Mental Health : Be Patient For They Will Even Cremate Themselves

"Crying The Tears Of Helpless Flame"
In memory of Jonathon Brannan Aged 28

By Silvis Rivers (Shared With UserWatch)

You cannot strike back
At the clever NHS
And its slick match pack

But you can cry with
The tears of flame

You can hold up the arms
Of new holocaust walkers
Smoking and dead

On our serviceless
Oven-boards of shame .


Case No. 2

National Death Services

Jonathon Brannan Aged 28 Death by Fire And The Trust's Surpluses

"Can you stand by when people run past in flames , or are a pile of steams and fires ?" - This was said by the bad Samaritan with a financial grin who worked for the NHS Boards of executives in the UK National Health Mental Health Services .

Joe Samaritan of course, and his relatives, had changed . Now he believed greater good could be done by depriving people of cool water tears along with supportive help that over a long time might have calmed some of their painful inner fires .

While Joe prospered as you know like folks on the hill do, Jonathon could not wait for a service anymore His anguish and inner life reached for another liquid which was not so cool . In March 2008 he burned himself alive in Bradford UK by pouring thinners over himself . The Coroner said his death was preventable . His local Mental Health Trust was on target to make a "surplus" of £550k

I'll pick up the post from UKsurvivors which was done in response to a newspaper article (Bradford Telegraph and Argus ) posted by Cyndy. This is a post which promotes a rough correlational "tool" of : "Surpluses made set against patient's needs who die and are deprived of care " .....In UserWatch's recent article about Service User Colville Mark's (Camden London) death it was shown the local Islington based Mental Health Trust was on track to make a surplus of £1.75 million yet Colville had along with 49 other patients been "unallocated" services .

UKSurvivors Post

Case 2 Fireball dad 'could have been saved'. (The Silvis RoughToolkit applied)

In the case (2) of Jonathon Brannan aged 28 - this poor guy burned himself alive in March 2008. Cyndy (Uksurvivors) copied the report from the "socially concerned" Bradford Telegraph - right lets have a look at this and apply the Silvis tool of "Surpluses made - set against deprivation of serious care" (there are a couple of extra points here too a bit later about NIMHE costs .

Questions :

1. Did his local Trust run at a surplus in the relevant period of his death ?

2. Were their indications he needed serious care ?

Answers :


1.

(From the Trust's internal finance report 2007 - 8 )

QUOTE :

2. "OVERVIEW OF FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE

For the eight months ended the 30th November 2007 the Trust is reporting a surplus of £983k; a favourable variance of £635k compared to the planned position at the end of November. On the basis of current performance and the assumptions within the year end forecast, the Trust is projecting that it will make a surplus of income over expenditure of £550k at the end of the financial year. This is in line with the financial plan approved by the Trust Board in March 2007.

A summary of the Trust's financial performance at the end of November 2007 is provided in Appendix A. "

2.

"Mr Whittaker, [Coroner] who is writing to health minister Alan Johnson and chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson, said he believed 28-year-old Jonathan Brannan's death would have been prevented if there had not been a delay in getting him assessed by a community psychiatrist nurse."


So there we have it Jonathon's death was preventable according to a Coroner . Slow assessment equals "NO Care" . Why ?

Because lean-finance practice at Trusts pressured to make surpluses in the bid for the new waves of "Foundation status" (or to clear, artificial "debt" ) equals more staff rationing (cost control) per potential patient seen .

Boiled down it actually equals NHS MH Trusts shaving off costs where they can and they mainly do that on staff ratios and that emerges in restricted inflow of patients seen .

In this Bradford Case of Jonathon Brannan we have a further gems of knowledge buried in the latest Trust financial reports

Take this :

Part of NIMHE was ceding its budget over to Bradford District MH Care Trust and that was

£1,400,000 for the year 2007 - 8 (set against a banked amount the Trust carried for NIMHE from the DOH of £6,747,000)

Its difficult to see completely into this Trust like others for the amount of Users they are employing to become the "voices" of others . In others words the costs of the Inhouse-User-economy-bubble factor But like other Trust's it is Top-Down controlled with the twin weave of mystifying policy objectives going right the way through it , as well as very poor demystification of its financial language ..

But Jonathon's death was inside a larger social context which helped to kill him by neglect when he could no longer bear what was inside his feelings and mind ..There was nothing to cool his state. So he burst into fire ..

NIMHE with its service-user-bureacracy need scrapping - they are rolling out bullshit meetings and more civil servants and Jonathon could have done with a Bradford team to assess him. My estimate is it another would have cost less that a third of that amount : 1.4 million . The Trust saved money but they did not save Jonathon .

As a comparison of the costs of a team Birmingham and Solihull MH Trust ran a team of 45 staff for serious BPD conditions for about 2.4 million .....

This is the begininng of a public dossier perhaps ...? It needs a number of people on it though .. Any takers ? Every now and then perhaps ? Just set the Audit Commission's reports of the MH Trusts against patient dead in the same account years for those who needed care and never got it . Trusts are also creating access to the financial board papers although it would not surprise me if DOH spies would not look in on this potential route of emarrasment and find some way to skew transparency . This is the kind of thing they can do because this is a very politically driven organisation .

Silvis rivers Aug 2008

Mental Health Teddy Helps Create New UserWatch Logo

UserWatch can announce that Mental Health User consultation with the office Teddy, Harvey and friends has resulted in a photoshop colour party from which two characters innocently emerged. In keeping with duplicity like nasty NHS Trust's who are really soul alligators who have shiny toothpaste logo's etched all over their pointy bits, we too have decided on a duplicitously wonderfully kind duo ...

Yeah in duck egg green skies where fairies fly about ..Tragic and magic are related so the fairies told us

NHS Trusts we want you to know teddy type spirits are watching you closely for where you really put the honey ....

Silvis Rivers Designed (while eating sweets)

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Mental Health Anti Date Rape Parrot Cream Backed By Dragon's Den

USERWATCH INVESTIGATES

When UserWatch UK investigated and interviewed the self confessed mental health wizard of cheek Silvis Rivers, we had no idea what to expect ...(well we did actually we knew we were in for a cheeking and probably total bullshit )

Accusations appeared (See Here) to be levelled at Silvis Rivers derived a posting on Uksurvivors that a defamatory cartoon had been posted of someone who looked like a pirate and a text allegedly had accompanied which implied serial rape ... We could not figure all this out so with our hacker contacts and inside Yahoo mates we had a further look and sure enough serial anal rape of parrots may have been implied. No humans however were harmed in the molestation by pirates ..

Silvis though, shaking , claimed to UserWatch :

"After grinning ...er ... sinning I knew I had to make amends and soothe matters so with some rescued anally raped parrots we embarked on a business idea . I had no idea it would get the backing of the Dragons Den entrepreneurs and the secret help of one now reformed Pirate who contritely claimed his besmirched reputation needed unsmirching secretly for his conscience ...

UserWatch interviewed the parrots and this is what they had to say ...





Userwatch can endorse this new product like the Dragons Den wiz-bizzies did recently and we show it below - but not because we have tried it !

OH NO ! We would never do that . We sent our abused office sparrow in for that ..

We can endorse too that madness is still alive and unwell amongst the mad out here in community madland , yes , in amongst the scream-trees where the parrots are now safe with ear protectors on ..

Mental Health : The Strange Tale Of Scuffles And Pirates

Of Parrots And Pirates

A strange tale occurs lately on the UKSurvivors forum - the home of the marginalised in UK Mental Health survivory. We had a look at various posts after a blogger named Bob claimed he was accused of being a serial rapist accompanied by a cartoon. We suspected Kakatoo the UserWatch cartoonist of being involved - especially as parrots are involved ...

"One of his members saw fit to add an image of my
face to a cartoon and label me a serial rapist!" BOB SAYS HERE

So we had a look at the cartoon and the text HERE on a yahoo post :

The cartoon :

The Text :

"Complaints are coming in that drugged parrots in South Yardley have against their will been tattooed by a bandana-ed man known as Pirate Bob ...

"Pucy Green" one of the parrots said :

"Bob gave us all drink and when we woke up Bob had tatooed our bibs - we think he took advantage of us for self promotion and some of us are having our anuses checked too because we think date rape drugs were used on us "

"Yellow Feather" said :

"I have been itching badly at my rear end and I vaguely recall Bob screaming orgasmically :

"I am having some COCK-in-too"

"He told us he was seeking to create worldwide Parroty but now we have Bob's Bibs and aching anuses ..."

The RSPCA commented : " Parrots should not be tatooed or date raped"

Police in South Yardley have gone to Shard End Pool where there is said to be an small island chain and secret drugs hideout.

They have issued a warning to all parrots in the Bham area:

"If you get Bibbed by Bob you might get Knobbed too - report it to us ".

Bob wrote in a subsequent post : "I LIKE IT

We have no idea what the rest of the scuffle is about but we want to ask Bob why he can reverse the sense of the truth in his posts so quickly about alleged parrot-rape ? . "I like it" in our book means "I like it" .....

We agree accusations of serial parrot rape are shocking and so terrible we too are heaving , but no they are not on par with human rape Bob, which unfortunately you've implied and for someone who can write as well you can, that has to be for effect doesn't it?

.

Mental Health Parroty Leads To Corporate Policy Caging

There are fears in Wales that all Mental Health Trusts may be merged into a one Wales Trust . It appears to us at UserWatch that this will lead to gross parroty. Parrots of course repeat things across all times and places pretty much the same way.. Far from Service Users singing more freely from their caged conditions they are largely dominated by Govt's Upper-parrot-policy repeating things like "anti-stigma" - "anti-stigma" (even as the system denies Users supports and treatment choices) and "Work is good for you" - "Work is good for you" (despite poor supports - little inreach strategy of decent training grants, and no or little choices of treatment) ......Central planning has dominated the UK MH scene and "modernisation" has been dominated by a skewed version of User-empowerment. In other words : find those who will parrot the system and claim they represent the rest.. The parrots it appears have it ..

What does Wales have to say of a one merged mental health-trust ?

"Aug 25 2008 by Jonathan Morgan, Western Mail(From Wales Online)

Having a single organisation approach will create more problems than it solves, says Jonathan Morgan, as he calls for a rethink on service delivery

HEALTH Minister Edwina Hart announced the outcome of the review into mental health services led by Professor Michael Williams in June.

His thorough review of the way that we plan and provide for mental health services followed a raft of concerns from politicians, clinicians, service users and bodies who felt that we had not paid enough attention to mental health services.

I welcomed this review at the time and the “blue skies thinking” that emerged as a major contribution to an issue that concerns me personally.

One of the reasons why I have been pursuing the devolution of powers to Wales to allow us to legislate in the field of mental health is because of its Cinderella status.

The Joint Parliamentary Committee into the UK Mental Health Bill in 2004 concluded that services in Wales were less developed than elsewhere in the UK.

I suppose this was their polite way of saying that things in Wales were pretty dreadful in comparison.

Bizarrely, there are two very good strategies that should improve the services for people with mental illness. Firstly the Adult Mental Health National Service Framework outlines a range of access to services that would improve the assessment of patients’ needs, treatment and care, emergency cover and advocacy.

On paper the plan looks robust, in practice it is flimsy."

But does mental health have a Cinderally status ? What does that mean really ? That it is kept impoverished ?

At UserWatch we really wonder about this because we think the trail of money that is used, is not reaching the patient in care needs. Needless rotating crisis based on poor support is still occurring whilst at the same time extra health bureaucracy has been formed and has been parroting policy for years . The newer layers of ex-service users and other "staff innovators" recruited for user-bureaucracy like NIMHE. appear to be merging into the Strategic Health Authority in the West Mids . They have served their purpose of endorsing the will of a Govt afraid to truly go to the people and endorse what they needed in Patient Choice . Instead NIMHE were turned to the will of the D0H-DWP axis to put "work first" ..

There can be no independence though that is not first underpinned by supporting dependency in a way that actually sees its individual issues and responds to them accurately ...For too many a circle of being deprived of good human help is the reality . The State have made it so .

We are years away from being even close to addressing social and emotional reasons for many MH damaged people's personality problems and altering states of mind .

Constantly drugging people though, is still refrigeration of social problems internalised in them and echoed into endless invalidity by a system that wishes to keep people away from supported reflection and the aided emotional journeys of being able to tolerate more of what they are ..

The job of reflection is hard and emotionally painful. The Self wins itself back only slowly from pain in decent therapies . Reflection when deeply helped is however giving up drugged parrothood and slowly other repeating states of what is at base emotional helpessness that genuinely needs new languages of personal navigation . Personal navigation is uniquely unparrotlike ..But the State you will understand prefers parrots .....

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Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health : Pathways To Hell

Image By Silvis Rivers (Copyright)

So far we have seen the much vaunted "modernisation propaganda" about Mental Health services include praising getting rid of the asylums (turning them into homes for the middle classes and use by property speculators) , creating "community care" (social disappearance locally) and the policies of "Social Inclusion" (the creating of selective inclusion of fitter Users in Trusts to create new limted treatment diverting bureuacracies ) .

We have also seen a rise in the amount of self medication (over 100% ) across the whole UK using illicit drugs and deaths because of it . There has also been a rise in the prison population of mental health Users and those with MH problems .

Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health one of the midwives for NIMHE and CSIP (Care Services Improvement Partnership ) has been one of the main architects of all this including "Pathways To Work" which for some are becoming "Pathways to Hell ".

By overarching the patient's needs and treatments shaped directly by "Patient Choice" and trying to turn Mental Health Users into socially engineered work fodder, the Govt have designed a kind of hell for many Users who cannot fit into society . Trusts have been encouraged to become "Lean" and this has meant even more disappearance of patients into community Zeroland or the existential treatmentless corner . We have noted though that those Users who work for Trusts and Staff too appear to get better treatments or attention .

The word "Lean" now has entered the NHS admin-class lexicon . Language for that admin class is just another way to conceal truth and misery . Prostituting health to politics . The Health Service Journal promote this "Lean" idea too which shows the word now is fashionable amongst the health admin classes :

"Becoming a Lean Champion 2008"

Yet at the bottom of the pile the patient is now increasingly under social engineering assault. The treatments do not fully exist that fit realistic Patient Choices but are made of of ideological CBT soup and other watery dilutions. More dilutions are bound to follow . Big system sovietisation is all, the few tins on the health supermarket shelf attest to that .. But the prize Labour and other politicians will be looking for is to get unfit people off benefits . To create a "working class again" that can supply New Labour with its missing ingredient - a seriously oppressed class ..

The oppression is shaping up though , and Chris Close (Advocate in Darlington) is the first advocate we know, to pointedly state that MH Users are being unfairly assessed off benefits .

One example he chooses to write about shows the sheer bureau-spaghetti knots one person is tied up in through a false medical assessment that they are unlikely to unravel for at least a year if at all . But he says there are others too . Yes, we have known about them and its difficult to dossier it all into something that is so sharp it will stick into the heart of the system . Betrayal of Mental Health Users is built into the system and in Birmingham this is also the case . There are very very few in the services who will put themselves into the firing line for Users because mainly they are paid by the services and its a conflict of interest .

Chris Close wrote in March 2007

Especially when the people concerned cannot work because they are not fit to do so.I am witnessing increased levels of distress amongst clients with mental health issues as they are gradually 'reassessed' by the DWP as not being ill enough to qualify for Incapacity Benefit or for the Disability premium on Income support and told that if they appeal against the 'decision' (which is often arbitrarily made after a medical examination which concentrates on their physical health) they will lose 20% of their benefit whilst appealling! Hardly an encouragement to appeal! The Government target is clearly not to assist the people concerned but to reduce the benefits 'burden'. Often the people concerned have no extended family supports or mechanisms and I fear the development of a system which further marginalises and alienates already marginalised and alienated people. This time they are not being marginalised by their own ill health but by a Government which it seems to me has no capacity to care for the vulnerable.

Chris Close
Advocacy Manager Comment first posted: 21 Feb 06

In August 2008 (18th) he writes :

"I have spoken to the DWP office today about a specific client whose situation is thgat despite being diagnosed by his own Consultant Psychiatrist as suffering from Bipolar Disorder (Manic Depression a reactive severe mood swing condition he has now been "de-recognised" as suffering from that condition after a laregly physical examination by a Benefits Agency Doctor "

Pathways To Work for some will be a pathway to personal hell because the sloppy system favours not rigour and real supportive treaments to get people back to some real creative contribution, but bureaucratic power .

This policy slop is designed deliberately though - with its lack of rigourous coherent law that protects the individual - and that shows the need that politicians have for unaccountability to drive "change" through . Labour are anti individual, and are system driven with a need to preserve the massive admin class which gives them power. From the split up of complaints processes in Social Care and Health with two differing Statutory Instruments (2004 and 2006) and multi layers to be negotiated, even though Service Users could and have been using both services, to the way they have created new layers of treatment diverting bureacracy.

They have not missed an opportunity to quite frankly fuck the individual up unless they could recruit them into the system itself .

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Let Us Bray To The Board - User Ass Spotted - Mental Health Exclusive

A Kakatoo Cartoon Again August 2008

Pinning The Tale On The Ass

The evangelical anti-stigma streak in Mental Health continues, with some national charities Rethink and MIND, together with architects like Mental Health Foundation are all about to lower the persuasion hooks and sell a new vision of mental illness that will be embedded with the need to work and be tolerated by all. Seig Heil .

Mini hangers-on too like Mental Health Media and the great matrix architect Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health, are all about to stick more anti-stigma images to us in approx Oct 2008 , when the £18 million they were granted from the lottery and Comic Relief fills the coffers of the London media mind changers ...Someone is making money then from the image game ......Yeah... usually the London media circles selling us their latest fashions for a while ..

Its a pity these bands and networks are not better exposed for the money-sucking circles they are . Forget small realistic grants for Service Users for management of their lives creating unique training and support needs .. Other people have swept the possibility of those up in "new services". The Lottery is corrupt and corrupted by being too close to Govt needs .. Its a back door way now to socially engineer and a bit too close to policy objectives ..

Johnny Patient does not know best . Everyone else does, that was supported by the Govt push to create a strange burgeoned growth of Mental Health bureaucracy of Users and others that frankly should see many of them doing real work rather than making paper piles from the NHS meetings cultures.

Even the problems of roll outs of Direct Payments (helping some Users with allowances lead more socially included lives ) was held up by local Councils across the UK and it all needed penalties in law for a lack of will to create ways forwards .

That struggle was left to Users and awkward bureaucracy to push it forwards but where oh where is strong law on this ? Forget it, Labour screwed complaints processes up - split them up in Social Care and Health so they had different standards and multiple layers to be encountered. They were used in anti-accountability way . That was planned .

Equally PPI Forums were supposed to be weaker versions of the CHC's because in practice they lost control over viewing-in on statutory advocacy services and making them account to them by direct control over their reporting systems . Labour screwed that up too .. Independent Complaint and Advocacy Services (ICAS) have become split off from the public experience substantially and not truly localised but seperately controlled by the new bureau-sectorite industries Labour have favoured.

The User Voice is now bureacratised across the UK in all but a few places . Corporo-speke is all and many Users too have lost touch in the semi sovietised NHS supply of treaments with the simple lost idea that they should have supply side control over their recovery treatments. The negotiation is one way around . Bureau know best . Sieg ! The Bureauland !

Its beans on the shelf with some chemical additives and Users get to choose which additives they leave out or want added......

A new Ass though has appeared at various levels of the NHS Trusts . Its Brays To The Board ..Its made up of herds of hangers on of ex Users and now Governors of Foundation Trusts - trained up by the very NHS Trust Executives that are the Govt's strings ...

"Oh Board thou art a great and wonderful place to slip around in the greases and straws "- some Assess have said .....(Pigs have migrated to China to make money)

The new windmills are being built on Orwell and Animal Wards across the UK . They say some donkeys still exist as shadows, behind those wallpapers with anti stigma slogans painted on them .

They are not braying though ....They are the donkey-ghosts they say ......

UserWatch will bray for them ..........HeeeeeeeeeHawwwwwwwwwwwww......

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Mental Health Bureaucratisation, Choice and LINks

Taken From Mandy's Lifeboat

BY SILVIS RIVERS

As the new LINKs (Local Involvement Networks) falsely bloom into doom and drop dead petals on the graves of the Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Forums so the march of the DOH that along with some Trust CEO's hated the PPI's (because some were becoming effective) is becoming cockier and more assured ...It certainly is in Bham with a new NHS connected Host being chosen for the LINks that has "NHS-connected" rubber stamped all over it and which has many of its staff still being heavily networked into the NHS ..The con was that the NHS connected Community Interest Company "Gateway Family Services" (South Bham based) was eligible to bid for the Host position if it had (under EU laws) two years of accounts .. Well it did . In reality it had only formed in Feb 2006 and it out-competed another organisation which had a track record of many more years of effective and truly arms length community engagement.

The past several years have seen the growth of Patient-User-bureaucracy in mental health services which has high-jacked the financial development of direct User-Choice and a viable supported robust front-line economy of that . Costly NIMHE and CSIP led cross organisational orgies called "meetings" sponsored by National MH Charities and Govt have created this unbelievable state of affairs . State supply sides of treatment has been put in the way of everyone too . Those who are psychotic and have serious crisis sycles might have fared a little better with choices of antipsychotics .

I have massive misgivings about the way many people are still excluded (especially in the Personality Disorder "Community") away from being able to get any provision . The total UK spend on PD areas was in 2007 about 9 million .. That's unbelievably small . In Birmingham (2007) nearly 2.5 million was spent seeing only a maximum of 24 people (12 local beds) per year . When I checked this on a number of occasions they were at under-capacity because the pressure was on to save money and make stupid fucking surpluses across the UK for those Trusts becoming Foundation Trusts (who had to qualify for FT status by having a substantial surplus in "their bank") . Some Trusts outside of Birmingham were previosuly purchasing the PD "specialism" that Birmingham offered .

PD is now a topic of change (a push towards community provision) but in Birmingham the proposed change is very tiny because they still wish to hang onto the "specialist unit". This is non-deterministic bollocks really because once you keep people away from good therapeutic support over the longer term they evolve into crisis - hence the false evolution of "specialism" for people who are at base child abused and have suffered shocking attachment experiencies and who often need help navigating massive jags of ascending feelings and partial re-experiences.

These people are not "psychotic" but are usually driven mad enough by what remains as serious imprinted disorder in their emotional and relational capacities .

The Health Service Journal over the past few days has pointed out that some people in broader medicine have been negotiating with their local Primary Care Trusts to "top-up" treatments they need : Cancer Drugs and other applications .

"

Almost all PCTs stated it was their clear policy - following Department of Health guidance - not to allow patients to mix NHS and private funding.

Co-payments

But freedom of information releases from acute trusts indicate that a number have allowed patients to make co-payments to cover the cost of drugs not normally funded by the NHS.

The commissioning manager at one PCT said this could constitute fraud if the PCT was not aware it was going on.

Leeds PCT recently discovered local nursing homes had charged NHS-funded residents a top-up fee. The PCT suspended any additional placements at those homes.

The DH has tasked the national cancer director, Mike Richards, with reviewing policy on top-up payments. It is due to report in October. "

Ivan Lewis the new Secretary of State for health has pointed out that engaging the public in service redesign is the way forwards. Yet the more people and Users I know have involved themselves in the NHS the greater the expectation on them to begin bureau-speke and slowly turn into voluntary civil servants somehow ideally re-possessing the heart of the values of the NHS .

The NHS though is quite frankly an oppressor for many in mental health and its time it was broken over the rack of any elements of Patient Choice . I welcome any mechanism that breaks down the monopoly of the NHS supply sides - that means "top-ups" too . Why ? Because any erosion of the bureacracy in mental health perversely carrying out socially engineering policies (work orientated social inclusion) and diverting resources falsely into new performance engineered very internalised User-bureacracy avoids frontline treatment for many.

User-democracy is simple when peoples get treatment choices that challenge State supply sides too across ALL ranges and particularly in recovery orientated situations .

A colleague was tipped off professionally about statistical returns at a PCT which if captured into the public domain could well have been used critically to show that counselling for many is non-existent and/or the quality of it is questionable .

The tip off was clear : stat-returns definitely existed of people who had counselling set against things like broken appointments . The point was to penetrate what the quality of the supply was, find out if its crudely inhouse and poorly trained, and set it against rough indicators of public confidence . So a Freedom Of Information request was made based on the tip off of the witnessed and seen stats .

The response was no information existed that was robust .....Oh yeah ....So what did exist and is this meat for the Information Commissioner now ? .....Its so fucking hard to penetrate simple local supply questions even for those in the know .. Control over vision is all in the NHS and its chaos .

LINks will be no match either for the NHS chaos because there's too much bullshit idealised cross organisational partnership within the clamping bureau State and not enough clearly boundarised real inspection that will happen ...

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Mental Health Discovery Of CIC Maggotry

UserWatch discovers that the Host that has been appointed By Birmingham City Council to run the dregs of the nippy partly untamed PPI Forums (now re-named Local Involvement Networks (LINKs) is a bunch of colourful Birmingham South based CIC maggots ....Green though - pretty too, like five pound note green ...LINKs are to be the wussy-cats of the new "health monitoring public" role ...

CIC's are more fully known as Community Interest Companies and have sadly become the choice of vehicle for the new growing policy writhe of "get em back to work" New Labour State-ish Sector ...Only its not quite like the old State Sector that was more dependably shit and occaisionally but increasingly rarely accountable. CIC's are the new methodism of socially corporatised sloppy socialism ... Like those jolly ol' middle class silly green wellingtons ....Everyone's gone green though now . We know we at UserWatch have ...But then we too are maggoty ....We at least admit our relationship to the Lord of the Flies ...

CIC's are partly being set up because New Labour feared privatisation so they looked for a hybrid philosophy that de-profited profit, increasingly gets rid of the old State and preserved community benefit inside surpluses they can generate .. Most of this hybrid philosophy is being churned into existence by Govt grants and DOH support but also by the new job creation schemes creating job creation schemes creating job creation schemes in the public-corporo-third-sector .....Labour after all need a new oppressed "working class" - mainly to be created from knackered out benefit claimaints and disabled people and the mentally ill ..

Privatisation of health is seen as a privileged evil by Labour yet curiously they divert so many resources away from the still dis-enabled individual into making direct opportunity-robbing bureacracies of one kind or another into the privileged pocketed bureaucrats and corporo-public-sector workers.

What the fuck is wrong with many longer term patients in mental health getting training grants, grants for treatments , disability training they design and shape...Is everyone so helpless they needs armies of new-experts in between their potential choices and the supply, if indeed they ever get choices because of the increasing size of the bureaucracy in the way.

Labour had the debate about everyone else choices in health (mental health particularly with their London friends in the virtually nationalised mental health charities) of how to move forwards and they won it before everyone else opened their mouths .

The top London national charity voices had everyone elses voices and that is what they created in the localities . Organisations named "Patients Voices" but without real choices .

Public and third sector expansion leading from the Govt and NHS top will certainly create a bubble of activity in localities for a time but at what cost to diverting life chances , treatments and other opportunities that people might have created if they had more direct choices ? Maybe a "real" state sector should be about that, distributing the means to choices directly instead of dominating choices and creating job creation bureaucracies because the new Host is actually a public sector Job creation scheme we think in a sector that is seriously overcrowded with bureaucracy



So who is the Host of the yet to be in October New LINKs in Birmingham ? Its Gateway Family Services . Nice little name but behind it all are some people of very senior NHS interests . Cynthia Bower is probably the most senior . She has been a Strategic Health Authority Head in the West Mids and worked at one time for Birmingham Social Services .

Stafford Scott has been involved in Bernie Grant Trust work so probaby knows good ol' Sharon Grant of the heavily criticised CPPIH that was disbanded this year .. stafford.scott@dh.gsi.gov.uk

To quote a ref :

"Joy Warmington From October 07, Joy will be working on a part-time basis for BRAP, which is a Equalities and Human Rights charity based in Birmingham. She has been the organisation’s CEO for the last 5 years. Through this role, Joy has been involved in working on issues of health inequalities both at a leadership level as part of a DOH steering group, and also by working directly with local PCT’s"

The lurch to the South in Bham again in the choice of the Host (the merged mental health Trust in 2003 became dominated by a south Birmingham agenda and south biased MH Trust) with its pc correct race and social inclusion agenda is quite a sell and there is no doubt it has been chosen to balance the ambitions of work-creation with New Labour's agenda of selling it all on the back of the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (500 Million announced by Hazel Blears earlier this year) .

Slowly however a giant policy fog soup is congealing in the UK and locally in Birmingham and the gamble is it will get people off welfare benefits and make them more healthy by central planning and masses of semi treated mental health issues with a heavy dose of get-back-to-work and become a pseudo-corporo-worker ? What you can see in Gateway Family Services is a social engineering philosophy that is similar to NIMHE's (National Institute of Mental Health Education) "Train the Trainers". You can see this openly on their site as an offered service and in Stafford Scott's Leadership work - but does it cut the mustard ?

At UserWatch we think dis-enabled people must have grants shaped by them directly to fit their socially creative purposes to buy in training and even shape that training around their idiosyncratic lives . Changing them into corporo-sectorites though is bullshit ..Let their be small innovative local grants a-plenty - let them be super promoted as information . Let their be information SIGHT !

Never mind the privileged industries of New Labour social twiddlers ..

We think the underlying failure of this policy is already seedbeded in the lack of trust New Labour have shown in enabled human independence - that would have generated a new social economy . Too many new bureacratic systems are in place like a bad glue around social problems that deserved better individual input by directer means of personal choice . Personal Choice in mental health is now being played with and "eligibilised" to death by the bureau-classes . The main victim has been wider Patient Choices and a financially enabled culture that could grew from that. What happened to Patient Choice in mental health is a theme that happens to individuals more widely where sections of the community benefit from social engineering idealisms by creating their own careers from it ....Bugger the rest in special spirit prisons .

Only truer Patient Choice would have started to undermine the way NHS bureacrats still pins the patient down and dominates them with new models of how to be a working bureaucrat - especially in mental health ..

The Tories have it partly right that the individual makes the best economic choices but they would never allow the means to trickle down to empower that . Labour might have allowed that if they had let go of trying to sustain a monopolistic NHS that cannot let go of the NHS mental health patient beyond crisis and let them liberate their lives into planned and owned creatvity/training. Labour still create in mental health a soviet-type social doom for many. Care in the new Gulag comunity

.

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

(CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO ENLARGE THE LETTER IN YOUR BROWSER)


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 ....


.

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)

.