So; I suppose I believed that I was in what is
often considered to be the right place at the right time. The three or four massive local Victorian mental
asylums were turfing out their inmates as fast as they possibly could. The local mental health services couldn’t
handle the sheer volume of work; the local authorities I don’t believe were up
to the job. What services were available
were not fit for purpose, most of the staff were inappropriate. Perhaps all of the people being released in
to the community may have had the right to live within whatever community they
chose, but many of them should have been placed with the appropriate amount of specialised
care and trained staff.
I finally got to meet John O Brien, the
American fellow from America. He was
almost spoken about in hushed tones; we quoted his guidelines like a mantra. I can remember waiting in a meeting room for
him to come in. I expected, as ZZ Top
sang, a sharp dressed man, but got something more along the lines of Zebulon
Tyler Walton, or as you might know him Grandpa Walton. I really was expecting the sharp suit and
flashy briefcase but in came this fellow in his late fifties, gentlemanly air,
dressed in a pair of denim trousers, with bib, and a head full of grey hair and
beard. He was softly spoken and had a
real lively sparkle in his eyes. He had
two members of his senior team with him and we settled in for instruction in
the proper way to do things.
I was disappointed to find out that there was
no magical solution; in fact John O Brien was advocating a simple
straightforward approach that always put the person being supported at the
centre of every decision taken about them.
It was a perfectly simple approach, but so simple, that British social workers
couldn’t accept it. What should have happened
normally, as in when a person is to be moved from a long term institution into
the community, you should find out what they like to eat, wear, live, be involved
in and support them to get those things.
It was decided that a plan would be designed for every person,
especially if they had no verbal communication.
Friends and family, old members of support staff would all be asked
about the individual and a complete picture of their lives their likes and
dislikes would be put in to a book.
For me it was taking simplicity a step too
far. By all means create a list, but a
book? Social services decided that this
was a brilliant plan and determined that everyone supported to live in the
community would have their very own Person Centred Plan. The situation now seemed to focus on
producing these plans, not only would social services inspect these plans but
various companies were springing up offering how to teach people how to create
them. A whole new diversion had been created. I attended a course to learn how to produce
one of these plans. I promise you I
could have taught the course without ever attending one, but what got me was that
to deliver the course for six people the company was charged twelve hundred
pounds.
I was still asking stupid questions as you may
have guessed, like what if the person supported changes their mind or their
tastes? There was also a big move to
allow people to be given their own budget and hire in their own services. One fellow I knew was determined to get his
own support staff and he told me, in a rather lascivious way, that he was only
going to employ young blonde haired girls with ample bosoms. Apart from the regular benefit payments these
people, who were being resettled, were given they had also been awarded compensation. Many of them had between twenty
to thirty thousand pounds in their bank account. I was worried as the fiddling and well;
basically theft, I had already seen could become even more widespread.
There was one company that had set itself up as
a consultancy firm for all things to do with learning disabilities. They boasted experts in everything and would
offer courses for anything. I asked why
no safeguards were being put in place for those who wished to manage their own
budgets and was told that this is what being equal was all about. But it was far from it. If someone fiddled me out of twenty thousand pounds
I would be able to fight to try to get it back or get a job and earn it
back. A person with learning disabilities
would probably not be able to do either.
Seems that I didn’t understand business, again. It really did feel that I was standing on a
cliff surrounded by lemmings that were feeling an urge to run towards the edge.
Some of the other things that were going on
were quite amazing too. In order to take
on specific contracts, say for example a house where five complex people were
being supported to live in the community. In order to encourage a company to take the
contract on the local authority would give them the house. The ownership of the asset would be given to
the new company. People were desperately
trying to meet targets and would do almost anything to ensure this happened,
but all of this was happening on paper and almost no care, or attention, was
being given to the individual person needing support.
I noticed that another Liverpool company, North
West Community Services, was looking for team leaders so I applied for a
position. Once again it was exciting,
social services had suspended the company, the whole top management had been
fired and a new management team had been put in place. The new boss, an Irishman, had fired all of
the team leaders and was now looking for new ones. With two Irishmen involved in learning disabilities
in the north of England it wouldn’t take us long to sort things out. So there was only one thing to do while I waited
for them to invite me for an interview, where once again I would tell them how
good I was and then gratefully accept their job offer, and that was to head off
to Ireland for a bit of craic.
I had built a dolls house for my old girlfriend
Pat. She was very special to me, my first
ever girlfriend and we still spoke to each other almost every week; it also
gave me an excuse to go to Warrenpoint.
This time it was just my eldest boy Gerard and myself that would travel over. The dolls house was so big it took up most of
the rear of the car, and that was a large estate, or as some people call them
station waggon, with all the seats folded down.
We were sailing from Liverpool to Belfast and I pulled up at the Pier
Head in Liverpool. I was used to soldiers
and police with search dogs but there were so many of them it seemed to
unsettle Gerard. I told him to calm
down. I wasn’t sure what was going on
but there did seem to be an awful lot of search dogs about, with handlers.
There must have been six search dog teams and
as each vehicle pulled up they were taking the passengers out and allowing the dogs
to run about the cars before the police gave each person a thorough body search. Sitting in the middle of what is obviously a
large search operation is not the best place for your son to inform you that he
had a bag of marijuana in his pocket.
I could see two dogs and handlers approach my car. Soldiers and police officers were approaching
too. Something like this could put the
brakes on any career aspirations I had in the world of learning disabilities so
I explained to Gerard that we were going to have to do the only thing possible,
which was to eat the marijuana. There was
far too much for one person to eat so we were going to have to share it.
The pair of us must have looked like we had
just eaten some spinach lasagne as our teeth were peppered and splattered with green
foliage. At least there was no evidence in
the car and the dogs, although a little agitated, found nothing, neither did their
handlers or the police officers who rubbed their hands all over our bodies. I remember Chris in London, when he bought
the opium and he had eaten it, telling me that the best way to take drugs was
to eat them. You got a slow release, which I can assure you is the case and probably
similar to the brownie cakes you can buy in the coffee shops in Amsterdam, or
in the pizza I was once accused of feeding to some police officers which I can
assure you I never did. It was mid
voyage when the drugs started to kick in and I wondered if this time I had
found myself to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? But then again, as the journey was proving to
be so mellow, perhaps it might once again have been the right place at the
right time.
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