Dear colleagues,
I am writing to you as psy practitioners who have been involved with, or expressed an interest in the campaign against the psychological coercion of benefit claimants under the DWP's policies of welfare to work, Work Capability Assessment, conditionality and sanctioning.
Many of you on this elist will be members of the Mental Health Resistance Network/Alliance group which met last year and has since been involved in the Streatham Jobcentre Plus protest against IAPT therapists being co-located in Jobcentres. Others of you are members of organisations like PCSR who have expressed an interest in joining the campaign.
Roy Bard (MHRN) and I have been organising a day conference for mental health activists and psy professionals to discuss where the campaign has got to so far, and what kind of actions we want to develop for the future. A primary goal of the day is to get us all together and to begin to think about how we can co-ordinate the campaign to unite therapists/psychologists and mental health activists in common cause to resist the violence of the DWP’s policies towards people on benefits with mental and physical disabilities.
We are now thinking about the programme for the day, and would like suggestions for the 2 workshops that are billed to focus on where we as psy practitioners are in campaigning on the issues, and what ideas and plans we want to develop for the coming months.
We are calling the conference “Welfare Reform and Mental Health: Resisting Sanctions, Assessments and Psychological Coercion”.
The date & venue are:
Saturday 5th March 11-5.30
Wade Hall
Dickens Estate
Parkers Row
Bermondsey
London
SE1 2DH
We are hoping to finalise plans for a social event for the evening - Wade Hall has a bar, MHRN are planning to invite poets and musicians. Any suggestions from us?
When we have a programme outline, we will launch the Eventbrite link to register for the conference.
Outline of the programme for the day so far:
1. Plenary session 1 - starting with "Where are we at now? - a review of the things we have done, and the challenges we face .........11.30 - 12.30
2. Morning Workshops - 1 on Direct Action and
1 on a topic chosen by the professionals 12.45 - 1.45 then lunch 1.45 - 2.45
3. Afternoon Workshops - 1 on Prioritising future campaigns and actions and
1 on a topic chosen by the professionals 2.45 - 3.45
4. Afternoon Plenary: "The way forward" feedback from the workshops and a discussion on how we move forward and work together 4 - 5.30
We will be encouraging people to go to any of the 4 workshops so we can learn from each other.
At the same time, I feel we practitioners have quite a lot to do if we are going to develop some focussed campaigning of our own on the “provider” side of things - in the private, public and voluntary sectors - including thinking about direct action. So I imagine a morning session discussing the political and ethical issues involved in 'back to work therapy' and thinking about the political pressure points we can bring to bear. In the afternoon, the main theme is probably what do we do about it.
Groups like MHRN, DPAC and Boycott Workfare have taken the lead so far, and are way ahead of us both in terms of research and uptodate info on DWP and the health/work marriage which has been developing at a pace since 2010 as well as organising and carrying out actions such as the Streatham protest. Currently a group of us are thinking about how to respond to Islington CCG's intention to pilot introducing employment advisors into 6 GP practices, as well as co-locate their IAPT service, iCope, in the local Jobcentre Plus.
I think it would be excellent if we could use this email group for a while to share our experience and thinking around this issue, so those of us who turn up on the 5th can feel we have started a dialogue about how practitioners can develop some campaign strategies.
Can you please let me have some feedback as soon as possible on what would be useful for you from the workshops and the day as a whole - to help you get involved, to share your experience so far and ideas for future action.