What I find most interesting here, is the date at the end of the document!
Good to see how things have really moved on isn't it!?
Ten Ways for Mental Health Workers to Impede User Participation in Planning
and Managing Mental Health Services
Introduction
I am introducing this subject in a contrary way. I am going to tell workers
how to stop us from getting involved in service planning and management. All
these things have happened to me in trying to take part in psychiatric
service planning, as someone who has used the services. At the same time, /
must acknowledge the very great help that professional people have given to
me and other service users in helping us to be involved in trying to improve
services.
1. Do not give resources
If you want to prevent user involvement, never give service users the money
they need to meet and discuss policy matters. Do not offer money for
training in committee skills. After all, you do not want them to get the
hang of how the power system works.
2. Take charge
Secondly, take charge. When asked to be treasurer or chairperson by a user
group where the members lack confidence, feel flattered, accept the job and
wonder why the users will not take responsibility.
3. Sow doubts
The third way you can prevent user participation is to express doubt about
the group's ability to be autonomous. Ask: "What if the chairperson becomes
manic"? What happens when any chairperson is unable to fulfil that function?
User groups are no different.
4. Not representative
Suggest to colleagues that the service users who are making representations
are not representative because they are articulate. "Real" psychiatric
patients are not articulate. If they were, they would have been given drugs
to stop them speaking out. How representative are you?
5. Choose someone compliant
Invite a service user of your choice on to your committee rather than
inviting a user group to send representatives. Then you can be sure to hear
what you want to hear, not what psychiatric patients have to say.
6. Tokenism: outnumber them
My next two points are about tokenism. Invite just one service user
representative on to a committee comprised of professionals. The user will
probably not be confident enough to present other users' views unsupported.
If the person is confident, he or she will be so heavily outnumbered that
you will not have to change anything.
7. Tokenism: ignore them
The next form of tokenism is to consult widely, but exclude service users
from the decision-making structures of your organisation. Then you can say
that you have asked the service users, but will not have to act on what they
have told you.
8. Embarrass them
The eighth idea to exclude service users is to embarrass them. For example,
if a service user representative starts by making remarks that do not
conform to your agenda, ensure that an awkward silence is followed by
ignoring the content of what is said.
9. Exploit them
Never pay service users. Expect then to attend regularly as the only unpaid
people in the roomful of salaried people. Then they will stop embarrassing
you with their presence, and you'll have satisfied your conscience by
inviting them.
10. Suggest that you are as powerless as service users
The tenth way to exclude psychiatric patients is to suggest that you are as
powerless as they are. Mental health workers have the power to recommend
children being taken away, to order compulsory admission to hospital, to
remove access to desired services, to release grants of money and give
access to housing of various sorts. You have a salary and probably a secure
home. You do not carry a diagnosis that invalidates what you say.
The ideas in this paper have been published in "Just Lip-Service" by Viv
Lindow in the Nursing Times (UK), 2 December, 1992.
Best wishes,
Mike Higgins,
Email: [log in to unmask]
Address: 1 Portland Court, Sheffield, S6 3EW, UK.
Tel (voice and, by prior arrangement, fax): +44 (0) 114 2258676
Mobile: +44 (0) 7956 856060
________________End of message______________________
This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies). Enquiries about the list administratione should be sent to [log in to unmask]
Archives and tools are located at:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html
You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.
|
