The Mental Health Bone Captain Of The UK NHS Service Ship

Cartoon By KakaToo UserWatch Roving Pisstaker


STORY BROUGHT TO YOU BY USERWATCH

The Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust long ago launched its own Bone-ship in the great NHS Wealthy-Unhealthy Fatlantics ....We can reliably inform you we know of many such ghostly service Bone-ships without many patients, or some have them hidden away stacked like moaning sardines , that were launched all across the UK .

Locally is it all a new Community despair BIRMUDA triangle of some sort we have often asked? .....

The slippery foundations for the Bone-ships special launches are based on runners with existential greases made from patients suffering the trimming of the fat off them and they are then thrown into harbours without real lifebelts .....

UserWatch learned that as of January 2008 this year the Birmingham And Solihull Mental Health Trust had made £ 3.9 million as "financial surplus" - and that was the final total over the last financial year.

In 2005-6 an independent report in Birmingham into what was happening to mental health patients , post-crisis (commissioned by a Patient Watchdog Group ) showed that patients did not receive a continuity of NHS and other supports after crisis but often went back into crisis as they tried to sort out their welfare benefits and problems created by the disruption of the initial crisis . Rotational crisis in this form is very very real for some of them still often exacerbated by a lack of targeted supports that solve their problems

There is also still very little choice of recovery therapies for patients and even on the recent grapevine some staff have said the Trust is going "more inwards" ..."more inward looking" - Mind you we heard recently of patients being given group-talks of how to "help themselves" ..

That is not satire either - its just shit practice if you are on the end of it and are in distress and mental pain ..

An inward looking Trust ? Is it gazing then at its Naval as part of Bone-ship practice ? (okay we know we mis-spelled that - but you know us - Who Cheeks Grins ! )

We restate, we have heard of struggles where longer-term out-ish-patients have tried to get help time and time again but frankly the Bone-ship is accustomed to wails and just passes them by as they spout their spirit lanced with hearted bloods...

Now as of March 2008 we are hearing more about "recovery based" thinking that wants to get patients into the lone-moan-boat of themselves coupled with pushes to work and training as quickly as possible. We know of course this is controlled by the national Bone-ship Captain...

David Freud's right-banking recent anti benefit push and his scourging whippery into the disabled "benefit class" coupled with other patterns of a general service push to get mental health Users using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for "work-recovery" is just part of a larger pattern to shrink the services and make then "lean" ...We would say "mean" too.....What is missing you see is the patient's real voice inside a real choice of recovery-treatment .. Real choice costs....

We can point our User-raft's textant again into the new subtle social engineering weavery and towards the massively top-down influential Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health (SCMH) that is putting out more propaganda about "recovery" . The text of that we agree is "hopeful" even written to sound "radical", but the economic sub agenda is not really about the patient and Users being empowered to get treatment choices that fit them and a recovery that really suits their paces .

Its a new hothouse-mental health recovery-theory that puts "lean economic NHS practice" before real patient led and shaped services......

We are also being recently informed that the Care Services Partnership (CSIP) which is part of the Dept Of Health (DOH) but was born out of the National Institute For Mental Health Education (NIMHE) which was itself born from advice given to the DOH by SCMH, is lately acting in an "advisory capacity" to get some User Groups that have been pretty close to it, large lottery grants in the region of £1 million ...

The problem is with NIHME and CSIP is a culture of boundarylessness encouraged by their own salesmanship of themselves and conceptualised by them as the practice of "cross-cutting" - which means they use public money to meet who they damn well please. The problem with that has been many who they meet have a vested interest in creating new bureaucracies for careers and that includes some fitter Users

This is constantly evolving into a practice now of selective inclusion because by creating these "cross cutters" and other closely connected bodies it does not favour the individual at the locality in terms of realisable consumerist led patient choice. Or indeed it does not favour the local innovation of service Users to use lottery based grants for local developments. No , they are in competition with new semi bureaucratic groups backed at one remove by DOH motives.

We will harp on it forever because it is creating a selective inclusion bureacracy that diverts money and keeps patients located even enslaved to the Bone-ship inside the monopoly supply side of "experts" who are still :

"On top not on tap "

This is precisely the opposite of what SCMH claim they support and here is a quote from their glossy flag waving talk about recovery

"The aim of the professional is thus to provide the person with the resources – information, skills, networks and support – to manage their own condition as far as possible and to help them to get access to the resources they think they need to live their lives. This is entirely consistent with the orientation described in New Ways of Working (Department of Health, 2007b). Repper and Perkins (2003) have neatly summarised this change as professionals being, “on-tap, not ontop”. It implies a very different power relationship between professionals and the people they are there to serve."

(from "Making Recovery A Reality" By G. Shepherd, J, Boardman & Mike Slade Pub By SCMH)

Other Source Story SCMH Below

Mental health services need radical changes

to make recovery a reality

17 March 2008

Mental health services need to offer people more opportunities to get their lives back and focus less on medication and symptom control, according to a policy paper published today by the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health.

Making Recovery a Reality, by Geoff Shepherd, Jed Boardman and Mike Slade, says helping people to recover their lives should be the top priority for mental health services. This means giving service users the chance to determine what future they want for themselves and offering practical support to help them to achieve it.

Jed Boardman, policy adviser to Sainsbury Centre, said: "While recovery is already government policy, the reality is that mental health services still focus more on managing people's symptoms than their work, education and family life. Yet these are what matter most to most people.

"Recovery is a truly radical idea. It turns mental health services' priorities on their heads. Traditional services wait until a person's illness is cured before helping them to get their life back. Recovery-focused services aim from day one to help people to build a life for themselves. The medical care they give is in support of that bigger purpose."

Making Recovery a Reality says mental health services need to change radically to focus on recovery. They need to demonstrate success in helping service users to get their lives back and giving service users the chance to make their own decisions about how they live their lives.

Geoff Shepherd, policy adviser to Sainsbury Centre, said: "National guidance on how to focus services on recovery offers one way of shifting priorities.

"But recovery means making significant changes to traditional power relationships in mental health services. It may also mean making changes their recruitment practices to bring in more people with lived experience of mental illness as practitioners and managers. This would truly help to shift the culture of mental health services and make recovery a reality for all those who use them."

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Making Recovery a Reality marks the beginning of the Sainsbury Centre recovery project. The project will look in more detail at how recovery can be made a practical reality in mental health services and in the criminal justice system.

The paper will be launched at the 2008 Sainsbury Centre Lecture on Monday, 17 March. The lecture will be delivered by Prof Robert Drake from Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire with a response by Rachel Perkins from South West London and St George's NHS Trust.

Links :

Sainsbury's Full PDF Report :

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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