Importance of keeping Social Work political

A quick plug for   this piece I wrote for Community Care about why it’s important for social workers to be political.

Just as an addendum (because I had to keep within a word limit), I’d add that the Social Work Action Network (SWAN) whom I mention in the article have their annual conference in London next year.

I recommend it if you want to see collectively how social workers in the public sector can be political and build links with user organisations. It’s the only way I see our future as a profession.

Returning to the Paralympics

On the day the Paralympics begin, I’m looking forward to ten days of excellent competition and sport. One of the things that brings me particular pleasure is the return to the Paralympic Games for athletes with learning disabilities. These athletes were involved in the Paralympic Games for the first time in 1996 only to be barred en masse in 2000 after a Spanish Basketball team were found to be cheating by entering athletes to compete who did not have learning disabilities.

The Paralympic movement felt that eligibility requirements for learning disabilities should be re-examined, at the cost of those athletes who did compete and work fairly through the process. It seems oddly perverse when those who did not cheat are punished more heavily by being removed from the competition than those who did.

And now, after 12 years of exclusion, the 2012 games will see the return of some top class athletes with learning disabilities although the return is limited at this point with competitors taking part only in athletics, table tennis and swimming.

One of the things to get used to with the Paralympics, if you are not already used to following, is the classification system which tries to ensure that there is a fair system of competition depending on the needs of particular athletes and so they are banded together into these ‘classifications’ which are explained on this BBC page.

The classification to look out for if you want to follow these athletes in the track and field  is T20 and F20 respectively. It is 11 in the table tennis and 14 in the swimming.

I’ve been lucky enough to get tickets to go to the swimming and athletics. My delight has been compounded by the fact that I’ll be in both venues to see these athletes compete at the highest level and will be able to add my voice to the thousands cheering for them and the additional battle against discrimination which has needed to be fought in the world of sport which is supposed to value fair play above all and has punished those who have competed fairly particularly hard through their exclusion for twelve long years.

Welcome back, T20, F20, S14 and TT11 – I’ve missed you.

I hope to see many more sports and events added for 2016

Picture by Gary Huston at Flickr

NHS trust advertises clinical post as unpaid internship

Working for nothing, it seems, is the new having a job. There’s currently an advert on the NHS Jobs website for an “honorary assistant psychologist”, for which the pay scheme is euphemistically described as “other”. [Hat tip: @DrPhilHammond]

We are seeking an enthusiastic and committed individual to join a community service within the Addictions & Offender Care Directorate. You will be based in a Substance Misuse team, a multi-disciplinary team, under the supervision of a Clinical Psychologist. You will need to be able to commit to working in an honorary capacity for at least two days per week for at least 6 months. We would look favourably on individuals who can make a greater commitment.

You must be willing to work with individuals with substance misuse problems, many of whom also have complex mental health needs. You must possess the relevant skills and attributes to facilitate service users to engage in the service. You must have a strong commitment to teamwork and be able to work sensitively within a culturally diverse environment.

The successful applicant will possess a degree in psychology, and be eligible for Graduate Basis for Registration with the British Psychological Society.

We offer regular, high quality, clinical supervision and strong professional support. The psychology department has close links with UCL, UEL and Royal Holloway DClinPsych courses.

Please Note: These are UNPAID positions.

Oh Lord, is this how it begins? The world of unpaid internships, sorry, “honorary” posts migrating over from business and the media into actual clinical roles in the NHS?

It’s perhaps unsurprising that it’s an assistant psychologist post that seems to have attracted this method. There’s lots of keen, bright psychology graduates out there desperately scrabbling about for a few jobs as assistant psychologists, which they hope in turn will make them more appointable to the fiercely competitive doctorate programmes in clinical psychology. Plenty of the nursing assistants and support workers I’ve worked with in mental health are psychology grads trying to get relevant experience. Quite a few of them eventually give up, and go back to university to train as mental health nurses.

In other words, a field where you’ve got a good chance of finding someone of sufficient quality who’ll do it for free.

No doubt it’ll save Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust a bit of cash, but it’s yet another kick in the teeth for social mobility. There’s going to be a lot of psychology graduates who won’t be able to apply for this – not because they aren’t good enough, but because they can’t afford to take two days off a week from stacking shelves at Poundland.  If this turns out to be the shape of things to come, this could be yet another deepening of class divisions where a whole slew of top jobs are simply closed off to everyone except the offspring of the wealthy. Welcome to the new aristocracy.

Is Social Work necessary in Assessments?

Hot on the heels of a story which extols the virtues of a ‘new’ social enterprise set up by social workers in Lambeth, comes a report from the Audit Commission, published yesterday, which urges councils to reduce spending on qualified social workers in order to save money on assessments in adult social care.

In some ways, it’s very easy to see these two apparently separate news items discretely but it’s also too tempting to run them together to see a pattern of where adult social work is heading.

Audit Commission Report

I briefly read through the Audit Commission report this morning – it is intended for ‘managers and senior managers in adult social care’ and the scope is to look at how local authorities can save money through the assessment processes in this sector in order to have more money to spend on care services.

Interestingly, it pulls out the ‘personalisation’ card in terms of identifying the different ways that assessments are being conducted (more self-assessments – for example) – and that’s true but I hope I would have always put the individual at the centre of every assessment I did – even before ‘personalisation’.

An assessment is a key to eligibility in adult social care and with self-assessments being introduced, it is basically allowing people to self-exclude earlier in the process without having as much professional involvement – which actually, isn’t a problem for those who are below the criteria but what the report misses is how much the process of assessment by a skilled person (whether qualified or not) can scratch the surface of the forms that are completed – particularly when the forms are tailored towards people with physical disabilities and physical health problems – and uncover needs that would meet the eligibility criteria.

The report pushes the somewhat dangerous opinion (in my view) that delivering personalised services will necessarily create lower costs. That’s a stumbling block which has led to poor implementation in my view. I actually don’t have any problem with support planning/brokerage and assessment being pushed to different organisations – but it still has to be done well. It’s interesting that while the Topaz team in Lambeth are looking at working with people who fall below the eligibility criteria, local authorities are looking at people who are eligible having more support from less qualified people – to save money. Lets not forget that’s what it’s about.

But I don’t want to get too fixated on the qualified/unqualified dichotomy because qualified doesn’t always mean better. But it doesn’t mean worse, either.

A paragraph in the report refers to savings being made in ‘back office’ roles – well, honestly, there is a greater need for administration and ‘bureaucracy’ in personalised care packages because we want to be able to offer people different options to manage their own care – either direct payments, individual service funds, trust funds or managed budgets. Of course we don’t have all those options available for all (yet) but imagining that costs can be cut by reducing ‘back office’ roles is honestly, facile. Cuts to ‘back office’ roles has and does put much more pressure on ‘frontline’ jobs. False economies in the extreme.

The report talks about improving online information and.. oh.. leaflets to provide information and to (they hope) deter people from requesting an assessment in the first place. I can see that being useful – and I’m glad they didn’t get ‘online overboard’ and some of the sites produced by local authorities to signpost people are appalling so it’s good advice, it’s just sad to think a report has to be compiled to give that advice. It is a bit depressing that call centres are seen as a solution in any part of social care though particularly when the role of the call centre is to ‘reduce the need for formal assessments’ – in other words it is to filter people out of the system at an earlier stage – so much for preventative work.

The headline of the report though – is that it recommends ‘changing’ the skill mix in adult social care to ‘reflect’ personalisation by shifting from social workers to social work assistants and that’s where some of my main concerns and thoughts lie.

Does a ‘professional’ need to Assess?

Having worked in adult social care teams, I know that there are some awful qualified members of staff and some fantastic non-qualified members of staff. Experience levels vary and I don’t have a problem with a mix of staff. I have no problem with some assessments moving away to third sector organisations and user-led organisations in particular (I will not give a wholehearted ‘bye’ to social enterprises though as I believe ‘social enterprise’ is a VERY broad term that can have a lot of different meanings). Some assessments are basic, many assessments are best completed without the need of any input but some, and this is the key, really do need expert input. Sometimes it’s the conversation that arises in an assessment (which, by the way, is not merely a ‘form-filling’ process) that can lead to further information being garnered. The more lax the assessment process, the more likely that opportunities to provide ‘early intervention’ or identify harder to define needs may be lost.

I mentioned above that all the assessment processes I’ve seen from adult social care are very biased towards physical health needs – it can take a more skilled assessment to draw out mental health needs or more complex family dynamics between the person being assessed and their families. I worry that bypassing the importance of assessment and the skill needed, we may lose carers’ needs which need to be identified much earlier.

So while I don’t think a ‘professional’ needs to assess in every case, what is very important (and missing from the Audit Commission report’) is an appreciation of the importance that professional training, experience, understanding and working with social work theories relating to assessments and an understanding of current research and a commitment to reflection and sensitive communication is and can be to assessments and safeguarding process.

What is social work?

In many ways, this is the key question for adult services and one that has been asked for years – since the move to the ‘care management’ models after the NHS and Community Care Act (1990) was enacted and it became clear that care management was not a social work exclusive role.

The question is more easily answered, I think, in children services and in mental health services where the social work roles are, I think, better defined. Perhaps the separation and specialisation into different ‘fields’ has damaged adult social work more than the others as it has become harder to define.

In adult social work there’s a need for a much stronger professional voice to explain and expound the importance that social work training has in delivering effective outcomes all round. Assessment is a skill and skills can be trained but it need to be linked with knowledge, understanding and reflection to create a picture in more complex (and sometimes the step between simple and complex can be one question, one statement, one gesture) situations.

As a society we undervalue the social work training and role at our cost but increasingly, I can see the role for social work being pushed back to safeguarding functions and ‘complex’ work – that’s easily said and I’m sure it appeals to the Audit Commission but it’s important for us, our professional bodies such as the College and Adult Social Care departments and academics to push that we often find the ‘safeguarding’ and ‘complex’ work by doing some of the things that could be done by ‘someone else’.

Where next

Community Care has responses from BASW and the College which say similar things. I think it’s important that as social workers in adult services, we also prove our own worth internally. We talk about research we have read in team meetings, in our supervision, we explain why we did what we did in terms of the theories we know and use. We talk professionally, we respond professionally and we become what we want our profession to be.

We need to all take responsibility to prove our own worth.

picture by KatherineKenny at Flickr

The Power of Death

As a health care worker and a nurse the probability that someone will die in your care is highly likely at some stage in your career. This is not something that we wish to happen of course but  we know it is possible especially  when the people that we care for might be very ill or very old. Helping people prepare for a good death however is not something we often discuss or research (except for the fantastic work carried out by Kubler Ross in the 1960s) and is something missing in today’s health and social care manifesto. The government of course want people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible because it is cheaper and many people when asked prefer to die at home. We are trying to make this last wish happen for people so that they can at least feel in control over what happens to them in death as well as in life. 

It is when people want to end their own lives prematurely that we struggle both morally and spiritually. For whatever reason some people decide that they have had enough, they cannot see anything changing and they want to get off this planet,  we refuse to help them plan their own endings.

In the story of life Buddhists teach that we should all prepare for a death in which there is least suffering. This means talking about it and even planning it. Two people have died this week  many miles apart but very close in spirit. Tony Nicklinson and Tony Scott both decided to take matters into their own hands when they could no longer see a way out of their predicament. This is the power of death – to end all suffering – for ever. But it does make me wonder every time I hear about these sad endings , had they been allowed or even encouraged to talk about  planning their own death – things might have been different and the stigma of dying in less dignified ways can be addressed. 

There is an urgent need for compassion around this taboo subject which  for many of us, is still difficult to grasp. 

Privatising or Pioneering Social Work Practices

Yesterday, I came across this article on the Community Care website about new pilot ‘independent social work practice’ set up as a social enterprise. It made me pause for thought and ponder a number of things about where social work is going and what social work is.

The article extols the wonder of the ‘Topaz’ team in Lambeth which is described as

One of the six independent social work practice pilots for adult services, it has £91,300 start-up funding from the Department of Health until August 2012.

and explains

The team has three core aims: early intervention, preventive work, and promoting people’s independence and wellbeing in the community. To keep funding next year, it has to show that this is keeping people at home for longer, which saves the council money in care home and nursing fees.

Working with local health services, voluntary, faith and community groups, the idea is to create more resilient communities and raise awareness of services within Lambeth.

People who were assessed in the previous year and deemed ineligible for services are contacted to review whether there has been a change in circumstances.

It sounds wonderful. Really it does. So this team looks at people who might be at the lower end of the ‘needs’ spectrum and works towards ways to prevent a future dependence. It sounds a little like some of the work some voluntary sector organisations like Age UK might have scope to do but the council have gone a different route through this social enterprise model.

Topaz, according to it’s websitealso provides support and guidance to those who are ‘self-funding’.

So why do I have to rain on this parade of wonder and innovation?

Firstly, it’s about my discomfort about the talk about ‘getting back to ‘real’ social work’. What does that mean? Is that disparaging to the current social workers in a statutory setting who don’t get have the same role regarding ‘cherry picking’ those who need to use the services. Or is community social work (which no doubt is very valuable) the only ‘real’ social work that goes on. There’s a little hint of superiority in that attitude that I find discomforting and disconcerting.

The Team Manager says

It’s about improving the image of social work, telling people what we do, how we can help, that we are not agents of control who take children away

Which is great, but you know, sometimes we are ‘agents of control who take children away’.

As I said, I think it sounds like a fantastic project but it employs social workers and pushing them out of local authority ‘bounds’ – it seems very benign and creative – but – I see it as the start of a slope to eventually push statutory functions outside the local authority control and most importantly, beyond the local authority democratic mandate. While that’s fine as long as you are working with people on the fringes of eligibility criteria and having picnics in the park with them, it may carry a very different status when involving more serious safeguarding issues that arise – indeed, that would be my question back to the Topaz team – how do they deal with safeguarding investigations? Do they go back to the local authority for that or hold them within the team themselves?

My other concern is the terms and conditions of those employed in the service – they are employed on locum type contracts – as the article says

No pension, sick pay, maternity leave or job security beyond next year might not sound like ideal terms and conditions. But for a group of pioneering social workers in Lambeth, the risks of working in a community interest company are worth taking because it’s enabling them to do use all of their social work skills.

Well, you know what? I believe I make full use of all my social work skills in the job I have now. And I have sick pay. Who’d have thought that should be something I should be surprised at expecting as a social worker.

And this team won a wonderful award last year in an award scheme which, like most, operate by either self-nomination or endorsement by senior managers. I can see why it is completely in Lambeth’s interest and the government’s interest to promote these social enterprise teams. I can see why they want to be presented as ‘pioneering’ but actually is this going forward or is it going backwards? Isn’t this about the roots of community social work so actually far from pioneering?

Perhaps I’m overly cynical. I do want more scope for social work in communities however I’m not convinced by this model and propaganda which brushes over working conditions and limited contracts will not help allay my scepticism.

Because my worry is that it is a slippery slope towards pushing essential services away from the democratic mandate and when the cuts come, these services which have been presented as the ‘pioneers’ will be the forerunners as far as models go but when the other core services follow, these will be the ones which will be the ones to go when the cuts come. And the cuts will come.

So tell me if I’m wrong or just over sceptical because I want to find hope in the future of social work but I don’t want to be blind to the risks that may exist if we embrace these ‘practices’ without critical thought.

Keeping up with Research while in Frontline Practice

Being based in an ‘integrated’ team alongside NHS staff, I have been frustrated at some of the differences in attitude towards conducting, assessing and discussion of current research as a frontline practitioner. However, this is a better situation to be in than when I was working in a social work team. At least now, I’m aware that there is a difference and by not being given particular time and space to access research articles and journals, I’m being impeded.

While I see colleagues being actively encouraged to undertake research projects, there are no possibilities ever raised for social workers to work in similar ways. This may be wholly about work culture and attitude to research by employers or it may be about professional attitudes to the importance of being updated regarding research but there is a noticeable difference.

I try to remedy this myself and while there will not be time to actively carry out any of the research projects I ponder about – there is nothing as frustrating as seeing the same evidence being published in different ways that tells us nothing that will actually make a difference to the way we practice – I limit myself to literature reviews and trying to keep myself updated with journal articles. Sometimes we discuss them as a team – sometimes I collate the information myself and keep notes on the articles I find. I may even publish some of these literature reviews as blog posts in the future if they would be useful to others.

I used to make considerable use of the British Journal of Social Work but seeing as my access to research literature is limited (possibly like many local authority social workers) to the SCIE (Social Care Institute of Excellence) Athens scheme and they no longer are able to subscribe to that journal, I have turned to other journals to find and source information that is useful to me. It makes me think less of a journal that would play political games with allowing access or not but it is a sharp and important lesson about the need for practitioners to have good access to information.

I have though through the SCIE scheme found

Aging and Society, Journal of Social Work Practice, Practice and the Mental Health Review Journal have been particularly useful for me. It’s worth checking out the resources available via SCIE as any social worker in England and Wales working for a local authority with a gov.uk email address can gain access to them.

The College of Social Work also enables Athens access for members if the email address is a problem but I believe the list of resources available are the same and there is still a block on the British Journal of Social Work being made available.

SCIE provide useful resources generally and RiPfA have some good outlines and policy updates which can be an excellent way to start discussions and conversations in a local service area. I don’t know much about Community Care Inform as it focuses on Children’s Services but it may be something useful if there were a parallel type service for adult social workers – indeed, I’d be happy to pay, individually, for just such a service.

As an AMHP (Approved Mental Health Professional) and a BIA (Best Interests Assessor)  it is crucial that I am constantly aware of both the latest developments in terms of case law and the new interpretations as they arise – I’d say that it is necessary for anyone working in Mental Health to have a good awareness and understanding of current interpretations of the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act.  I find the 39 Essex Street Court of Protection newsletters very useful to ensure that I am aware of the latest developments. although I do attend both formal and informal training and workshops regularly which focus specifically on case law in these areas.  It is the one area particularly that I find social media enormously helpful – not just in terms of awareness of cases as they arise but as opportunities to discuss them.

Even in the toughest, busiest teams we have to take responsibility for our own learning and ensuring that we do not leave the information and research evidence to pick up cobwebs in the ivory towers of academia. Being a practice educator helps with this as I encourage students to source and discuss recent, relevant research with me in supervision but also try and find some useful and interesting articles myself to discuss.

The benefits of being up to date and knowledgeable about current research are that firstly it encourages competent practice – I don’t think it’s possible to work in a silo of information and evidence that may have been presented when you (we) last studied formally, even if that was a year ago. Things change quickly.

An awareness of research can affect policy and the development of services – I’ve been able to feed into consultations both locally and nationally using references and information that I have gleaned from recent papers and it has added a more authoritative quality to my input. I’ve also been able to discuss and reflect in my own supervision sessions some of the disconnect between what might be positive ways of organising services and the ways things happen in practice.

It has also allowed me to garner a louder voice within the system in which I work. I can build a professional reputation as someone who will invest in my own learning and progress and when I have concerns about the way the organisation might be approaching something, I can back it with references, I’m far more likely to be taken seriously.

We want to create learning organisations but they have to be filled with learning practitioners and standing still is not an option. It doesn’t have to take significant amounts of time although it can if we want it to. It can be about reading through an article with an interesting title and reviewing it mentally before deciding.

One of the chief things I’ve learnt is that just because an article is presented in an academic journal, doesn’t mean it’s well-written or useful. We shouldn’t idolise academics as there is as great a variety in quality as there is in practitioners but there is no doubt that having an active interest in current academic research and debate is the next best thing to being able to be actively engaged in contributing to research.

Perhaps that’s the next step – one day I’d like to see more effort all round to integrate active research into practice but in the meantime I’ll make all the effort I can to ensure that my practice is current and informed.  It helps keep me hopeful and it helps keep me interested.

I’d love to know if anyone else out there has other information or resources that they use to make sure they keep up to date with research while practicing. It’s a vital way of keeping our knowledge fresh and active.

pic by jmatthew3 at Flickr

Julian #Assange – A sensible article that nobody will agree with

Over the past few week’s I’ve been idly watching the #Assange hashtag on Twitter and the screaming arguments going back and forth. I have no legal training, so what I think I’ll do is simply state the facts that are self-evident.

 

1. Julian Assange has been accused of rape and sexual assault. The actions he is accused of would be considered sexual assault both in Sweden and Britain.

2. The complainants have a right to their case being investigated. The Swedish police and judiciary have a right to investigate. Mr Assange has a right to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

3. The American government would, I’m sure, dearly love to “get” Mr Assange by fair means or foul, though they haven’t made any moves to date. Quite possibly they may be more than happy for him to be stuck in a London embassy for the time being.

4. The Ecuador government no doubt gains a certain amount of political propaganda by being seen to raise a middle finger to the Yankee Imperialist Great Satan.

5. The British government would hand Mr Assange over to the US in the blink of an eye if they asked. Probably far more quickly and easily than the Swedish would. The reason they haven’t is because they haven’t been asked to.

6. Under no circumstances should the British government commit a grievous violation of diplomatic immunity by removing Mr Assange from the Ecuador Embassy.

7. Likewise, under no circumstances should the Ecuador government get away with abusing the concept of asylum for a non-political charge such as rape.

8. The British government should not and almost certainly will not grant Mr Assange safe passage to Ecuador.

 

So, what should, and almost certainly will happen seems pretty straightforward. Julian Assange isn’t going anywhere. Either he spends the rest of his life in the Ecuador Embassy, or he leaves the building and gets put on a plane to Sweden to answer the prosecutor’s questions. As for any (at this stage, entirely hypothetical) extradition to the United States, that can be protested against when it’s actually proposed.

Oh wait, that’s far too rational. Nobody’s going to agree with any of that! Let me try again.

 

1. The accusations of rape are clearly bogus! I demonstrate this by repeatedly asserting it!

2. David Allen Green may be a staunchly liberal lawyer with a passion for human rights and who successfully defended the Twitter Joke Trial case. However, his analyses of Assange’s legal case clearly show that he’s also a CIA agent.

3. Green’s refutations of myths about the Assange case are not accurate because I am SHOUTING VERY LOUDLY!

4. Why won’t the Swedish police interview Assange in the embassy? Police are supposed to conduct investigations at the convenience of rape suspects!

5. How dare the US hypothetically try to extradite him to their territory! Those potential swine!

 

Is that better?

Rethinking Care Funding

An interesting headline in the Independent caught my attention  this morning.

‘Affordable old age – U-turn on money for elderly care’

So the  story develops, in the Independent, along with other papers that the government (via a ‘senior sources within both coalition parties) that the Dilnot proposals to fund adult (note – adult, not ‘elderly’) social care in England.

Dilnot’s ‘headline’ proposal was that there should be a cap on the limit of personal liability for the cost of care fees and this development suggests that that limit may well be set at £35000.

The article explains

A Whitehall source said: “They’ve come to the conclusion they’d be mad not to do it. It’s all about the legacy. It means both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats can turn round in 2015 and say: ‘We sorted out social care. Because of what we did no one will have to lose their homes to pay for nursing home care any more.’ That’s a pretty big achievement – and would appeal to both sets of voters.”

Now this narrative of ‘losing homes to pay for nursing care’ is a basically incredibly simplistic for a start as it doesn’t really take into account the conditions that currently exist about when that may or may not happen. It does, however, grasp on the ‘tabloid narrative’ of the terror of the home owning generation that they might actually have to use some of their assets to pay for the high cost of care.

You see, I have a problem with Dilnot and care caps while seeing it is politically pleasant. Care has a significant cost.  Caps are good politically but there will need to be significant investment of money and the ‘cap’ is solely in terms of ‘care costs’ and wouldn’t cover the ‘hotel costs’ of residential care.

Protecting inheritances though, fits well into the coalition narrative and without doubt, there’s a need for the basis of social care funding to be rationalised. I hope the coalition move beyond the ‘selling homes to pay for care’ narrative that’s overplayed and under-understood.

See, the other interesting little tidbit of information in this report from the Independent is that

The Treasury is expected to argue that the plan should be paid for out of the general NHS budget. But that could create problems for Mr Cameron, as Labour could argue that funding care was robbing hospitals and frontline services of cash.

This will add significant pressure on the NHS – however it does potentially free up the local authorities from some funding responsibilities that they already have. This remains a worry. What I need to see to be satisfied with this proposal is detail about where and how the money is going to be made up when the cap is in place.

A move on Dilnot though (which is about more than caps – believe it or not and you wouldn’t necessarily if you just read the headlines) would be a definite positive so I’m not knocking it.

I just wonder about headlines that talk about ‘affordable old age’ – affordable to whom? Sometimes affordability comes at a cost. I want us to achieve quality care for all those who need social care input and it will cost. It’s a matter to consider where the burden of that cost will lie. As long as the money is extracted from a stretched NHS budget without further injections of cash, I can’t be as overjoyed as I would like to be about this u-turn.

I’ll retain my sliver of cynicism until we have more details.

More on the “Child Stealing” Tin Foil Hat Brigade

It’s all kicking off in the comments thread to this post, in which I looked at the legal campaign of Chris Jarvis. Mr Jarvis has had his children removed by the courts and social services, for reasons that he hasn’t specified. His response to this is to mount a private prosecution against Leeds City Council for genocide.

For some reason I can’t quite fathom, his prosecution was struck out on the spot by a district judge. He now plans to take his case to the London High Court.

Mr Jarvis seems to be presenting himself as something of a legal expert in certain conspiracy theory circles. In this blog post he extols the virtues of acting as a Mackenzie friend (a lay person who acts in lieu of a lawyer during a court hearing).

As he says in the above video, “If you wish to see the end of the law of the lawyer…then we must make these people redundant and surplus to requirements….Let’s make the lawyer something of yesterday.” He had acted as a Mackenzie friend to one Norman Scarth, who had been imprisoned for contempt of court after recording a court hearing.

Mr Scarth appears to be something of a colourful character in himself. A World War Two veteran who has stood for election on various occasions, though his electoral campaigning in the past has got him arrested for shouting abuse through a loudhailer. In 2001 he was imprisoned for wounding a bailiff with a chainsaw.

In his YouTube video, Mr Jarvis makes great play of the respect he was given in the court when applying for a writ of habeas corpus for Mr Scarth. I must confess to being somewhat surprised by this approach. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m given to understand that it’s considered a fairly easy thing to get out of prison for contempt of court. Basically what you do is go before the judge and say that you’re sorry and you won’t do it again, thereby purging your contempt.

Mr Jarvis links to the Bailii page for the court hearing. Curiously though, he doesn’t mention the outcome.

Conclusion on habeas corpus

1. In the absence of any basis upon which it would be proper to conclude that the Claimant has been imprisoned unlawfully or that his imprisonment has become unlawful I could not grant the writ of habeas corpus. As I sought to point out to the Claimant in the hearing on 15 August 2011 his interests are much better served by an appeal to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. I am satisfied from documentation referred to by the Claimant and sent to me in the post either by the Claimant or persons acting on his behalf that the Claimant has lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal. It is that court, in my judgment, which should adjudicate upon whether or not the finding of contempt of court and/or the sentence imposed for the contempt should remain.

1. I do not pretend that I have dealt with every point which the Claimant made during the course of a speech which lasted about 45 minutes. I have, however, dealt with all of the points made which I considered had any bearing upon whether the Claimant was detained lawfully.

Purging contempt

1. During the course of his oral representations Mr Jarvis raised the possibility of the Claimant applying to me to purge his contempt. In some ways this was a surprising application since in his own representations to me the Claimant demonstrated nothing but contempt for the order made by HH Judge Rose and, indeed for the judge himself. Nonetheless I felt it my duty to consider this possibility. I did so upon the assumption that I had jurisdiction to entertain an application although Ms Lambert was not able to confirm that I enjoyed such jurisdiction. I reached the conclusion that assuming I had jurisdiction to deal with the matter I should decline to do so. It seemed to me that the appropriate forum for any such application would be the judge who had found the contempt proved and who was, far better than me, in a position to judge the seriousness of the contempt and the genuineness of the Claimant’s application to purge his contempt. Alternatively, such an application could be made to the Court of Appeal Criminal Division. It is a possible outcome of the appeal that the court will uphold the finding of contempt and also determine that a sentence of six months’ imprisonment was an appropriate one. Even in those circumstances, however, the court might be prepared to entertain an application to purge the contempt. I raise that possibility for the Claimant to consider. Whether he makes such an application and whether the Court of Appeal entertains it is not for me to determine.

Or, to summarise, “get stuffed and use the proper channels”.

Mr Jarvis is at pains to point out in this conspiracy theory podcast that Mr Scarth subsequently had his sentenced reduced by the court. What he doesn’t mention is that it doesn’t appear to be down to anything he did. Rather, he was released early because the judge decided that “the nature of his personality disorder means that he is not one of those who is likely to see the error of his ways and, to use technical language, purge his contempt.”

Perhaps the lesson is that unless you can’t get legal aid and can’t afford a lawyer, if you’re before the courts then you’re better off instructing the qualified professionals. In his video, Mr Jarvis quotes a legal maxim, “He who fails to assert his rights has none.” Maybe he should consider another, “He who represents himself in court has a fool for a client and a lawyer.”