnatural and the UserWatch Dog "Ken-Hell" wears stockings too before he launches into another neighbourhood fight with the BNP terrier in the next block ... However "Ken-Hell" does not like the anuses of other male dogs ...Its a matter of taste so to speak ..

Stonewall's outing tactics though are perhaps being hailed as being transferable to mental health and upon MP's for instance .In a survey which outed some "Mad"MP's recently Jonny Naess Of his new Charity: Cocks Stand Up To Reason, or something, had this to say:

"In a civilised society, people with experience of mental ill health should not be restricted from being MPs, directors, partners, magistrates and jurors.

When we invited Mr Bondevik, the former Norwegian Prime Minister to come to speak to MPs, he was amazed that had he been British he could not have stood for Parliament. As a lawyer, one of the main reasons I founded Stand to Reason last year was my determination to remove from our laws these offensive and stigmatising restrictions. Like Stonewall before us we hope to encourage some brave MPs to come forward to break this last workplace taboo.”

Really Jonny ? You think anyone with experience of mental illness can do anyhing they want ? Perhaps some can, but many are crippled by it Jonny, and your stridency affects the few professionals which is where you are coming from isnt it ?

MP's though, have been mad with skewedery for a long time so what's in it for the Mental Health Charities who are creatively rigging the skewed debate about mental health anti -stigma?

Take for instance these well rehearsed PR manufactured comments "post survey" taken from the BBC's site .. :

"Paul Farmer, chief executive of the charity Mind, said that at a time when the government was appealing to employers to be more understanding about mental health issues in order to help people off benefits, it should be looking closer to home.

"Repealing antiquated rules that ban MPs from returning to work after recovering from a mental health problem would send out a clear message to all employers that discrimination should not be tolerated," Mr Farmer said.

The charity Rethink's chief executive, Paul Jenkins, said: "These findings are an affront to democracy. MPs and peers need to be free to bring their personal experiences to their vital democratic role.

"Instead they are being gagged by the prejudice, ignorance and fear surrounding mental illness.

"We look forward to the day when MPs from all political parties with experience of mental illness are able to participate fully in our democracy."


Rigging the debate to shape it towards "get the mentally ill" back to work is ofcourse the major rigma of stigma that the MH charities hook their growth onto, anticipating full Govt support for their new work-focused drives which the Govt itself in a conniving network believes is the answer to "modernise" mental health .... Both MIND and Rethink encourage regimes at their centres now which drive their Users into activity that is work focused and woe betide Users who disagree ...They are kicked out or suspended for a time . Oh we have heard about that Mr Farmer and Mr Jenkins .....

What we know is this, that the Govt has been advised by a right wing banker David Freud to help create a Wisconsin-ish Model of welfare to work in an economy where welfare and public services is the next wealth creation target for the coporate clasess, who lets face it have ckufing-well run out banks and other's debt to fleece. The level of fraud in Incapacity Benefit (IB) estimated by Dave in his Telegraph interview as 5- 7 per cent is not provable, and the DWP's estimate of IB fraud is only 0.5 per cent...And they have shit hot investigators now ..

Magic Jobs and rabbitry from hats have appeared in NHS mental Health Trusts that have now ballooned a whole new User-Involvement section of bureacracy but how can that socially engineered inflated sector continue ? There will be a big crunch okay ...Beyond the anti-stigma rainbow when the gold runs out in the colourfully diverted pot .

The Mental Health Charities and Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health are at the helm in this version of rainbow modernisation and money swilling time ...They have far far more planned and the problem is, the bureacracy in Mental Health is not getting smaller yet patient care is suffering as surpluses are made by MH Trusts and the Social Inclusion ethos pushed by the social engineers is becoming stale and effectively pinned-down into the "modernised" bureacratic inflation effect . We have heard it from staff -

Look - its simple, some patients are not getting the treatment they need in the community - and not even enjoying real social inclusion opportunities because they do not exist as bridging into them very well - its not happening in Birmingham for instance for Personality Disorder sufferers both male and female, and across the country its replicated ... They are an easy target. But others too are on the end of the new NHS performance regime to decide what the patient needs then call it "the patients preference" ....We think its system abuse .. Locking people out and away from their genuine needs and seperating their voice off into something called in management-speke the "User Voice" .

So the MP survey we see as a social engineering stunt . Very manipulative too but the seals are clapping in the circus . They always do .....Jonny too is performing well on the Guardian who also favour journalism as a social engineering tool a little too much ..

From the Bonewall of the dead MH Users, we still hear :

Treatment that fits first ! Patient Purchasing Choices of what stabilises patients first ! Stuff Bureacracy !

A new culture of that was the dream which never happened - that would have been progress and then development to work by special training packages for some .

Okay ! Okay ! We Give You CEOBT TOO ! You demanding little devils !

Link: PlayMyGame

CEOBT Boxing Therapy Back By Popular Demand!!!

CEO BT Chief Executive Officer Boxing Therapy was first developed by Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust .... You know before it saved £3.9 million as a surplus from shaving off here and there on what might have been better provision for some better services for Service Users lives ......It already cut services in the days after it was merged in 2003 and went onto to "clear debts" and shrink services in order to do that ..

Still in the political ring where the NHS lives so much, patients were bound to be knocked out weren't they ?

Some die in spirit or otherwise slowly - punched drunk by the system they have endured for years .. DING DING ....


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By Popular Demand Susy Turner The Great Doing the Money Dance

Link: PlayMyGame

By popular demand we bring you back the CEO Sue Turner performing and we can give our thanks to the wonderful lady above who bears so much on behalf of patients unmet needs for help and treatments when they need them ...

£3.9 Million surplus was the big game dance prize saved by the Trust this last financial year and were patients harmed in that little two step ? No wonder there is a big audience boiling to join in the "slippery fish twist" with Susy The Great .. You wicked little devils you ..

The Mental Health Great Pyramid At Three Geezers

Mental Health Archeology By Indiana UserWatch

We love gods and goddesses in the Mental Health Arena because they create religions and chants and things ..

Occasionally there might be ritual cake involved too and we know some get very big slices . Yes they are priests ..

Yet the pyramid builders of influence and "reform" always appear to be doing well out of the careers and constant ways they attract money to schemes and groups whose aim it is to centralise power upwards in the name of Service Users .....NSUN the stop-go stop-go National Service Users Network cobbled together by a few top-downsters were granted 750k in all in 2007 for use over a few years and there's bugger all to show for it . I

In now 18+ months of existence in their July 2008 edition of their newsletter they say on page one of the resignation of two top NSUN members :

"We regret to announce the departure of Chandra Fowler as Network Coordinator and Chris Wright as a member of the Management Committee. We would like to thank both Chris and Chandra for their contribution towards the development of NSUN and wish them both well in the future. "

The three people pyramidised above , Jan Wallcraft , Andrew McCulloch (EX Dept Of Health Civil Servant - Ex CEO of Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health, and current CEO Of Mental Health foundation) and David Crepaz Keay, have been and are associated across years to mental health charities or agencies and we wonder what good have their actions and use of money created with all these attempts to create corrals of top professionalised Users to influence and lead the rest - who we are not sure need leading at all .

Users might however need themselves as more healthy, and Patient Choice to deliver more of that ....

All three though are sure to have created some good but what was it ? Anyone know or want to volunteer more information - we'll publish it - with examination and critique of course . We know that all are associated with the marketing of mental health "Anti-stigma" as a chant with which to attract Service Users who do not have much hope in their lives ..

We've argued that the "anti-stigma" approach that has been developed in the UK has been linked and strongly skewed into the policy of getting mental health Users back to work and off benefits . Jan worked in the Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health which Dr Bob Grove (adviser on Pathways To Work) seconds out from to the Dept Of Work and Pensions . NIMHE (100 +milions cost over 5 years) of which Jan Wallcraft was an "Expert Fellow", was advised by her , and they created entry level jobs mainly for Ex Service Users , many with academic backgrounds and a degree of fitness that meant they could work . Jan can work . This section of people however were not representative of all Service Users at all. They vanguarded nothing but their own circles .....

More recently we carried a story with cheek on UserWatch about Jan's Wishcraft and we reported her saying of her resignation from a Research Group associated into Gov't :

"We feel it has become untenable to work in the current climate of "top down" non transparent decision making which we feel has been so damaging to power sharing , partnership and effective involvment "

But what does Jan say in the latest NSUN July 2008 newsletter after she had been to a MH conference in Toronto :

"One piece of work common to WPA (World Psychiatric Association) and INTAR (International Network Towards Alternatives and Recovery (http://intar.org/) is 'trialogue', which was developed in Germany and taken up in a number of other countries. A mental health trialogue brings together mental health practitioners, service users, and families/carers, in an arena which is kept neutral, i.e. not on hospital grounds but in an accessible community venue, where people can talk freely and openly about mental health, in a way that can be personal, political, philosophical and practical.

There are criticisms by some service users who have been involved with German trialogue, that it tends to rule out the most critical service users, but it does seem to be a format which might benefit us in England to deepen people's understanding of each other's issues and break down polarised thinking, stigma and ignorance "

Where Jan Wallcraft really stands is shown at the end of that text . Namely she may be prepared to rule out the most critical voices in order to buy into a trialogue in the UK .. The voices with the most power of critical integrity come from the margins though in our experience Jan ... Anything else becomes "Top-Down" Jan ..

Jan also says :

(INTAR ) " It brought together survivors and mental health activists with professional backgrounds who are critical of the biomedical model of mental health and are trying to change things in practical ways. "

So there we are out we come again with more top-downsters who create the collusive allure that pyramidicity of influence is the best way forwards. What the fucking hell is wrong with arguing for straight forward patient recovery budgets for all long term MH Users to keep people well and out of crisis rotational admissions . Lets all create our own real Well-th-spaces that way .

This is where NSUN and David Crepaz Keay , Jan Wallcraft and Andy McCulloch have gone really wrong in not getting to grips with that . Patient Power is not on the agenda properly with them . Patient Choices of recovery treatments (post crisis) are not on their agenda - or the Govt's really . Andrew McCulloch advocates wide use of Computerised Cognitive Behaviour Therapy ...Yeah ....We know, ofcourse, good empathically skilled people cost money to help heal others and they would be first choice for many patients if they existed. CBT though is superficial, useful for a few but lacks realistic longitudinality - and lacks inside its model the interior tolerance of emotional intelligence and emotional damage .

Rituals happen to create publically viewed spells of better mental health promises sometimes and the big Anti Stigma push will be out to create more flag waving - Blue Peter badges, a walk by the Queen etc but the reality for many Users is misery without proper supports and that voice is moaning all the time without much of a hearing as to its unmet need . Kinda makes Patient Choice (and recovery and management budgets to match) not so much as the radical agenda but the only real one that fits people equally ..

David Crepaz Keay was the CEO of Mental Health Media in 2004-5 and left in that year to go to Mental Health Foundation . Andrew McCulloch had ran both Mental Health Media and SCMH and then ran Mental Health Foundation . So what User empowerment have they supported that has created equal access to choices of recovery supports . Have they banged on that drum or is it the Anti Stgma work-driven charity and govt skewed policy that more lately just happens to have netted £18 millions for several charities including Mental Health Foundation ?

We think a great pyramid of geezers has been created, and continued ..

Mental Health Physics - The Discovery Of The Patient Quirk

Frontpiece above of Remedy-Guidance
Courtesy of Rebellious Staff
at Ombudsman's Office UK
Click Here

A UserWatch Snakethrough In Strange Social Physics

Newton would never have discovered anything about Apple Laws were it not for Great Great x 7 Auntie UserWatch the first, and her team of young scrumpers that lived nearby a certain tree under which a certain youngish Isacc was sitting half asleep ...

By the scrumpers shaking the tree, Lord Applegrab's fruit bounty yielded juicy food Also one large and heavy Apple fell into Isaac's poor resting bollocks . Testicular pain thus started a whole examination of how and why Apples did not fall safely upwards away from delicate parts ....

Seeeeeee ! We are always helping pioneers in Time and history around trees and stuff to see into large systems via the window of the experience of individual pain .

Thusly we hear today about a UserWatch connectee who is challenging the large laws of systems again and their increasingly contrary old brown-law motions ...

Up and down the UK, Local Councils are altering their business practice and so is Goverment . The Net is the new up and coming law and national and local gov't. systems want to rotate the public around it.

The connectee reported to us that they voiced this to the Ombudmans office : "Wouldn't it be nice to be able to get navigational guidance on solving public admin cock-ups in black and white text instead of glossy colour PDF's which gobble domestic and everyones inkpots up ?

Yeahhhh.......If bureacracts want to listen and validate the point .

We understand a complaint has been made to the Ombudsmans office for the UserWatch connectee experiencing that quiet smouldering sicilian desk code of :

"I'll send you the guidance form our office - I'll print it off - now fuck off " -attitude ...

Why are large systems experienced as so abusive to individual sense and need ?

Because they are not made for people but abstractions .

It will not do . For treesake ! Will the public services provide printable important material in black and white economic form and realise the public cannot and will not be PDF'd forever .....There are trees to think of ! UserWatch dogs know that . Street posts are too artificial - like public services .....

We need to ask readers out there too : "When will we actually become realistically quantum minded and realise the law of the big systems is innaccurate at the level of the particle ? - The Patient Quirk.. ? Are you a Quirk or a large system equation.... ?

The battle of Black and White economic PDF's for printing has begun ...General Bureau-Muster we hope you are listening ...You have been shitting-bull for too long ....

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Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health and The Next Steps For Corporo Rogue-gress

A Bad Kakatoon As Usual By Kakatoo


UserWatch Rip-orts

The Health Service Journal has just published Angela Greatley's new spiel (below) regarding what's next after nearly 10 years of the 1999 National Framework which she thinks has seen acheivements largely influenced by Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health .

We observe at UserWatch that "Beyond the Water Towers" (taken from the book SCMH promotes echoing the "bad" old asylum's appearances) is in fact the newly built re-institutionalising Corporo-Towers which SCMH helped to institute .. And , we'll come to that a bit more later below .

From the very beginning the SCMH with its push to drive people back to work through "Pathways To Work" led by Dr Bob Groves, a SCMH employee seconded into the Dept of Work and pensions, has had a post-victorian system delivery work agenda (not a Patient Choice agenda). It has done this alongside its charity colleagues like Mental Health Foundation (run by Andrew McCulloch previous ex-CEO of SCMH) and Mental Health Media (which Angela Greatley is a Trustee of) , Mind and Rethink who are all selling to Govt that "Stigma" by society and employers is one of the main problem areas. We do not believe this . We think discriminatory services are the real problem and SCMH has been forced to see many mental health Users have been re-asylumed into prisons .. Well done SCMH for your influence..

The MH charities all of course push this "stigma" line and its very well funded and they are expanding their influence and reach into communities on the back of this with lottery money .. One of their ex crew a previous CEO of Rethink Cliff Prior works for part of the Big Lottery .

Mind however after a major push of some 5000 surveys in 2007 turned out only 300 + service Users living mainly in sink areas who they say complained of "stigma"....Rethink lately has gone very quiet about its 25000 stigma examining survey which it was supposed to report back to the public about this April ....

The problems is the Charities need a line to push and they do not favour "Patient Choice" because of its greater inherent power shift back to the patient. SCMH and all the other Charities have pushed the notion of the "User Voice" ...Its been the cheaper system driven way of actually depriving people of their voice away from instituting real choice .. This will never be squared but it will be played with because already with Direct Payments (a method of funding some Service Users) and even we think with the so called Individual Budgets evolution, the gatekeepering of these will be constantly narrowed .. There will be no real "Patient Choice" for many - but more suffering and being pushed by financially lean services into new forms of marghinalisation ..

We see Social Inclusion as a fraud why ? Because the idea of SCMH with its Dept of Heasth baby NIMHE which it purchased the cradle website for and the Dept of Health lost the records for grew into a kind of cosly bureacracy for the more middle class corporo-aping Users...These self circlers many of which were actually kind people just used money up shifting around information inside meetings and diverting potential growth of "Patient Choice" into the more corporately acceptable "User Voice" .....

Lord Dickie Layard (London School of Economics) when he did give his first endorsing speech in 2005 at SCMH about the need for therapies for Users - something pushed by SCMH, chose CBT : The anti emotional non-inner world self-suppressive cogntive fix ...Botic-psychology.... Who owns the patient's mind - the patient ? NO . Its the orthodoxy of the system deliverers and cheap fixes pushed by a supermarket charity post victorian approach .. Adminsitered by the superficial poor solution bringing professional class of nearly all of the practitioners in mental health .. The good few are rare - they are there, we know some so we'll insert that too before we are biffed by friends ...

Social Inclusion trumpteted by SCMH and Charities is more like Social Pinned-clusion . Some Users actually have badges made by Trusts to reward them with status and belonging as well as a whole new raft of User-groups but hardly any are seeking more autonomy and true self management . They are pinned . Like special butterflies they colourfully dot NHS websites now and the few in house magazines that Trusts always produce . Some of this is deliberately rigged too with recruited ex-Users and even PR firms are involved - this is the case in Birmingham .

In Birmingham and Solhull Mental Health Trust they underpin for £6000 a year a cluster of centralised roups that are dependent on the rent of their premises being paid for by the Trust . Local wider approaches and support is far less if at all, and User "autonomy" is still managed in the shadows by the Trust . "Mainsteaming" though is seen as all and the sensible bridges for progress do not exist but the pinned-clusion is not an answer either . So what is ? Critics that we are do we have any answers ?

Yes we do ..

Again its wider and widened Patient Choice. Pinned clusion happens because patients are not helped properly and have no power to bring training to them (Grants) which they purchase and control - paranoia and social exposure fear are important to factor into making progress not "Get to college for training" ....The NIMHE-ites could achieve that in more black and white performance mode - many were ex-uni types (a few we know and drink tea with) and they know their views were favoured as were ex-Users "voicing " for others in Trusts and meetings based on their own "expert experience" ..

One of UserWatch's collegeaues observed one ex User, now working for a Mental Health Trust (we'll never forget it ) saying of other Users in parrot fashion of a well know Trust top jerk "Get them out of their comfort zones" ... What a limited view that was given so happily and it was generalised upon to the approval in a main meeting with managers listening to what they need to hear .....

So will we get beyond the new Corporo Towers Angela ? NO .... Mental Health cleaner concentration camp experience tells us the guards are wearing more informal and coloured clothes and the Trustees have increased and are wearing new shiny badges like kids and the new strait-jacket is let the charities and Services do your marketed "stigma" thinking for you while a Patient Choice culture never really takes off ....Sad isnt it Angela ... ?

Below From The Health Service Journal

"Angela Greatley on a new vision for mental health"

• Published: 11 July 2008 09:00
• Author: Angela Greatley
• More by this Author
• Last Updated: 11 July 2008 09:00

Angela Greatley

• Increase image
• View all images

"Next year, the first of the government's national service frameworks will come to an end. The adult mental health framework was published in 1999 as a 10-year plan for improving services and setting out what patients could expect from them.

"The question many are now asking is: what next? Many of the services the framework promised are now in place, thanks in part to the extra funding that has come into the NHS since 2000 and the targets contained in the NHS plan that year for crisis resolution, assertive outreach and early intervention teams. Other elements of the framework, notably in primary care, have fallen short of expectations.

Nonetheless, the conclusion of the framework's 10-year life provides an important opportunity to review what has been achieved and set out the direction for the next decade. Unless we do, the risk is that the sense of urgency and purpose the document created will dissipate and we will simply drift without a clear sense of long-term, strategic direction.

"The aim should be to demonstrate that mental health matters to all of us and that the role of public services is to support those who experience mental ill-health"

In addressing this question, the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health has worked with partners in other mental health charities, the NHS Confederation and ADASS to set out what a new vision for mental health beyond 2009 would look like. The outcome is the discussion paper A New Vision for Mental Health.

Improving lives

The document notes that people with severe and enduring mental health problems now have access to better services than they did in 1999, but that their lives continue to be constrained by communities that still do not accept them as equal citizens and by services that do not do enough to give them the same opportunities in life as everyone else.

Mental health is still seen as a minority issue, something to be avoided and ignored rather than an inevitable fact of human life.

Our starting point for the next decade, then, is to look beyond what we have achieved in building better services and to focus on helping people build better lives for themselves.

From promoting better mental health in schools and workplaces to giving people with severe and enduring mental health problems control of their own care and support (as Lord Darzi's next stage review has begun to iterate), the aim should be to demonstrate that mental health matters to all of us and that the role of public services (all public services) is to support those who experience mental ill-health to live the lives they want to live.

Universal concern

In other words, we need a new national framework, not another national service framework, for mental health. Central to this framework is leadership across government, with a Cabinet-level champion for all aspects of mental health and well-being.

Mental health is so important to all of us, as individuals and as a society, that it needs a voice where national policy gets made. It must no longer be an afterthought of government policy, stuck out on the margins of health and social care. It is so fundamental to the human condition that no policy discussion - about the NHS, law and order, welfare reform or education, for example - should take place without it.

For more on the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health, see www.scmh.org.uk

To read the discussion paper, visit www.newvisionformentalhealth.org.uk

• Author: Angela Greatley.Angela Greatley is chief executive of the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health The Foundation Surplus And Death By Suicide

As the new Trust launches into "Poundationhood" here are the figures from the publically available Board minutes . Almost 2% of income from the DOH is "surplus" - just who missed out on care ? We can give you one suicide here but there are more to follow - we'll consider reporting on them later ..

BOARD MINUTES

"TO BE HELD ON: 30th JANUARY 2008"

"As at the end of December2007 , the Trust is reporting an Income and Expenditure surplus of just under £4.0m, compared to a £3.6m surplus for the previous month.

Healthcare income recovery has improved marginally again in month, and is now showing an under performance of circa £0.1m. Pay spend has returned to its previous trend levels following the impact of pay awards during November. Non pay spend remains in line with budget. A number of commitments against reserves are still to be made during the last 3 months, particularly relating to enabling and equipping works relating to the Birmingham New Hospitals project and the ‘Deep Clean’ programme. Delivery against the Trust’s CIP target shows that circa £1m remains outstanding on a recurrent basis, although based on further work with Service and Corporate Directors this is expected to be largely achieved by year end.

The Trust’s forecast surplus position at year end remains at £3.9m- just under 2% of overall income.

Capital spend has increased to £3.7m and a detailed profile of spend in the last quarter is
shown on appendix 4.

Due to the uncertainty surrounding its various programmes, the Trust has revised its CSIP
forecast outturn to a predicted surplus of between £350k and £850k. Agreement has
been reached with NHS West Midlands on a flexible approach to CSIP brokerage to
ensure that there is no impact on the Trust position......."

We hear with heads bowed in the North of Birmingham there's been another suicide of a woman Service User - we won't say where we will wait for family to grieve ...But for sure its true this is a "Highly performing Trust" its their favourite text of late ...Sort of poundation-polished in a kind of self trapping spherical mirror so the top brass can see their own gleeming teeth in all they do on the brilliant concave surfaces with the in-house User Groups and sad cash diverting circus around them .

In memory of K .

For figures drowned you
And us

While they launched
Pure images on a polished bus

And who has paid their fare ?

But the blood of your life
And a lack of care

Ding ding forgive them
In the barbs of loss

Poor woman this time
On the finance cross




Other Developements : See : NowPublic.com


NowPublic.com carries this story above which Silvis Rivers Poet-Artist has posted there, here is a response by an American poster named Mary :

Hi silvisrivers,

duo marked your item "Another Death By Suicide And The New Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust Finance Surplus " as Good Stuff.

Another Death By Suicide And The New Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust Finance Surplus

[MARY] silvisrivers, I like this story. It's good stuff. Do you think since UK doesn't acknowledge the mental health needs of its citizens sufficiently to use its full budget, it could possibly loan that surplus to America? According to a study released in March by the Treatment Advocacy Center, for every 20 public psychiatry beds in the U.S. in 1955, only 1 such bed remained in 2005. Probably not even 1 by now -- maybe a pallet in the corner. We have seriously mentally ill people over here committing suicide as well as mass murders, wandering society homeless, and imprisoned for lack of hospital space. We could sure use the money. What with seeing to human rights around the globe, we're a little short right now on funds to care for our mentally ill citizens, you see. If you send Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust this link, maybe they would help us with their surplus funds. http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/ Mary Neal Assistance to the Incarcerated Mentally IllWebsite: http://wrongfuldeathoflarryneal.com

---

[Silvis Rivers] Yeah ....Points taken Mary ....Yes really ... If the UK used surpluses generated at new Foundation Mental Health Trusts and helped get Americans well they could all come over here and support our needs ..Yeahhhh its a virtuous circle and God knows

"I love America "

(in fact kissing americans and hugging them because of my inner empathic teddy)

However God bless you and may I say :


In the burning of the Bush
The vision came
Of a family licking in the flame

Beating twisting metal
At the forge
And there my Mary
Poured the energy of war
Sparkling into the gorge

All tough we were
And brave with eagled freedom
Under blue and red
And coloured sky

Until we returned
Post traumatised
And learned by God and heart we had to cry ...


(in memory of my war brothers)


Silvis Rivers (Poet Artist)

.

Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Foundation NHS Trust

UserWatch Reports July 2008

Old oppressions renew themselves in new forms : 5 years after the various NHS mental health Trusts in Birmingham merged we have the new promise of a very corporate and finance driven NHS Trust which will be able to accrue surpluses to "benefit patients"... Well we will see , but Benjamin the Donkey from a certain farm related to Mr Orwell is nodding in his wiser negative fashion . Nayyyy Nayyyyyy ... HeeHawww ..

The persistent parrot of Patient Choice which is an almost dodo-ic bird patrolling the old leftover bushes where the Water Towers once were has slowly developed invisibility to match its previous invisibility thus doubling up helpfully for the lack of real insight by the NHS services ..

Ghosts cannot even see this purer invisibility

Will patients ever be free of the corporatised chains of Top Down mental health management in Birmingham ? We doubt it ... The 11000 figure of members at the new Foundation Trust we think was also partly stitched up .

We know a User Group that was phoned up by staff and asked to sign up for membership and it was made clear that it was "just a peice of paper, and that a neighbour had done it "

In other words just casually signed up ... A kind of bum on seats approach...

UserWatch saw the Foundation Trusts as inveitable but the rituals of democracy around them as mainly sadly bullshit really because once again it avoids the central issue of patients being served by ANY recovery services (post serious crisis) by having choices and real purchase power converted from the over staffed overmanaging bureaucracy that by cash diversion chains MH patients often into circles of crisis and even false cultures of "User groups". We have experienced many situations where Users locally and in the UK are left to themselves by services that are lean and boned and even gutted of much real human and empathic content .. Surpluses will be made by management authority at the new Foundation Trust - tweaked a bit by Governors who will be given red carpet treatments and patted with importance and will go along to "meetings" and more "meetings" ..

Agenda's will be set from the Top and Centre ... For some Users its a soul-killing ground . To get to this stage BSMHFT has made "savings"...... Over 3 million ....And its all covered up that some did not get the care they deserved - who are they ? They are the Users that do not always articulate themselves well and are fractured in soul and life and they wander in circles of social zero-ness because lean and leaned on staff have to create a new "lean service" ...

The new parlance instead of real market driven consumer power of Patient Choice is one of "Partnerships" and this is Corporo-speke for : "We are still in charge but look deeply concerned when you say you are a User or Carer and mention need....

Partnership with the NHS cannot be equal in any real sense at most individual levels without brokering market forces into the equation when people can usefully use them to get out of mental health culture circles .. Mental health services are still a colony in subtle but deeply ingrained chains ..


FROM THE TRUSTS SITE :


"The newly named Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (BSMHFT) will start operating as a Foundation Trust today, 1st July 2008, after receiving confirmation from Monitor, the independent regulator for NHS foundation trusts.

Sue Turner, Chief Executive said “I’m delighted that our Trust has been awarded Foundation Status. It is a true reflection
of the hard work, dedication and commitment from our staff that we are in a position to operate as a Foundation Trust”

This level of involvement and the freedoms that FT status gives us means we can further develop our services to truly reflect the needs of the communities we serve”, added Sue.

With over 11,000 members, the Trust has received fantastic support from staff, patients and local people.

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust remains part of the National Health Service but is more accountable to service users, their carers and families, staff and the local community through the new membership and governor arrangements. "

Mental Health : The Blood Of Drained Services - The Picture

The Continuing Story On Mandy's Lifeboat

A Luton Based Mental Health crew and ship ..

Mandy's Lifeboat In A Swirl Of False NHS Finances

SUPPORTING MANDY'S MENTAL HEALTH

LIFEBOAT

While Mandy of "Mandy's Lifeboat" in the UK is having heavy weather of it with the crap mental health services not supporting her family properly and listening to the accuracy of her concerns about her now desperate Bipolar suicidal father - and boy she had expressed them on her site okay, and to the useless team of so called services - there goes her NHS Trust making a financial surplus . So what does surplus equal ? Oh there's cast iron proof about this from their own Board Papers - just allow us short UserWatch rant first ..

"Surplus" partly equals fucking bullshit guidance by the DOH and Strategic Health Authority making sure Trusts are self rationing with patient care - yet on top of that - as if it was not enough - Trusts are supposed to make "SURPLUSES" to go into the Foundation Trust bid ( the new NHS financial format) which is overseen by MONITOR ....The same is happening in Birmingham - patient care is rationed and so tight arsed you would have thought the BSMHTrust has an anal tailor who is good at stitching arseholes things up . Yeah probably

SURPLUSES EQUAL SHAVING OFF COSTS OF PATIENT CARE EVEN BEDFORDSHITE AND LUTON MENTAL HEALTH PARTNERSHIP TRUST RECOGNISE THIS .

Below is the finance text taken from their 2007 Board minutes... What makes these corporate pratts believe in this crap though ? A better world ? That's doubtful - its simple admin class conformity that finally sells out people's care and knows it and does little to really protest .

Time to do something ...

(Below Taken from Beds and Luton Partnership Trust Minutes and Docs )

5. Looking Forward

5.1 The DoH is demanding that an efficiency requirement of 2.5% will need to be found in 2007/08. All directorates have been tasked with identifying ways to achieve a 10% cost reduction over the next four years, as part of our Foundation Trust application, with particular emphasis on the 2.5% required for 2007/08. The initial results of this have now been reviewed and will be played into budgets for 2007/08.

5.2 Budget setting is virtually complete and the draft budgets are presented on the Closed Board agenda. The budgets are based on a breakeven assumption, in line with our statutory duty, but the SHA has requested that we aim for a surplus of £1.6 million. This figure comes from the FT diagnostic exercise, where a particular set of assumptions was made. Those assumptions have been overtaken by events and a surplus of this size (2.3% of our health income) is not possible without major service cuts. We are in discussion with the SHA to clarify this issue.

6. Conclusion

6.1 The Trust is forecasting to achieve a surplus of £506k by year end. At this point in the year we can be confident of being able to achieve this figure, despite some minor risks which may impact on the final two months of the year.

6.2 Board members are requested to review this report and raise any queries.

Gerry Nolan – Director of Finance & Performance Management
Author: Alan Hubber, Finance Manager
22nd February 2007

"Get Them In The Art" NHS Mental Health Art Competition Winner Again

A Bottle Of Sparkling Shit goes to :


WAHOO KAKATOO !!!

Bane-pain of the National Hellth Service

USERWATCH DISTORTS

Featuring an existential Disfiguron modelled on the moral twists of the in-house User-Voice in Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust, KAKATOO (KAK for short) - half shark and other parallel worlder, the judges at UserWatch decided, has captured the tainted disgrace of moral truth that walks like a death in life of well paid bad faith ....

We admit we had to hide our hands every 3 seconds from the revealed distort-body of the Disfiguron that is reputed to live by redigesting matter in its own anus .....Still it will be well paid even if its teeth are brown and breath is worse than Satan's arse after maggot-stew ...

Well-hell done New Labour, your work in the 60th year of the National Health Service and your policies have attracted a hybrid DNA policy recombination cross-species that is rumoured emerged from actual human material ....

God is pushing for a new concept of SIN too now... Satan and God are rumoured to be in discussions about this new development outside of their powers ..

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NHS Birthday Party Crew

They make a fine trio don't they ?




See Also DR RANT's BLOG

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Mental Health Coggy Actually Meets The Great Wizard Of Darz

Another Award Winning

"Get Them In The Art "

Picture by KAKATOO

In this 60th year of the NHS its only right that some mental health Zero's are given some magic after all the NHS mental health system has been dishing out the black variety long enough that morphines and boa constricts the spirit - so come on Wizard of Darz how about some humanity and warm empathy magic .....Come on or we'll get Toto to bite yer ass ....Hang on a bit that's another Wizard isnt it ?

Mental Health : Working Neighbourrhood Fund Birmingham Parliamentary Video

There are real implications for Mental Health Users arising from the Working Neighbourhood Fund which partly will seek to look at the issues of worklessness and barriers to that . The Services which include the local politicians are bloody useless so far in Birmingham and it is difficult to fully grasp details of anything they are doing positively to seriously look at the barriers to Social inclusion let alone the entry into work - there is certainly rhetoric , but reality appears to batwinging about in the night with dodging radar (More on this later)

Mental Health: Another Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust UserWatch Competition Winner

"GET THEM IN THE ART"

COMPETITION WINNER

Accompanied by a rare War-hole-ish Kakatoo copy of that roaming bloody NHS cake aged 60 we show another mental health artist poem winner below . We understand the poem is dedicated to all those financiers who are now sitting at the decision table of people's health at the very punderful Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust

NHS Cakeschwitz

Oh darling mix my cake
From human themes
And ash

For it is conscience-bones I eat
Converted from sick cash

I was a service cake of health
But now I am a class
Of finance hell and wealth

Around the tables at the top
Champagne of money
And of blood
Goes pop

And the trolley furnaced
Service Users
All ash from missing cash


They never stop.....


Silvis Rivers Copyright 2008


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Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health User Led True Art Competition

KAKATOO WINS AGAIN !

KAKATOO , The CEO's (Sue Turner's) Favourite artist has won again this year in the

"GET THEM IN THE ART"

Competition .....

Yeah Sue , with financiers helping to run the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust and strangely enough a merchant banker advising the "peoples" Labour Govt to boot people off benefits and that includes mental health users, we at UserWatch really feel the NHS mental health services at 60 " have come of cage" -

Yeah CAGE, because they are now imprisoned by the corporate classes - they are not for the people who often get crap treatments or none . In fact for Mental Health Users its a case of the enriched NHS bureau-class saying "let them eat chemical cake" - a bit like the one above we suppose . Occaisionally some Users may get a cog in their slice ...A cognitive therapy type pip with broken teeth perhaps ..

And, measures to appear linked into people and democracy are now an over-controlled stunt - take the in-house User Voice at BSMHT that by straining to appear "critical" now reports to a Trust committee whilst wearing its own sado-masochistic self tightened choke chains , about its actioned idea of using "Mystery Shoppers" spotting whether staff are wearing badges . What the hell of a ring have we come to ? That is a masked poodle trick worthy of a circus Sue - not a democracy where Users should have more choice and less diluted "Voice" .....

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