As the cuts continue to bite, the various agencies that work with vulnerable children have become more and more stretched. Multi-agency working has become ever more difficult to achieve. Fortunately there is a standard letter, which I’ve seen increasingly in use by these agencies. Feel free to copy this letter and use it in correspondence between social services, CAMHS, GPs, schools, Youth Offending Services and voluntary agencies. Lots of other professionals already do.
Tag Archives: humour
Generic Buck-Passing Inter-Agency Letter Template
I’ve seen a lot of these letters flying around recently between various services that work with vulnerable people and their families, probably due to the pressures of austerity. Since we’re all constrained for time, feel free to copy and paste this for future use.
Dear Professional from Another Service
Our service has discussed this client in our team meeting which we didn’t invite you to. Our service is currently under strain due to service cutbacks. Naturally, any suggestion that your service has similar problems would be ridiculous!
Our service decision is that the client fits your referral criteria, which we haven’t read, and that you should engage the client with the resources that we haven’t checked if you’ve got. We have concluded that it is the role of your service to fire a magic wand out of your backsides and sort everything out.
We do not look forward to hearing from you, as it’s your problem now.
Yours Sincerely
Department of Buck-Passing
I hope this template will be useful to you in your inter-agency correspondence. But do please note that if you send one to me you’ll be getting a letter back suggesting a joint meeting.
The Nick Griffin Cookery Show – I watch it so you don’t have to
The news reports are true. Nick “Fat Hitler” Griffin of the British National Party has posted a cookery TV show online. Personally I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of no-platforming fascists. Don’t get me wrong, I can see the argument in favour of it. Even so, when Griffin was invited on BBC Question Time, the result was a more effective anti-BNP message than years of Unite Against Fascism’s campaigning – through the simple expedient of letting him open his gob.
So, with that in mind, I’m going to review his culinary extravaganza.
The show opens with the BNP TV logo, which looks strangely like the Eurovision Song Contest logo with a Union Jack slapped over it. The screen cuts to a surprisingly posh-looking kitchen for a man who’s just been declared bankrupt. No doubt his creditors are watching the show with a calculator in hand.
On the table in front of him is some veg, including a bag clearly labelled “British White Potatoes”. Presumably Nick wanted these on display because he’s British, white and has the intellect of a potato.
Nick starts talking about the impact of poverty on food budgets, and how he was at an event where people complained that “they can’t afford – their wives can’t afford to put enough decent food on the table.” Their wives? Who was he meeting with? The Stepford Racists?
He then suggests that the problem here is that a lot of people only know how to cook processed food, and don’t know how to make cheap food from raw ingredients. “Our chaps said to me, you like cooking. Why don’t you show a few examples of how cheap it is, how simple it is to cook really good food for yourself and your family.”
Wow. There actually was a BNP meeting where they decided, “You know what, Nick? See that Jack Monroe? You could do that!” Be very afraid.
1.00 Nick warns “We’ve not done this before. BNP TV does politics, not cookery, but we’ll see how it goes.” Building up the tension here until it’s almost noticeable.
1.20 Nick takes us through the ingredients, which he’s spent about £10 on. He provides the startling revelation that a good place to find reduced prices is in the the reduced section of the supermarket. I have a feeling there’s going to be a lot of this sort of revelations.
1.35 He found some stewing steak in the reduced section. Naturally it’s made from British beef. “Good stuff!” He’s got some carrots, onions, parsnips and swede. But there’s an important warning. “You can have too much swede, unless you’re a goat.” The nation’s goats breathe a sigh of relief.
2.05 There’s some condiments too – some salt, pepper and in a magnanimous gesture to Johnny Foreigner, some tabasco sauce.
3.00 He launches into a sob story about how he used to be living hand-to-mouth when he first moved to London. This doesn’t seem so much to be to empathise with the nation’s poor as to justify having a bottle of beer to hand. No doubt this would elicit more sympathy if he wasn’t a fat man standing in a very expensive kitchen.
4.15 Having bleated his poor-me history, Nick then promptly starts bragging about how nice his kitchen is, and to be fair, it is a nice kitchen with a great big Aga. Or at least it will be until the bailiffs arrive next week. However, he reassures us that in order to heat up a pot of stew you don’t need a fancy cooker, just any old burner. That’s right. Tesco Everyday Value fire is just as hot as Marks and Spencer’s fire. Well, I never.
4.25 “Different things take different times to cook, so obviously you’ve got to make sure that the things that take longest are done first of all.” Glad to hear we’re getting to grips with the concept of time.
4.40 I am now watching the leader of a political party explain how to chop an onion, while explaining that you don’t actually eat the peel. You won’t other political leaders doing that, eh? EH?
6.10 Hey up, we’re off. He’s starting to cook, though not before explaining that there are different types of cooking oil.
6.30 After explaining how time works, we now have more basic physics as we learn that a handy way to speed up the cooking is to put the pan on a hotter ring. He then grabs a wooden spoon, presumably the one he was awarded at the last election.
7.00 Sometimes meat comes ready-chopped. If this isn’t the case, Nick helpfully advises that as an alternative you can cut it up yourself.
7.40 It seems not only are there different types of cooking oil, there’s even different types of meat! “You could use pork, you could use chicken.”
8.00 Handy hint from Nick. If you buy a slow cooker, you’re getting a cooker and a pan for £12. How he hasn’t got a sponsorship deal from Russell Hobbs, I’ll never know.
9.14 Time to peel some vegetables. “You can peel with a knife.” YES YOU CAN!
10.05 According to Nick, British cooking used to be the best in Europe, but was scuppered by Ze Germans. “It became very simple after the Hanoverians came over from North Germany.” Fear not though, since “I spend a lot of time on the continent” and he now believes British cooking is becoming the best in Europe again.
10.50 Oh no! An onion has escaped the round-up. He leaps on it like it’s a fleeing immigrant.
11.30 Speaking of immigrants, “Don’t let people tell you that you need huge numbers of immigrants to have good cooking. We’ve got a Mexican restaurant in a town near here. The place isn’t swamped with Mexicans. You take the recipe, that’s really all you need.” Though to be fair, his attempts to recreate the dishes at home probably don’t include those “extra ingredients” they probably secretly slip into his food when they see him walking into their establishment.
12.20 Time to move the pot of stew onto a smaller ring. He conveniently tells those with a one-ring burner that they can get the same effect by turning the gas down.
14.05 Nick’s Handy Economy Tip! Too skint to buy meat? “Go to a butcher, and tell him you’ve got a dog. Can you have some dog bones?” Then scrape off the meat. Apparently he’s tried this himself, although your butcher may not sneak out back and wipe his bum on the dog bones first, like Nick’s presumably did before handing them to him
16.10 “With a stew, if you find you haven’t cooked if for long enough, just cook it for longer.” Amazing.
17.40 Another one of Nick’s Handy Economy Tips. Can’t afford to buy a recipe book? Just go into a shop use a camera phone to take photos of the recipes.
20.40 Brief rant about “all that green bullshit”. He really doesn’t like anything coloured.
21.20 Important advice on using stock cubes. Take the tin foil wrapper off because “tin foil really is unpleasant in your food. It’s not a good additive.”
21.50 Nick laments the fact that although you can get beef, lamb or chicken stock cubes, you can’t get pork ones. However, he has a solution. “I reckon if you put one beef one in and one chicken one in, you’ve more or less got pork.” How much time has Nick spent experimenting with mixed stock cubes?
22.05 “Food without salt is absolutely disgusting”. Between his political speeches and his salt advice, he really isn’t doing wonders for the nation’s blood pressures.
22.45 We now learn that opening a tin of tomatoes requires a tin opener “unless of course, you look for the tomatoes which have a lid with a pull-ring, and then you don’t need a tin opener.” At this stage, I’m starting to worry that watching this show is causing me to become dumber.
23:20 Nick cheerfully sloshes some rather nice-looking Hobgoblin beer into the stew, before taking a swig from the bottle. “The fact that you’re able to drink the beer as you’re cooking makes it worth cooking.” I am now regretting watching this while sober.
24.00 Nick explains how the Mexican police use tabasco sauce as a torture instrument. Perhaps in future they’ll just use his cookery shows instead.
30.20 With the stew cooking nicely, Nick puts in a request for “serious, constructive criticisms” of the show. Naturally, the online masses will hear this request as, “Troll him! TROLL LIKE YOU’VE NEVER TROLLED BEFORE!”
31.10 It’s now time for those immortal words, “Here’s one I prepared earlier”, as Nigella Hitler dishes out his stew to two old guys and a teenage girl. The girl looks embarrassed to be there.
31.30 Adolf Ramsey scoops the stew into bowls. It looks like a cowpat with carrots.
32.30 The old guys declare the stew to be “first class, delicious.” Nick doesn’t ask the girl what she thinks, probably because she’s wishing she could sneak out to the Mexican restaurant that Nick slagged off earlier.
And that’s it. Nick tells us he’ll be putting a list of the ingredients online – because nowhere on the Internet could we find a recipe for beef stew – and the show is over. This is something of a relief because if I’d had to watch any more of it then my IQ would have probably dropped to the level of Nick’s stew. Or possibly that of a BNP supporter.
.
Just what do I do all day in CAMHS?
Last year there was a picture meme going around on the theme of What people think I do/What I actually do. After I made some sarcastic remarks about the meme on Facebook, I was challenged to come up with one for my own role as a nurse therapist in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Being one never to ignore a thrown-down gauntlet, I went on a trawl through Google Images, and promptly knocked together the following illustration.
A few days ago, I noticed that this graphic (which I’d probably devoted an entire half-hour to creating) was being passed around on Twitter. Since that’s the case, perhaps I should elaborate on it a little, and explain the different images. that I selected
What adult mental health services think I do.
Okay, it’s probably an exaggeration to suggest they think I work with Teletubbies. Even so, there is something of a disconnect between adult services and CAMHS. Our core client groups are palpably different, and so too are our ways of working.
We don’t work a lot with people who have psychosis. Despite the American fad for diagnosing “pediatric bipolar disorder” (which even the Americans have been backtracking on in the last couple of years), conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are rare in children. I see maybe one psychotic young person a year, usually in their mid-to-late teens. I do work with young people who hear voices, but it tends to be at the level of pseudohallucinations rather than outright hallucinations.
One unfortunate consequence of this is that on those odd occasions when a psychotic child comes to a CAMHS team, they may not be as geared up to supporting them as an adult service. Conversely, adult services often aren’t as geared up towards treatment of eating disorders as CAMHS.
Another difference is that people with depression and anxiety are more likely to be seen in primary care during adulthood, and in secondary care during childhood and adolescence.
These difference tend to result in all kinds of problems when a young person turns 18. They often discover that they’re either transitioning to a very different kind of service, or they simply aren’t being offered a service at all.
What Peter Breggin thinks I do.
It is true that use of psychiatric medication has risen in the UK in recent years, and I’d be lying if I said I’m entirely comfortable with all aspects of that. Despite this increase, it’s still fair to say that CAMHS are much more cautious in their use of medication than either their American counterparts or their colleagues in adult services.
I could count on one hand the number of medications I’m likely to come across in any given working day. If a young person is prescribed an antidepressant, 9 times out of 10 it’s likely to be fluoxetine, not least because it’s the only one licenced for under-18s. For ADHD there’s some relatively new drugs on the market, such as lisdexamfetamine aka Elvanse, but they’re not being prescribed much. The great bulk of young people with ADHD are still prescribed good old-fashioned methylphenidate (you know it as Ritalin, but it’s far more likely to be issued in various slow-release preparations such as Concerta XL, Medikinet XL or Equasym XL) with a smaller number taking atomoxetine aka Strattera. For sleep problems there’s melatonin. For highly agitated children there’s some use of low-dose antipsychotics (this has usually been risperidone, though there’s increasing use of aripiprazole instead) – and it’s this use of antipsychotics that I tend to feel uncomfortable about, even at low doses.
Outside of the higher-tier services dealing with deeply-unwell young people, that’s pretty much all the medication you’ll see. Despite the controversies about dubious use of psychiatric medications in childhood (by no means all of which are unjustified) a high proportion of the kids I work with are on no medication at all.
It’s also worth pointing out that I’ve worked with quite a few kids whose lives have been significantly improved through some judicious, well-monitored use of fluoxetine or methylphenidate.
What the Church of Scientology thinks I do.
All I have to say to this one is…If their argument is that psychiatry is superstition masquerading as therapy, and it’s all just a big scam to control people and take their money….Well, that’s a bit rich coming from the Church of Scientology.
What society thinks I do.
This image illustrates one of my major bugbears about what mental health services are perceived to be for. There’s a whole plethora of language devoted to it. “Oppositional defiant disorder.” “Conduct disorder.” “Behavioural problems.” “He has an anger problem.” “He needs anger management.” “She has difficulties with impulse control.”
All of which translates as, “Please make this child behave themselves.”
There seems to be an idea out there that all of society’s problems – unruly classrooms, chaotic family lifestyles, juvenile delinqency, crime – can be therapied away with six sessions of anger management. I can see why it would be an attractive idea to politicians, civil servants, parents, teachers, GPs, social workers – but it ain’t true. The psychiatric profession hasn’t helped itself in this regard by coming up with silly non-illnesses such as “oppositional defiant disorder”, but I don’t think mental health services should be there to get children to behave themselves, and I don’t think we generally do a good job when we try. If anything we can make the problem worse by trying to distil a wider systemic or social difficulty into a “condition” that the child has “got”. Hence why many CAMHS teams simply don’t accept referrals for ODD or conduct disorder.
What I think I do.
It would be fair to say I’ve put in quite a lot of training and studying into what I think I do. I’ve attended training on cognitive-behaviour therapy, as well as enhanced CBT for eating disorders. I’m currently paying out of my own pocket for some postgraduate study in systemic and family therapy. Over the years I’ve ploughed through a reading list of the great and the good. John Bowlby. Carl Rogers. RD Laing. Carl Jung. Paul Watzlawick.
What I actually do.
What do I do? Listen. Talk. Try to be a listener, an ally, a facilitator of reflection and problem-solving. Someone who works to build a relationship with young people and their families, and at times to help them build their relationship with each other.
When one puts it like that, perhaps what I do isn’t that complicated after all.
The #Pillshaming Bingo Card
The #Pillshaming Twitter hashtag was created by @Sectioned_ to refer to condescending articles and viewpoints, deriding the use of psychiatric medication. There’s been a fair few of these recently. In the Guardian Giles Fraser and Will Self leapt onto their respective soapboxes to pour forth a series of tired cliches. Today in the Daily Mail, Dr Joanna Moncrief published an article which has some valid points but also a lot of pillshaming tropes – prime among them that bipolar disorder has become “fashionable” because Stephen Fry and Catherine Zeta Jones have it.
Let’s get one thing clear. I have huge respect for Stephen Fry, but the fact that he has bipolar disorder tells us one thing and one thing only; that there are a lot of celebrities out there, and by a simple matter of statistics at least some of them can be expected to have bipolar disorder. I’m sure there are plenty of celebrities with diabetes: does that make diabetes fashionable too? I’m sure Mr Fry didn’t feel that he was making a high-end fashion statement when he attempted suicide earlier this year. (“This is not just an overdose, this is an M&S overdose…”)
I would respond more to Dr Moncrief’s article, but Purple Persuasion has already written an excellent rebuttal in which she concludes, “Sad to say that when it comes to discussing bipolar and to mental health drugs, it’s lazy journalism that seems to be really in fashion.”
And it’s this lazy journalism that prompted @Sectioned_ to ask me to create a #Pillshaming bingo card, to accompany my Twitter Drama bingo card. As well as scanning the articles by Fraser, Self and Moncrief, I also had suggestions of pillshaming tropes tweeted to me by @Sectioned_, @MarkOneinFour, @BettyGudrun, @444BlackCat and @KennerleyWendy. It really didn’t take me long to fill the squares.
So, without further ado, here is the #Pillshaming Bingo Card.
The Rules of Calling Out
Seen people “calling out” other people on Twitter over their use of language? Want to get into it yourself? Here’s a cut-out-and-keep set of guidelines to help you get started.
1. The greatest enemies of the left are those who agree with you on 95% of issues, but use minor semantic differences
2. Calling out must be done in the most public way possible. E-mail is an instrument of patriarchy
3. Nobody on the left should ever have a “large platform”. Better to cede public discourse to the right.
4. Everyone who disagrees with you is privileged. You know this because you’ve never met them.
5. Nobody who is privileged could also be right about something. The two are mutually exclusive.
6. Under no circumstances is it acceptable to agree with Caitlin Moran about anything.
7. In order to be intersectional and show your alliances with others you must have screaming rows with them every 5 minutes.
8. The ability to muster a large crowd to bellow someone into submission is in no way a platform or privilege.
9. Caitlin Moran posting a subsequently-retracted un-PC tweet three years ago is definitely worth devoting more time and energy to condemning than recent rape and bomb threats.
[This post is based on a sequence of tweets I posted facetiously last night. In a classic case of Poe’s Law, some people thought I was being serious, so for clarity I will state here that this post is satirical. On a serious note, I think disagreement and debate are good, but allies should do so respectfully and civilly rather than by Twitterstorming each other.]
We repent! This government is great!
On behalf of Ermintrude2, Abe Laurens, Bonklesoul, Celtic Knot and those others who have contributed to the Not So Big Society, we would all like to make a formal apology for our criticisms of the coalition government.
We finally understand that the NHS deserves reform, and the new Clinical Commissioning Groups will clearly drive up standards. Doing it in the middle of an unprecedented spending squeeze was exactly the right timing.
We also entirely agree that the widespread withdrawal of social workers from healthcare teams, particularly in mental health services, is a gigantic leap forward. Health and social care provide far better outcomes when working apart.
The bedroom tax? Clearly a well thought-through new measure, with absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of unintended consequences.
Legal Aid cuts? Who needs one of those hoighty-toighty “lawyers” when we have Wikipedia to get us through a divorce hearing?
As for the armed forces, who needs an actual army when we have those aircraft carriers in the pipeline that we’ll definitely have the money and resources to use when they finally materialise? As for the Trident replacement, we’d say more, but we’d wind up gushing.
Let’s not forget Cameron’s pledge to lead “the greenest government ever”. He’s done fantastic work sticking to that promise.
Let’s face it, this government is awesome. With leaders of the calibre of Michael Gove, Iain Duncan-Smith and Jeremy Hunt showing us the way, we can’t believe our luck!
So, on behalf of all those working in public services, we would like to wish Mr Cameron et al a very happy April Fool’s Day!
P.S. Vote UKIP.
Twitter Drama Bingo
Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@thus_spake_z if you’re interested) may have noticed me compiling a Twitter Drama Bingo card. I had too much fun doing it not to share it here.
EDIT: Following feedback from others, I’ve now expanded it to a 6×5 grid, which is bingo fans will note is slightly larger than the tradional 5×5 bingo card. I’ve also added a free space.
Gay Marriage Bill passes second reading, all straight people in UK instantly get divorced
With the news that the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill has passed its second reading, a shockwave has passed across the UK with the surprise news that all heterosexual couples in Britain have instantly divorced.
The housing market has been thrown into chaos due to the sheer volume of couples putting their homes on the market. Schools have described mass abandonments of children, and maternity services nationwide are reporting that new referrals have dropped to zero.
John and Debbie Longley of Totnes experienced events that have been repeated all over the country. “We’d set up a joint account to pool our finances, got ourselves a foothold on the property ladder. In a year or so’s time we would be getting ready to have our first child,” explained Mr Longley. “Then the news came on the TV that gay marriage had passed. Suddenly, it all just seemed so….meaningless.”
Mr Longley then turned to his now ex-wife and sighed, “You’re nothing to me now.”
Mrs Longley concurred, “I suppose I just have to get used to these new realities and consider my future options. I’m contemplating bestiality.”
Social affairs experts admitted being stunned by the turn of events. “All the warnings by opponents of gay marriage just sounded so daft,” said one leading sociologist. “Heterosexual marriages being undermined…A breakdown of values and norms…Nigel Farage actually being right about something. It seemed totally implausible.”
The news has also resulted in severe traffic delays across Britain. The Highways Agency report that this is because it’s raining men.
Generic Condemnation of This Thing That Person Said on Twitter
Words cannot express the outrage I feel after reading this thing that person said yesterday on Twitter. Such comments are a clear betrayal of the principles of Insert Cause Here, as well as being deeply socially irresponsible.
I have already been sufficiently outraged that I’ve had to write a blog post. If I get any more angry I may have to set up a Tumblr.
I am also surprised by the silence of Insert Prominent Tweeter Here over this issue. Their failure to comment on this thing that person said may well be a sign that they secretly agree with them. I tweeted them 20 times repeating the same question in different wordings, and they promptly blocked me. I can’t imagine why. I’ve already posted several tweets expressing glee about having been blocked. Later, I will be engaging in one-upmanship discussions with other tweeters about who we’ve been previously blocked by.
I’m also shocked by the failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue. It’s as if they don’t care about this thing that person said.
I hope you’ll all join with me in getting off the fence and giving your unequivocal condemnations of this thing that person said. I think we can all agree, what they said was worse than the Nazis.
Unsafe Spaces 