Still locked out

Large organisations do have an inflated view of how much control they can impose on individual human agency without undue consequences. This seems to especially true of those in the public sector, who do come up with some rum things.

On Friday I was told that our 'patients' (not a word I usually use myself) were not going to be allowed back to the yurt, and yesterday (3 days later)  we were told we couldn't use our usual 'therapy' room in the hospital, as a basic life support course was double-booked into the room. So we had one perfectly suitable therapy space in shared ownership with staff and members - which we were't allowed to use, and five minutes was our unsatisfactory room in which mandatory staff training was said to take priority over intensive therapy, and we were asked to leave. This is a programme for some of the county's most excluded and anguished people, and this is about the seventh time we have been 'evicted' since the three day programme started there last Summer. The administrative staff nearby are all lovely, and as helpful as can be - but there is nothing they can do to change these perverse priorities.

The 'managerial decision' is that members of the programme cannot go to the garden centre, and therefore to our the yurt, during therapy hours. Presumably this means 10am - 3.30pm on Mondays and 10am - 12noon on Wednesdays and Fridays - although it is a fundamental clinical principal of this sort of programme that 'therapy is 24/7' and 'everything that happens here is part of the therapy'. The managers will consider revoking this order when I have supplied:

• indeminty forms
• insurance certificates
• confirmation of criminal records bureau checks on all the greencare staff
• adverse incident policies
• medical indemnity cover
• risk assessments

...and then a decision might be reached, and hopefully communicated back to me. I have no idea how long that might be.

So much for a 'service user partnership' programme, where members of the therapy group are empowered to make their own decisions about engaging together in various supportive and therapeutic activities.

And, indeed, so much for our Mind-National Lottery funded project to provide an 'adjunct' to fill the gaps where the NHS can't go. I am still awaiting a response to my recent email to the Mind legal department.