There seems to be a lot of debate at the moment about “social care” for the elderly, and how the Government is going to afford it. Aside from forcing those silly enough to work for a living and accumulate wealth to sell their house to pay for their own care, I am surprised that Ministers are confused.
Why don’t they simply adopt the Ruralshire County Council policy for mentally ill people, deprived children and asylum seekers?
This policy comprises providing little or no care at all, waiting for the inevitable homelessness and vulnerability, observing a slow decline into alcoholism, strange behaviour and desperation, and then calling Ruralshire Constabulary to arrest or section them.
We then take these poor unfortunates into our custody and assume responsibility, at huge expense in terms of staff and facilities, until the next morning when a Mental Health/ Immigration team will arrive and release them again.
Why not add elderly people to the list? If they suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, even better.
Police Officers lack the training (if not the compassion) to deal with this problem and I doubt if a custody block is the best place to house these unfortunate citizens.
I would like to emphasise that we will always take people in and help them in a compassionate way (even though we can lose our jobs if something goes wrong when we don’t fully understand what we are dealing with) but this is another relatively new reason why “there is never a Copper around when you need one”.
The public have a right to know.
Many of our newest immigrant cultures acknowledge that care for your parents in their final years is your own responsibility. They don’t yet expect the state to use taxpayers’ money to see to this and to protect their inheritance too.
A reasonably sure way of getting care and attention when you are old is to slaughter some people that the public don’t like. (So not footballers or drug dealers.)
I won’t suggest who these might be.
The attitude of your local council sounds remarkably like that of mine, supported by the attitude of our local mental health trust.
Ooo new pad Guv, very nice indeed..xx
Too many hands stretched out. We can’t fill them all. We need to sort out which hands to fill and in which order. There isn’t enough money in the kitty any more. There’s no economic miracle coming down the highway.
I’ve said it before and here I go again.
The government is running out of liquidity.
The government have flogged off the family silver and the gold reserves.
On an island of coal they shut the mines.
PFI ensures that we will pay more and longer to have less sooner than if we had all saved up. Buy now pay later is OK for a 42″ flat screen but not a health service
Nearly every penny that the government can usefully squeeze from the workers has been squeezed.
We all somehow let it happen that we have a society where it is OK not to be a contributor or at least do your bit.
Mental Health Crisis Teams drive me mad!
When people go to our local hospital suffering from mental health issues, they call the Crisis Team.
The Crisis Team then call the Police, because they don’t like dealing with aggressive people in a hospital environment.
The Crisis Team try to persuade the poor bobby that the person in the hospital needs to be detained under Section 136 so they can be taken to a place of safety.
This sergeant (or Inspector - if I’m doing a bit of acting up) happens to be listening in (it’s my job) and reminds the bobby that the patient is in a hospital, which is a designated place of safety under the Mental Health Act, so the person should not be taken from one place of safety to another.
The Crisis Team get the hump, because it means they might have to take responsibility for the person in the hospital.
I go to the hospital and tell the Crisis Team that there is no way that this person will see the inside of a custody block - they are ill, not criminal.
The Crisis Team pretend that they can’t do an assessment unless the person is detained.
I remind them that if the person hadn’t been violent or abusive, they wouldn’t have contacted us and would have done their assessment anyway, so why all of a sudden are they not capable of doing it?
Crisis Team get the hump and threaten to contact my supervisor.
I point out that I’m the senior officer on duty (if I’m acting) or that my Inspector has ratified my decision, so now what are you going to do?
All this time, the person in the middle is wondering who is mad - them or us?
Stan…. you forgot that the crisis team can’t assess due to the fact that the patient has almost always had a drink and the PC ends up babysitting until the morning when invarably everyone has grown up, the patient isn’t sectioned ( because there aren’t sufficient in patient beds and you have to be seriously ‘mad’ to get one) and they are released. How many people in your force are actually sectioned I bet very few, Whos fault will it be when one slips the net and goes on to murder someone.
Apropos of nothing…
watch “Chris Rock - How not to get your ass kicked by the police!”
on youtube. Dead funny, but could be a public information film!
This made an interesting read from the experience of the police…so infuriating…much like the experience of a mental health service user:
Wake up on a Friday morning with sufficient insight to realise my mental health is seriously deteriorating. Social worker or ‘care coordinator’ works only 2 days a week so is not in the office.
Mum contacts the CMHT who tell her the duty worker is at lunch. Two and a half hours later the duty worker is still at lunch. CMHT knocks off at 4.30 p.m. (it is Friday after all).
Contact ‘Mental Health Out of Hours Service’. Duty worker doesn’t have sufficient level of English to understand what Mum is saying. Tells Mum to call back if we need more support (um, that’s why we called in the first place).
Contact NHS direct - they are not allowed to refer me to the Crisis Team.
Contact Out of Hours (OOH) GP Service, they can, and will, refer me to the crisis team.
OOH GP calls back. They can only refer me to the crisis team if I am seen by a GP. GP says I’ll have to wait four-five hours to be seen.
GP calls back and says I can visit local health centre to speed up assessment.
Mum and I visit said health centre and meet two very compassionate and caring GPs who want to do all they can to help.
OOH GP phones crisis team. They’re not keen to come out at 11 pm and do an assessment but they will if they have to.
Crisis team visit at 11.30 p.m. There are no beds on the acute ward and if I ask to go on the waiting list for a bed I become ineligible for crisis team support and so will not be able to access their support/input over the weekend; it’s either/or.
Crisis team eventually leave and we’re back to square one.
It’s easy to see, just from the journey above, how the police could become involved in picking up the pieces. So many missed opportunities for ‘timely’ intervention. Mental health care and, in particular, out of hours mental health care, can be very poor.
Or, as in my case, you call the Out of Hours duty desk to be told they are too busy to talk to you….
Or your Care coordinator is off work, sick (for 8 weeks) and there is nobody available to cover her so you don’t get the support your care plan promises and states as necessary.
I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that mental health services frequently don’t “do what it says on the packet”. And until you have experienced it first hand, it’s hard to believe how badly the system can fall down. It’s all too easy to blame the problems on the person in need - after all, they are “mentally ill”. But actually, we are people too.