Caring Souls Forum "Fran" The Counsellor - More Disturbing Evidence

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BACP Links To Caring Souls Story

UserWatch will not support unprofessional or unethical practice by counsellors in the UK especially when they openly support UK mentally disturbed people as main Forum Support administrators (Re: Caring Souls Forum) and openly state they are UK counsellors and the friend of the main Forum Support who later collapses under pressure from posters and brings the whole Forum down without warning distressing other people with instability. Its clear a UK counsellor like this who is also advising others on the Forum is not respecting the boundaries of their own professional practices and they are endangering others - Its a step too far ..But are they even registered ? We think this person "Fran" probably is ..

"My name is not Fran and I have never revealed my true location and always given false details as is proper and safe when online."


Lets remind the public and other Users about dangers of poor professional boundaries by looking at the somewhat prescient material below written by a BACP therapist in 2008 who knew the person whose alias was "Souls" on Caring Souls Forum. That BACP therapist was also concerned about the mixing of counselling boundaries online.

The Quotes below are from page's 4 and 5 of the BACP Therapist's 2008 response to a complaint and in reference to the person known as "MF" who was "Souls" on the Caring Souls Forum and the same "Souls"who posted this complaint material Online on a blogspot where we screen captured it. "Souls" also known as "MF" previously posted the information inside the Caring Souls Forum under the nose of her friend the counsellor "Fran" ..

From The BACP therapist :

Page 4 : Section 13 : (reference the internet and gaining of contacts)

"This was mainly via an internet website that brought together counsellors, student counsellors and clients of counselling "

and

"I was sometimes worried about the nature of the relationships resulting from this website and chat room and regard this website as highly inappropriate and encouraging a hugh blurring of boundaries between what is friendship and counselling"

Page 5 Section 13 : (reference to the internet)

"I do have questions though as to how much xxxxxxxxxxxxx may have interfered in her counselling with me "

UserWatch believes this material is very concerning and certainly the last line gathered with the rest because it points directly to the heart of the matter and focuses the points into serious matters of mixed up ethical behaviour of someone who claims to be a counsellor somewhere in the UK ..

When this material reaches the authorities in the UK and there are many pages of it, UserWatch believes they will be very surprised . There are in fact two separate tracts of material generated by two therapists associated to BACP and UKCP available as sources.

We will not support Users who endanger other Users - we will not support wayward professionals ..

We say to "Fran" - Turn yourself over to your registration body Fran - get peer supervision because you are ethically wayward and demands for privacy from you are nothing more than demands for immunity from accountability ..

Caring Souls Forum, BACP, And The Unethical Counsellor Named "Fran"

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ALSO : NEW MATERIAL PRESENTED (BACP Text In Last Picture Below)

We at UserWatch think there may well be an unethical UK counsellor poster-named "Fran" still running the Caring Souls Forum .

The name "Fran" is claimed from a post on NowPublic.com which we screen captured to be false details ..

"My name is not Fran and I have never revealed my true location and always given false details as is proper and safe when online."

We've seen the evidence though that she is still credibilising claims as "Administrator"of the Caring Souls Forum which we think is flawed by very blurred boundaries and it caused arguments which led to pressure on her friend the Forum Support "Souls" - who was already someone with problems to collapse . NO-ONE FROM USERWATCH WAS INVOLVED IN THE OVERHEATING OF THE ARGUMENTS ..

The BACP text (you view large by clicking on it ) at the end of this report which was generated by a BACP therapist in 2008 refers to blurring of boundaries and feeling uncomfortable about this internet pattern of mixing counselling/friendship. The person in the text it is concerned about is the same person that collapsed the Caring Souls Forum .. UserWatch only discovered this because that person posted a lot of BACP material on the web about themselves .. The trouble is it affected other people too ..

After what has been happening on the Caring Souls Forum "Fran" if she is a counsellor, should report herself to her UK registration body for serious peer supervision, sooner or later, she will be brought to book for her wayward mixing of being a "counsellor" with support forums where mixed messages about therapy and counselling and feelings created problems .

At least posters now from that Caring Souls Forum which crashed in late February can be assured they can delete their private material on it after we along with Silvisrivers pressured Fran On NowPublic.com to get it sorted after her unstable Forum Support friend made the Forum unavailable with everyone's material on it ..A lot of people were made so unhappy and some suicidal ..

Is "Fran" real ? Not the name apparently , but she is a Counsellor in the UK probably, and there is evidence of that in the BACP text at the end of this tract .... Why is she unethical as we claim ? And will the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy care ? ... BACP will care, we have very serious material we are not showing here yet which they will obtain from other sources too ..We will show part of it at the end of this UserWatch report .

This whole Caring Souls Forum story is a strange but human story of badly blinded good-will actually gone very very wrong ... Fran the counsellor , chose to support a friend who was running the Caring Souls Forum but Fran ALSO deserted her professional ethics and jeopardized the public inside her own conflicts of interest (looking after her friend - promoting her counsellorship knowledge - and supporting her friend to admin a support forum for vulnerable others) and the Forum crashed in late February. It took risks with suicidal people . They and others contacted us - they were not fictions .

Fran's friend was the poster that had named herself "Souls" on Caring Souls Forum and "Sluagh" on another practice-ambiguous Counselling Forum where "Fran" the counsellor we believe is also stationed ..(see image below)

Fran who also promoted herself openly and repeatedly as a Counsellor on Caring Souls Forum was lending credibility to "safeness" of the Caring Souls Forum ... Only it was not safe. Fran, prided herself on the Caring Souls Forum she claims was safe, but she stated on NowPublic.com that ethics were her last consideration ...

UserWatch observes : Without ethical consideration she actually helped it to be unsafe but she was inside a kind of zealot blindness ..

It was not safe because Fran lost her own professional boundaries and she sadly falsely gave more functional credibility to her Borderline Psychotic friend "Souls" to run the Caring Souls Forum which collapsed along with herself in late February, and that affected other members of the public with sensitive mental health material posted there .

We know this is going to be pursued through UK authorities because it was dangerous practice that involved other people's mental health safety ..

"Fran" chose to support her very tragic friend who is sadly "Borderline Psychotic", with a tendency to be paranoid and manipulative in the words of a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy BACP therapist's text of 2008.

It gives us no pleasure to be involved in viewing the material we have seen that confirms BACP also probably knew about the counsellor "Fran" along with the dubious internet themes where counselling and friendship were blurred in a professionally unboundarised way.

Its time for a yearly register of online interests for counsellors we think when they are using their "counsellor" term of practice status and name dropping it frequently in online support forums - it needs scrutiny ..

In fairness to BACP there was nothing much they could do.. But now the matter has become public, and we will follow it . Fran also threatened to use personal material against someone who exposed her to her own ethical binds and poor practice.. Hardly a balanced counsellor approach is it ? . In fact its indicative of abusive defensiveness and it is noted too ..

Lets be clear about this : "Souls" who is a real person with a very serious condition and who is known as "MF" in BACP material she HERSELF posted Online on a blogspot, was lent capacity to perpetuate the Caring Souls Forum beyond her real ability, and Fran who promoted herself as professional counsellor there did that. That is very bad practice, poor risk assessment, and judgement ..

From Souls (MF's) Blogspot
Click to Enlarge

Fran, UserWatch says to you : if you visit here and we think you will, you should report yourself to your registration body as soon as possible for your ethically skewed judgments .. You need serious senior peer supervision over your involvement on Caring Souls Forum and maybe other work and involvements as soon as possible .

Text from a BACP Therapist's Letter Below
Showing Questionable Connections Between "Souls"
And "Fran" the "counsellor"

Page 4 : Section 13 : (reference the internet and gaining of contacts)

"This was mainly via an internet website that brought together counsellors, student counsellors and clients of counselling "

and

"I was sometimes worried about the nature of the relationships resulting from this website and chat room and regard this website as highly inappropriate and encouraging a hugh blurring of boundaries between what is friendship and counselling"

Page 5 Section 13 : (reference to the internet)

"I do have questions though as to how much xxxxxxxxxxxxx may have interfered in her counselling with me "

Links To : Now Altered Google Cached Material Here

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The Art Of Releasing Principles From Jailed Illusions

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UserWatch will be following up the story about Caring Souls Forum but for now Purple Bunny in glow phase has got out of the illusion prison some others want to live in ... The key to the prison was principle as much as anything else ..

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More Surpluses (5 Million) To Be Made At Local Mental Health Trust

5 Million Forecast For 2009 - 10

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Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust look set to make larger surpluses. "Lean management" - which is one of their phrases is the way they make "surpluses" . Surpluses mean of the granted amount they are given each year - they are allowed to shave "savings" here and there and where-ever they can . From a patient perspective this could mean waiting for therapy or some help for many many months - even years in the past ..

How does it work though making "savings" and surpluses ? That is what you want to know. We are certainly asked by patients time and time again . How can they make money from us ?

Well (we nearly always say ) instead of having 10 types of staff in the year to meet patient need - you have instead 8 and those 8 create a supply side of care that rations patient need .

In other words demand from patients is controlled by false and squeezed supply side logic .

A Trust can save the money from two posts it has not recruited for and "save the money" . That money emerges as a "surplus" which it then claims at its Board level it can use according to its own visions .. "For patient benefit " - Yeah we really beleive you ..

This sounds wonderful except some patients doe not get therapy allocations when they need them or they do not get Occupational health attendants for the hours they need them..

The easiest patient-service to target for savings have been those with complex post trauma or personality disorders - these people are often lost within the mystifiaction of what need is - what label they are (often non-acute so they dont attract services) because labels evolve allocations of money - and some people defy being labelled ..

Once again UserWatch puts the simple facts and states that if its possible to make "surpluses" from patient care money at a major Mental Health Trust then its possible to return the money to GP allocated provisions of therapy in the community , counselling etc - creating peoples choice led and preference shaped services that do not depend on Boards of well heeled people

The local Birmingham Mental Health Trust (never one to miss a dodge ) has already anticipated some role in the national Improvement To Access of Psychological therapy policy (IAPT) - but since most of the money will be swallowed up by the shallow Cognitive Behavioural Therapy models, UserWatch can honestly say patients are cynical and this exercise may well be counterproductive to producing patient-led quality therapy .

Why ? Because the standards are already planned for what CBT is supposed to achieve - if you are human and suffer from complicated human feelings or trauma aftermaths, CBT is like a gate made of clever feather that will be blown away by a powerful emotional wind of truth . Sooner or later ..



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Lead Administrator At Caring Souls Forum Makes Statement

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Lead Adminstrator Fran Responds to Need For Statement

Lead Admin's Response and Silvis Rivers Response Follows - taken from NowPublic.com




Fran09

at 14:54 on March 1st, 2009

Hello everyone

I have only just been made aware of this site and am so relieved i am able to communicate with you all. I am equally as upset and confused as you all are and want to tell you what happened from my seat regarding our forum. It is Souls who started, owned and maintained the forum and i was a moderator there. I am a reliable person who cares deeply for our members and would never close the forum in that way - i did not have any say in what happened nor any control over it as all my moderator tools were taken away while i was working.

I hope you can all hear what i am saying and that this doesn't have to become an attack on myself. I feel as upset as you all do and equally as powerless. Also i cannot and will not be held responsible for the actions of another in this circumstance.

Souls is an intelligent and amazing person but like us all she has problems of her own - and right now they are very serious. I am not going to expose them here but please could you hear that right now she is struggling - I believe she has had a breakdown and is not able to control what is happening to her. She has had something very difficult happen in her personal life recently and was under a lot of stress on the forum too.

It was too much for her and despite her desperately asking to be left alone and my frantic efforts to get her to step back, on Thursday she finally lost it when a member addressed her after she asked to be left alone. I came onto the forum for 10 minutes at lunch time and found a post that showed me she was in a terrible place.

The members who had been challenging her didn't realise the gravity of the situation and it had become inappropriate on her behalf. I removed the post and explained that souls was in a bad place and warned her to back off. That is all i had time for. I then had to go to work. On my return i found the forum closed down - i had access but Souls had removed all my moderator tools and had even closed down our e mail account. I had no warning of this and no time to go in and take e mail addresses so i could contact you all.

My hands were tied and i could do nothing. I have spent the past few days absolutely wretched with the pain of what has happened and the plight of you our members who i care for so much. I am also furious at the way this happebned and at having my tools taken away from me - the tools that could have kept our forum up and running and prevented the pain of us all. I am so glad i have finally found you to explain. I apologise for the closing of the forum. I am afraid i cannot answer any questions as to whether it will be re opened as i have no control over that and Souls is refusing to speak with me. Please understand she cannot help it and would never deliberately hurt anyone - she has become very ill.

I am aware that this has had an acute impact on you all as i know how important the forum is to you. I don't know what else to say - it is an important place to me too and i feel utterly devastated by what has happened.

I am a professional but also, and most importantly, a caring human being and i would never do anything like that to you - i did not have any control over it. I feel angry that my name is now being held in such disrepute when i have not actually done anything wrong. I will not allow myself to be tried and found guilty for something that is not anything to do with me. I am sad and very angry that this has happened - it is very wrong that the forum was shut down so suddenly and i completely disagree with what happened but i also know that it was done from a place of acute pain and a loss of reality.

When the dust settles i will try and see if i can negotiate a re opening of the forum but i am nor sure if i feel able to continue as a moderator there. I would like to be able to hand over to someone else but it all relies on Souls re instating it and i have no say in that right now. It was not meant to become something that took over my life in such a painful and stressful way. I was just a volunteer helping to moderate an online forum but it has become too much for me now. I was asked to come in as moderator by Souls with no idea that she might do something like this.

I am also shocked that you would want to reveal my whereabouts and my name. That feels very unfair - i have a right to anonymity and safety the same as you do Silvis. It actually frightens me to read what you posted here with all those therapists names. It feels like i am being hunted and i feel very afraid of that. I would appreciate it if you could not do that ok and that you would please respect my rights for privacy - as i respect yours.

I am sending you all my love and support. If you would like to e mail me i can be contacted on

francouns@yahoo.co.uk

Fran xx

Silvis Rivers Response

silvisrivers

at 16:40 on March 1st, 2009 new

Fran you have explained some of the situation here because this matter was not discussable on the Caring Souls Forum which an unstable member of your team closed down and there is no forseeable solution that has been shared or informed to people widely - the pressure for that has occured here on NowPublic.com .. This is a public interest matter with a number of serious angles ..

You are, in fairness to the rest of us , advertised as the main "Administrator" on Caring Souls Forum. The buck stop with you because of that . You have let your name become used in that promotional way . That was your choice ..

Who can know about your informal arrangments behind the scenes - they are not on public display .

In terms of simple principle , in the outside world of service delivery, risk assessments are made of those people who are delivering some kind of resource to help others and maybe you should have taken a longer look at what you were doing in terms of risk and who you were supporting to deliver a resource to others .

In your text response here you've gone from being the publically advertised main "Adminstrator" of Caring Souls to the minimalised "volunteer" .. So lets state this fairly :

"I was just a volunteer helping to moderate an online forum"

Who is supposed to know what your boundaries are when you actually advertise one thing : "Administrator " and state another of more minimal responsibility .. ?

That is fair comment and a fair question here isnt it ?

Online, there are no governing standards for quasi counselling type boards but only mutual ethical stances that we see can seriously collapse leaving hundreds of people adrift from their own material .. We are talking here about very sensitive material ..

It seems that Souls the Forum Support Staff has encountered some kind of breakdown and personal distress but that has spilled over into creating much distress in others and in one case so far that UserWatch picked up, someone reportedly has encountered some suicidal feelings because of it ..

This issue is about safety and people learning that Online they are not necessarily safe because there is no actual accountability . Its clear though from material that existed on Caring Souls Forum that you are a professional and also know Souls on a personal basis so why didnt your professional alarms go off earlier ?

The only impetus there is to put things right in a violated information void where many posters are severed from their own material is a moral one, and the pressure to bring that about lies within principled actions and concern .. That is what has happened here .

You have stated :

"I am also shocked that you would want to reveal my whereabouts and my name. That feels very unfair - i have a right to anonymity and safety the same as you do Silvis."

Fran :

As a professional counsellor you have to abide by ethical standards - even outside of dealing with clients directly - peer judgement by other counsellors is one of the things that protects standards of safety for clients .

Your involvement with a quasi counselling forum was a moral hazard to your connections with professional counselling . No-one stated you were a professional counsellor but you on Caring Souls Forum , coupled with you being advertised as Main Adminstrator it placed you in a risky position . You were a quality person in my opinion but risks have been run which I feel you might have altered and I hope you will learn from this .. I know I and other have done so dramatically .

You will be aware Of the Health Professions Council in the UK and BACP and others like UKCP who have standards of conduct and complaint processes and if you had been holding a group set of meetings in the UK Offline albeit voluntarily and people's material has been severed from them by a colleague of yours in a set up where you were sharing at least some degree of management authority and implying you were a counsellor then a complaint about ethical standards may well be winging its way to the right committee .

Lets clean this matter up and get people's stuff back or their right to delete their private material Fran - that is the way forward ..

Silvis Rivers .

Mental Health Meltdown Of Forum Support Staff At Caring Souls Forum Is Claimed

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Update To The Previous UserWatch Story

The Caring Souls Forum up till recently offered its 703 members a place where therapy and counselling professionals and others in such training could create some “support” (without offering formal therapy and counselling duties) but ethically it stood in a difficult halfway house territory of personal pain and personal disclosures and needs for deeper emotional answers , and it took risks within its key administrative ranks .

Those risks sadly were to recruit someone not suited to the role of being able to take stern public debate on an issue where many Caring Souls Forum members felt a very honest US female poster who had disclosed serious serial rape and abuse issues in her childhood was given contrary signals about whether to continue or not .

UserWatch knows there is a serious human need for people to gather on the internet and find fellowships of kinds which suit them and it is a reflection on our societies that in emotional terms we have poorly containing Offline human solutions .

State therapy services particularly, and even some private services are of very dubious quality in therapy terms. Empathic quality (the ability to feel with and into another's inner map) cannot necessarily be trained within some staff or practitioners who internally speaking are role playing the machine idea-end of “therapy” .

Its a common complaint of people who need help that they often encounter unseeing professionals who are contrarily practiced at a kind of distant alientated form of objectivity ..

Empathic objectivity which is interrelational is missing . So its within this larger social context that people find themselves bereft of a special human hearing in which they can work with and progressively unload lives of pain and abuse that have been developmentally chained and cut off. Caring Souls Forum it has to be said was succeeding in some of that empathic endeavour.

It has been claimed by the Caring Souls Forum Moderator, a poster named "Willow", who contacted Silvis Rivers on NOWPublic.com following the UserWatch story put there, that the Caring Souls Forum Support Staff – a poster named “Souls” went into "meltdown" . That is a tragic matter.

This is part of the email sent to Silvis Rivers by Willow on Nowpublic.com - it is presented below:

“Because of some of the things going on recently in the forums... Souls had a complete meltdown... I know very little... and I don't know how much I should say without compromising her privacy..

I know that she started to break after some of the posts got a little out of hand. I saw one where she asked someone to stop using her name and another asking some people to leave the forums if they were not happy there... The following morning I was contacted by Fran and she told me Souls had sent her some very nasty emails and locked her out of the forum.

Since I am in the US... by the time I got on my computer many things had happened during the night... I am 5 hours behind the UK... At that time the forum had been locked down by Souls for many hours... I am glad she did that in a way... because it spared all the members from seeing some very disturbing things... Fran had been locked out as an administrator since the night before... all of the passwords had been changed and the email Fran and Souls shared had been deleted...”

Userwatch has a couple of things to say about “privacy” since the issue of concern over Souls privacy has been raised it is neccessary to address it .

Public interest overrides issues of privacy where harm and upset is caused in the public domain and where there is evidence of that . Critical views on this regarding the latest behaviour by the Forum Support staff Souls at Caring Souls Forum are necessary .

Userwatch has been approached by a number of the posters that went to Caring Souls Forum for harbour and some safe asylum - some are quite rightly complaining that their material is simply left without their choice to edit it , save it elsewhere or even delete it and make sure it is actually deleted .. There were private zones on the forum with private material in them which effectively are in the control of someone now who has shown some serious instability .

UserWatch has in its possession a picture claiming to be of Souls – the Forum Support at Caring Souls Forum.

That picture was apparently posted on a blog :

3pluribusunum.blogspot

And It is still there when scrolled down to

This was not a private blog – but it was made private late this February . However before that occurred, Google cached ( digitally stored) this blog . And UserWatch has some copies of the cached material . Some of that material was shown on Caring Souls Forum too .

So would this lady “Souls” decide to be reasonable , go and get some help - and give control back of the Caring Souls Forum to the main adminstrator “Fran” and let everyone heal the situation and move on ?

The ball we think is in that lady's court . Go and get some help, and leave everyone to form theirs . That is the right thing to do .

Meanwhile of Fran, we firmly believe she needs to account for herself to several hundred people in the US and UK and even Israel and other areas of the globe regarding her judgement on creating a risky situation and as she is a professional in the UK we hope should does this openly, and soon .

She can contact UserWatch

FOR THOSE WHO WISH TO MEET AT A FORUM SET UP BY ELEISON GO TO :

http://ourwrites.proboards.com/index.cgi

See also Interesting Link

http://www.screamsfromchildhood.com/hero_child.html

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Mental Health and NHS PLONKS Scrutiny Org Is Set Up

A Story Of Upside-Down "Re-engagement"

"Its fantastic ! "

- Barked one local would-be PLONKER .

"Now we have a chance to join the NHS orientated PLONKS . We'll be able to eat great food at last and have "juicy-meatings"..."

We tried to tell these oodling prospectives that Patient and Public Involvement Forums pre March 2008 had been poor to middling bone chasers and scrutineers of local health systems. We tried to say that Local Involvement Networks had now taken over and were busily engaged in scratching or doing somethings nobody can quite see into ... But who gives a sniff anyway ..

Once again the politically orientated DOH and the Govt are trying it on by creating new "Patient and Public orgs in an effort to close the large "engagement" gap of the grand canyon yawning public.

The public respond best to being able to be directly empowered and the NHS is not at all empowering of state assisted Patient Choice which is the only true democratising quality driver of health supply ..

For Labour the preservation of bureacracy at the expense of health has been experienced by many mental health Users ... These Users are not the ego-poodle class though ... Their barks are lost or are drugged into social oblivion .. Their kennel provinces been taken over too by others who wear underdog fur over poodle-class attitudes ..

There's always some like this - actually there is quite a lot . Personal Success is equatable in the mental health service economy to being unreal, bureaucratic and inauthentic and preserving bureaucratic power and getting false jobs that fleece real Patient Choice as a deeper reality ..

The real problem is that being Individual in a neo fascist service state service economy is seen as the enemy and yet services are best negotiated by individuals outside of monopoly supply ..

For the next few years PLONKS will be barking here and there .. And in one way or another we are all part it .. We are passive scratchingly mostly active democratically paradoxed plonkers .. The Gov't set the agenda and mass kennel context ....... The DOH just get rich on it so do others in the NHS where the top is poodled and trained to look very very sweet and pampered ..

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A Caring Souls Forum That Did Not Care To Tell Its Users It Was Closing Down

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The Strange Story Of The Caring Souls Forum
which broke down suddenly

Some mental health Users in the UK contacted UserWatch regarding the sudden apparent demise of the Caring Souls Forum .. (see here)

From what UserWatch can gather the Forum started with good intentions and existed for 11 months up till a few days ago and it gained a following of people (703) who wanted to talk about human difficulties , pain and life ..Some had dissociative disorders and others had eating disorders and there were cases of people trying to come to terms with child abuse issues.

We invite the admins of Caring Souls Forum to put their views here or elsewhere where we have links since the forum was supposed to be backed by professionals and act as responsible interface between people in therapy training , therapists , counselors and sufferers from the human condition ..

More lately apparently a female poster (no poster-names given here) opened up about some serious sexual abuse . That abuse was quite terrible and it made the counselors and helpers running the forum think again about how some people coming to the forum should be aware of the risks of opening up powerful memories and feelings .. They apparently suggested having offline help too for the poster which we have to say seems reasonable.

Two posters who contacted UserWatch anonymously claim that :

"Control and moderation went a bit too far and the poor poster who had opened up was left feeling confused about whether they should talk anymore about their life .

It was as if contrary signals were being given and the result was a growing feeling shared by a few people that the right of free speech was being undermined too . "

"Suddenly one of the admin helpers seems to have flipped and the forum went down overnight into "maintainance mode" but the admin caring forum googlemail address which is seperate from the forum functionally when you try to use it, returns as :

"no longer an email being used "

We think this is apalling . That is not care . People should have been informed about matters responsibly . "


Userwatch has seen many forums come and go and break down or not be supported . The shame of this particular case is it suddenly pulled the plug without care . No warning at all . And the people who contacted us claimed that many posters claimed they had been let down by bad therapists or bad counsellors previously in the UK and US .. Clearly this is not going to help is it ?

What a great shame - Users claimed this forum had some real quality about it ..

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Mental Health's Pathways to Zero

"TRUST ME I AM A PATIENT"

(Sec of State For Health John Reid 2003)

Those of us who saw it coming even back in 2003 saw that Mental Health Trusts were going to become over-managed corporatised merged machines with naff all real patient choice and a serious exploitation of ex patients (the so called User-Voice workers) who were fooled by a well planned DOH and DWP attempt to turn everyone into new mental health workers - that is to say - before they were ever treated to power to hold their own budget and create remedy directly in their lives .. Everything is State Owned under New Labour - its like a form of slow covert fascism in which individualism can barely breathe ..

Its going to get much worse with new rounds of super-corporatisation planned by NHS Trusts and NHS Primary Care Trusts PCT's in a kind of bad corporate orgasm that has more to do with top staff insecurity than local delivery controlled much more by "real" local people as opposed to limited and self important "focus group" approaches ...

But gone is GP-patient axis of potential power and choice .. Its been undermined by Govt and DOH and bureaucrats alike - all at the expense of producing chaos , unaccountability - local disempowerment and : "we'll do what we like anyway " so long as Govt nods that its okay to be policy bureaucratic and have a few groups that look as if we are enfranchising patient's "voices" ...

Well in mental health circles it worked for a few ex-patients who are now busy in the wash of funds and other "recovery" bullshittery that has become the State's overarching attempt to control all life and choices ..

In health, in national policy terms we simply do not believe enough in the power of choice at local and individual levels that create management of conditions and personal empowerment . A few people in mental health circles have managed to obtain Direct Payments to help out their serious disabilities - others have been burned by the system for even trying ..

But the main thrust of "recovery" in mental health is set to fail many because it is top-down nonsense and the supply sides of any recovery and management treatments are dominated by local trusts and others set on "good management" and making surpluses from nowhere really, but patient care ..... The Trusts Board's are self hypnotised by such financial paradoxes which they do not even react to them by declaring madness . No .. Strategic blindness is all in the NHS so long as you retain your job and your status in a bubble ..

"Masturbation makes you blind" .... It used to be said .. Well we think mental masturbation is the destruction of vision and accountability and shame on the Boards and others for selling out human service for their own farcking wages and privilege ..We see into your bubble .. We have bubbular vision .. And our arses are not soaped up like theirs..

Pathways To Zero ?

The great Pathways to Work experiment is in bubble trouble too and David Freud the ex-banker gambling mastermind behind some of it, as well as Sainsbury's Centre For Mental Health (SCMH) and its other shadowy planners like MIND and Mental Health Media , Rethink are all a bit "up the swannie"... Employment Support Allowance (ESA) the new form of Incapacity State Benefit looks set to be run persecutionally and UserWatch believes the evidence will emerge more and more that its just a part of a bad State that forgot to empower people towards lives properly ...

All the reform money in Mental Health in the UK got soaked up by NIMHE across years (that SCMH planned with the DOH) and later its morphling the Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) who set up localities to create Mental Health Users who could become the "leads" for others to get work ... What in ? Oh well it was NIMHE then CSIP and other halfway zero activities that had nothing to do with Patient Choice and patient budgets and real patient empowerment .. It was bureacracy and meetings after meetings about DOH policy aims dressed up as the "Patient Voice" ready to be rubber stamped ..

£140 Million has been wasted on NIMHE and CSIP .. The planners and social engineering manipulators have been a-swill with money and influence under New Labour ..The people at the bottom , the Users have been without Patient Choice .

Shame about the credit crunch which has seriously farcked up unreal and top-down anti patient planning . But to be honest we saw no working class people leading anything in mental health locally .. We saw only middle class people in dominion, suited for middle class bureacratic games ..

Working class or underclass as it now is - was going to be cured by Pathways to Work ... Harsh rules if necessary . But the speculative banking sector and the frothy jobs are going - it was a dream based on a credit economy that did not generate reality enough ... How could it ? The manufacturing sector was decimated years ago in a major attempt to disinvent the rather blunt nosed working class use of power ..

The ruling elites and classes in the UK also prefer social apartheid and of course bullying claimants off state benefits and state services .. Its a class thing that goes all the way back to semi abandoned hard nosed performers being buggered or half farcked up by boarding school and ex colonial mentality.... They are islands and can cope - why shouldn't everyone else ? ..

Give 'em a jolt of CBT - a poor man's version of therapy ... ECT , CBT ... Somehow the control agenda has never gone away has it ?

Some of the partners delivering new (ex mental health and mental health) workers for the Pathways to Work ethos are signalling real problems Reed is laying off staff . A4E wants more money up front (1 billion) for its services . And David Freud has jumped ship to the Tories anticipating his hard anal approach will later sort the underclass shits out ....

Somehow we doubt it - very seriously, and we see that New Labour was partly state-fascism because it could not trust truer empowerment at the base of society . Rather we need to be force fed . And naturally that creates simmering underclass social hatred and divisions.. In the next political chapter, the return of the 19th Century will be hailed as the answer again .. It is not . A new conversation of :

"Trust me I am a person and Trust me I am a patient"

is long overdue and in the UK we doubt it will ever happen . Subtle class dominion and hatred is just part of the UK mind-furniture... It just gets moved about a bit, but the kennel outside is kept the same while the middle class and bankers live off social and financial part service fantasy inventions...

..

Mental Health Fears For BBC As It Goes Into Blue Petrification Over GAZA

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The Blue Petrified BBC ?

Can the BBC be treated for its Blue Petrification ? Maybe , if its wound down and the money that powers it starts to give choice via the market . £3.5 Billion is a lot of cash and should be helping competitive media in all sorts of ways but via the consumer .. Govt's insistence on keeping the BBC is typically British with its old establishment needs to control information . Well the information cat is out of the bag and is internet roaming .. For how long will we need the BBC with its heavily subsidised ways ?

BBC today, refused to run a Gazan Appeal because they maintain the stance of preserving their impartiality . At UserWatch we are not sure how you can be "impartial" about human rights of bombed people by Israels disproportionate actions and murder of people . Ghetto-isation and slow invalidation of people will make them crazed and extreme ... We of course have seen it in the Mental Health system which still quietly persecutes and drains the soul out of people while pretentious national top down dominion exists ..

Everyone needs human rights and the right to sustain their identity as opposed to the cornered one they are given by politically motivated dominations ..

This is the site below BBC are not openly disclosing to the public enough that will help the GAZA APPEAL


The situation
After an 18 month blockade of Gaza and three weeks of heavy shelling the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is now completely overwhelming.

• Donate online to the DEC's Gaza Crisis now
  Thousands of people are struggling to survive with many having lost their homes and most down to their last supplies of food and only limited amounts of fresh drinking water.
• Just £25 can buy warm blankets for 8 children
• Just £50 can provide a Food parcel for a family for one month
• Electricity - supplies to Gaza are erratic at best with 75% of the area cut off completely. There is a significant public health risk arising out of the almost collapse of Gaza’s water and sewage system, the running of which is dependent on electricity.
  
• Water - Around 500,000 people are without running water with 37% of Gaza’s water wells not working effectively and fuel reserves depleted due to restrictions on access and damage to pipes.
  
• At least 412 Children have been killed and 1,855 injured
  
• 60% of the population is living in poverty
  
• 1.1 million people are dependent upon aid to survive.
  
• Health - The capacity of the health system has been significantly reduced due to the damage of at least 21 clinics. Ten primary health care clinics are functioning as emergency clinics and hospitals and intensive care units continue to treat the mass casualties.

GAZA : SALUTE BY MENTAL HEALTH USERS FOR THE PALESTINIAN SOUL

.

Souls are sands now
And homes are bones

And tank commanders
Sit in restaurants

Like olden Rome's

Sweet talk wives
And girlfriends
On mobile phones .

For my hammer is a tank
For that village on the hill
And the land is a cross
And my nail shells will kill

Drink Palestinian red
Lets rock and roll
For I forget my history
And my stamped camped soul


(God rest our Jewish children of the trains too )

UK MP's To Block FOIA Transparency Into Expenses

IMPORTANT MP FOIA VOTE

To Avoid Expenses Accountability

BULLETIN BY

http://www.mysociety.org/


******************************

***********************************
We interrupt your normal email alert for an important message
*****************************************************************

On the 16th of May 2008 the High Court ruled that MPs' expenses
must be published under the Freedom of Information Act.

This Thursday, MPs are voting to change the law to keep their
expenses secret after all, just before publication was due and
after spending nearly a million of your pounds and seven months
compiling the data.

Your MP may not even know about this proposal (it was sneaked out
under the Heathrow runway announcement). Please take a few
minutes to alert them to this attack on Parliamentary
transparency and ask them to vote against the measure.

The outcome of this vote will be prominently displayed on every
MP's page until after the next General Election.

What can you do?

* Write to your MP to protest:
http://foiorder2009.writetothem.com/

* Join this Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=50061011231

* Blog about it, call a local newspaper - our unfinished site
http://news.mysociety.org/ might help; text, email, and instant
message your friends to let them know that about this campaign.


Read more detail about mySociety's thoughts on this issue.
http://www.mysociety.org/2009/01/17/6-days-to-stop-mps-concealing-their-expenses/

Mental Health UK - New Oven Building Jobs Announced

Keeping middle class people warmed is important in the UK . NHS CEO's now get well over £100k worth of woollies . Surestart a single mother social and job inclusion scheme started by Labour for disadvantged is used extensively by the middle class . 400,000 graduates look set to get special help of up to £2500 for internships in the recession and middle class people get mortagage help on the back of a credit black hole they and others helped to create .

Class apartheid ? Class hatred ? Nahh ...Surely not ... Mental health users though and the disabled are set to be re-tried for their disadvantages . Re-jobbed in some kind of way by a bankers-ideas (David Freud) .

Gone are the days of (NIMHE's ) "experts by experience" in mental health (MH) - but it was a term anyway that benefited the university type MH Users most, who stocked out NIMHE . The whole economy has now lost pleasant idealised picture pieces and the policy saw is rejigsawing another picture frame - but you can bet the middle class, who will accuse you of "class hatred" if you raise consciousness of their advantages , will be the first to get adaptive advantages .. They need their social warmth and they'll do it by framing others for the fire ..

No wonder there is crime , bad mental health and division in society with perpetuated lost opportunities ......The resource argument on a class basis is never had fully - never socially examined deep enough.. Its even pushed further down into the competition for resources with new ethnic groups from europe or anywhere, and then termed "racism" if it emerges rawly in underclass sentiments .... What a bloody social-confidence trick the UK is ... It creates a dog class and then kicks it .

Congratulations though to asian people in Birmingham (by god they showed local politicians up) and moslems in the UK for having the balls to stand up at the Town Hall for the Gaza Palestinians (the dramatically marginalised) while the rest of the UK middle classes worries about its graduates and the way the financial systems they exploit and support, tripped them up and over...


Source Mail

Middle-class families have the biggest debts in the country with many borrowers owing more than £50,000, a study reveals.

Those living in wealthier areas such as London and the South-East have borrowed almost four times as much as those living in Scotland and parts of the North-West.

The report by the credit reference agency Experian also shows that an individual's debts have typically risen by more than £2,000 over the last year.


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The Mad Mental Health Of New Labour's Grandiose Supercontrolling Superdatabase State

Exclusive Picture above - smuggled out by a Tory mole

Jaqui Smiths Own Special Design Of Building

To house the new "Good-Citizen-Superdatabase"

We are carrying a Dec 31st 2008 Guardian article in full below . It's well written . The State under Labour is becoming paranoia-producing and grandiose (see the ex Director of Public Prosecutions cutting remarks in the article) in its ideas about capturing everyone's emails and web activities . Labour really is barking like a Nazi dog .

We at UserWatch know the UK State is very command and control orientated - very pro an admin-state over everyone's lives - we have seen this in mental health scenarios which have turned into oppressive work driven "recovery treatments" which do not relate to Patient Choice or authentic shaping by patients because there are no powers for most patients to create a culture of purchased supply of adequate recovery help. You cannot measure authentic choice until there is a reality of it being empowered and it lies outside of the NHS super-state ..

"State knows best" - except it does not - its a cheap over overmanaged overcostly anti individual suppressive mechanism . Keep those at the bottom on cheap means otherwise those in the middle will have to share more .. Won't they ? Come on get real everyone ... Just see what there is and what we have become .

The people that are creating this comand and control State aided and abetted by Govt who need their votes are the middle class administrators with top planners behind them - they live off it - and large charities do too - enjoying an unprecedented rise to power as Labour with its magical social weave merchants gives them privileged treatment , influence and access to lottery money as well as new reinforcing bureacracies .

Who are you though ? You out there ? You are a social experiment if you are a mental health User..

The new age approaching of a combination of a freer voice on the web and the suppression of individuation and locality innovation (unless it agrees with Govt objectives) together with mass capital removing productive capacity from whole nations and leaving them jobless appears to us to be potentially explosive or even creative ... Depending on who you are and whether or not you are a politician or administrator with a comfortable job that needs to believe in a system that delivers more comfortable reality for you ...

Supercontrol as a concept has emerged with a European super-state. Its emerged with China controlling so much of the world's industrial production of goods. Its emerged with a massive downturn of the economy because too much unrealistic credit was produced .. Its emerged because of massive oil dependence and the refusal of the world to stop worshipping the choking Gods of fossil fuels .. Systems are in a contrary mess, Karl Marx rises from his grave to re-criticise and there's a ray of light - suddenly he wakes up to photovoltaic possibilities...Well maybe ...

And when chaos appears like the cheeky internet and everyone's email thoughts so does the need to oppress it and regulate it and control it .... Make everyone behave the same way around in a context of fear - its easier than questioning the fucking mess we are all in because we played out credit and money contradictions and we produced classes of people to socially control others lives that we kept without authentic empowerment - healing and proper inclusion via a new form of realistic distribution of resources. Nahhhh why bother with that ..

Let them eat fake ... Fake work, fake life, fake empowerment, fake democracy ...

From the Guardian By Alan Travis and Richard Norton Taylor

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone's calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

A cabinet decision to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses.

But in his strongest criticism yet of the superdatabase, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian such assurances would prove worthless in the long run and warned it would prove a "hellhouse" of personal private information.

"Authorisations for access might be written into statute. The most senior ministers and officials might be designated as scrutineers. But none of this means anything," said Macdonald. "All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen."

The home secretary postponed the introduction of legislation to set up the superdatabase in October and instead said she would publish a consultation paper in the new year setting out the proposal and the safeguards needed to protect civil liberties. She has emphasised that communications data, which gives the police the identity and location of the caller, texter or web surfer but not the content, has been used as important evidence in 95% of serious crime cases and almost all security service operations since 2004 including the Soham and 21/7 bombing cases.

Until now most communications traffic data has been held by phone companies and internet service providers for billing purposes but the growth of broadband phone services, chatrooms and anonymous online identities mean that is no longer the case.

The Home Office's interception modernisation programme, which is working on the superdatabase proposal, argues that it is no longer good enough for communications companies to be left to retrieve such data when requested by the police and intelligence services. A Home Office spokeswoman said last night the changes were needed so law enforcement agencies could maintain their ability to tackle serious crime and terrorism.

Senior Whitehall officials responsible for planning for a new database say there is a significant difference between having access to "communications data" - names and addresses of emails or telephone numbers, for example - and the actual contents of the communications. "We have been very clear that there are no plans for a database containing any content of emails, texts or conversations," the spokeswoman said.

External estimates of the cost of the superdatabase have been put as high as £12bn, twice the cost of the ID cards scheme, and the consultation paper, to be published towards the end of next month, will include an option of putting it into the hands of the private sector in an effort to cut costs. But such a decision is likely to fuel civil liberties concerns over data losses and leaks. Macdonald, who left his post as DPP in October, told the Guardian: "The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."

Maintaining the capacity to intercept suspicious communications was critical in an increasingly complex world, he said. "It is a process which can save lives and bring criminals to justice. But no other country is considering such a drastic step. This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," he said. "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls."

The moment there was a security crisis the temptation for more commonplace access would be irresistible, he said.

Other critics of the plan point to the problems of keeping the database secure, both from the point of view of the technology and of deliberate leaks. The problem would be compounded if private companies manage the system. "If there is a breach of security in that database it would be utterly devastating," one said.

.

Mental Health : Breaking Health Illusions

Karl Linx's Wisdom ?

The Dept of Health and Govt approved back door fox-trot on patient and public involvement (PPI) has resulted in a dubious and sloppy new set up in Local Involvement Networks (LINks) across the UK .

So far we are aware that Statutory Overview Scrutiny Committee's (headed by local councils to oversee changes in Health Services ) are also slopping around in the LINks splashing too as some kind of Linky-kinky-form tries to swim here and there - added to that the Foundation Trust 's have become mysterious and poor at producing a view in onto them . We are not sure what the LINks splashing form is though because occasionally a watery arm is seen then a brick around the neck of something, then different conflicting cries and maybe a screeching cat in a sack ...

Hang on maybe its a drowning we are witnessing ! We THEREFORE give thanks to our readers for being there because YOU MADE US THINK and decode the new DOH pushed and distorted symbolism ....Or is that embolism we mean ? Maybe they will use formaldehyde soon and PPI as an ethos will be well and truly pickled as well as trickled ...?

Ex Commission for Patient and Public Involvement Types are turning up at the National Centre For Involvement (funded by the Dept of Health ) apparently and we see they lately want someone with press experience . Ahhh the image game ...The love of arts everyone has would be amazing were it put to the use of integrity ..

They want a "Director of Communications NCI" for £19645 - 22765

"Job Purpose :

To provide professional communication/ press office function, administration support as well as provide advice and information on the NHS Centre for Involvement, its partners and available resources to contacts from patients, the public, patient and public involvement professionals, voluntary organisations, working with both internal and external customers"

The new year is a-coming but accountability in health that might lead to better reform is unlikely we think, not least because all across the UK we are seeing a trend of LINks having a kind of authority-core which will dominate its working groups - you know the people that have to see and experience the health and social care bullshit going on . We have seen this trend in places like Bristol and Birmingham and we really wonder what Hampshire is doing too - its almost as if the PCT and Council there had it all arranged behind the scenes and stitched up appearences of a few concerned citzens with a dominant shadow of NHS/Council bureau-fear behind them ready to run and control the agenda. Without sure footed independence LINks will be slurried into partnership sliding about ...

We think LINks is doomed to failure because its already being observed to be internally centralising and creates a pyramid core group tendency who are not necessarily patients and the public with that hard edge of patient and public experience gained by some in the in the PPI forums . We are also in possession of evidence that shows some alarming views that LINks appears to attract those who are authoritarian in their approach .. Oooo lets see more of you lot - bring it on ... We is the Multi Media cheeksters and do not expect any mercy from us .. Satire is our game and we will give you fame ...

Instead of using the strategic power of some wisdom gained by those lingering on from PPI days - LINKs here and there are already behaving like mini versions of a mis-shapen political puppet of the Dept of Health . It seems the DOH puppetmasters have done well .. What power LINks have at the moment is dubious. Certainly no greater that the Freedom of Information Act and worryingly some have no indemnity (as PPI Fora previously had from the Secretary of State) . Yet the confidence in them is not great either since the Govt has trashed and bashed the sharp little teeth that some previous PPI Fora were developing and that is making ex-health-activists give their own opinions in the UK amongst their peers ..

So what is more positively going for the UK Government is the current trend in widened opportunities for administrators and the players it backs through the NHS link in the bureau "partnership game" ... Yet this is now in the uncertain context of an altering economy with no bullshit financial sector to keep any surpluses acruing ...

Frankly we have never agreed with the idea of User-Voice in any part of medicine without USER CHOICE being a parallel purchasing power more immediately owned by the patient and we wonder what would have happened if all the expensive bureaucracy around PPI and so on had been converted into straight forward personal health budgets locally driven in truer linked partnership with GP's .. The real LINK has been denied we think . Its about de-bureacratisation of health , Patient Choice, and losing the false illusions that are chaining patients lives ......

But watch the Govt carefully for how it has undermined the local connection between GP and patient claiming better health accountability - new forms of super practices (led by PCT planning) are springing up here and there but they are not local enough and are not seriously humanly friendly enough....The NHS was at its best with the GP connection and long term relationship - System driven analytics which is undermining human connections in health has to stop because its driving money up its own bureaucratic performance loving arse and undermining the human connection and real patient-link in health.

We advise - Watch the Trusts and PCT's - that is where the chaos and the dirt under the carpet is . They know it and they are paranoid about being found out which makes LINKs all the more designed and influenced to be soapier .... Moral sliding is the greatest skill you will ever see in the NHS ....

See the debate below about GP's Opposition To Polyclinics

From June 2008 Parliament Debate Re : Local Scrutiny

Tony Baldry (Banbury, Conservative) Link to this | Hansard source | Watch this

My hon. Friend has said that the situation is absurd, but there is a further bizarre twist. Is he aware that the Darzi clinics will not be subject to monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees? The Government are introducing a two-tier NHS: parts of the NHS are subject to scrutiny by health overview and scrutiny committees, whereas independent treatment centres and Darzi clinics will not be subject to scrutiny and monitoring by health overview and scrutiny committees, which seems fundamentally wrong.

Andrew Lansley (Shadow Secretary of State for Health, Health; South Cambridgeshire, Conservative) Link to this | Hansard source | Watch this

I agree with my hon. Friend. Pulse recently looked at the proposals in PCTs, and only a tiny proportion of those that it looked at had been subject to even a semblance of a public consultation. The reason is precisely the same as the reason that my hon. Friend gave: the Government are determined that the proposal should not be subject to scrutiny. Why? Because it will not stand up to that scrutiny, it is not locally determined, it does not arise out of the needs and circumstances of the area and, on the quality of care that will be provided, it is not even evidence-based.

LINKS :

Polyclinics BBC

Hansard GP Links Undermined

Theyworkforyou . com Polyclinics Debate

Mental Health Disablement, Arts And Empowerment

How to Use Photoshop - A Tutorial

Courtesy YouTube

Those who have severe Mental Health (MH) problems and like the arts are often up against the wall in terms of being able to get out and get some help to improve one of the things that will aid their lives into creating a few more coloured islands in amongst the fire and fear seas . The services offer limited support and UserWatch is as readers will know very critical of the ways they have -re-institutionalised arts in mental health. There is a clear need for better grants for User-chosen mentoring both in truly User controlled space and money should reach patients and stop creating bureacracy.. However that's a doomed hope . The NHS thrives on staff and patient de-individuation too much , conformity and personal betrayal of even the Self ....

So buddies , "you is" in street terms "on your own" - but not quite WE ARE HERE biting as usual .. And so is the NET ! When you can get to use it (and we know that's hard sometimes) get onto YouTube and look at what's available in tutorials for using "Blogger" and learn learn learn ...And make mistakes , yep make em and learn , and forgive yourself for them and stroke yourself and your bruised computer too ...

Getting more to the point of this post we show a "Photoshop" tutorial above - which gives 30 minutes of tips and help for using "Photoshop"....

Users interested in the arts have contacted us and the Great KAKATOO and mangy Silvis Rivers and other disruptive artists have advised Users to FIRST - scan in line drawings done with good lining pens and colour with photoshop. You can even recolour after using markers of pencils but MAKE SURE your lining and lines are joined up and well defined otherwise when using photoshop to colour fill you will find colours chosen will flow into other areas where you did not want it to go ...

You can trawl YouTube yourself though - looking for tutorials -

Here are some more on Photoshop