Know-nothing managers, uncaring carers

Last week there was a report (here in PDF and .docx formats) published by the National Survivor User Network, a mental health advocacy group run by people currently in or who have experience of the mental health system as patients, on the way women are treated in British mental health wards during their periods (author Hat Porter, who also addressed a round table at Parliament last week on the subject) was interviewed by Metro here). This includes not being provided with pads or tampons while they were prevented from leaving to buy their own, having products confiscated (particularly less well-known products such as cups), being told tampons are banned when they are not, being left naked with only an anti-ligature blanket for cover, and being expected to change in front of staff. Also last week, the BBC published a report based on interviews with teenagers who had been subjected to “deprivation of liberty orders” from the Family Court, in theory to protect them from harm but in practice required to live with abusive adults. One of the interviewees, detained on grounds that she was at risk of sexual exploitation, said she had been assigned male overseers, one of whom demanded on one occasion that she leave the shower, then burst in on her and assaulted her when she was naked. (The in-depth investigation is part of File on 4, here.)

As I have mentioned at length on this site in the past, I spent four years in a ‘special’ boarding school in the late 80s and early 90s and these stories take me back to that time when I was being “looked after” by people with no training whatsoever and who appear to have been recruited down the pub or at least on the grapevine, because they were often completely unsuited to any kind of caring whatsoever and had not been briefed on what was appropriate (or had been told it was OK to use violence). One of them (a man called Bill Sutton) began attacking boys on his first night there in January 1990. While we have qualifications for doctors, nurses and social workers and you cannot work in those roles without them, there do not seem to be qualifications (at least not mandatory ones) for people working in caring roles when these are often challenging roles with a great deal of responsibility, dealing with people who might have been traumatised, might have suddenly been torn away from their family, might be mentally ill, might have learning difficulties or autism, and they need to know how to act appropriately when dealing with distressed behaviour.

Women in closed or secure mental health wards (who often should not be in secure units anyway) being abused through denial of period care is not new; it was something Claire Greaves reported as having happened to her while detained at Ty Catrin, a Priory-run unit in south Wales, in 2016. This shows that we have people running mental health units in this country who have no sensitivity whatsoever to their patients’ needs and no concern for their dignity and mental wellbeing. As with the men being hired to guard teenage girls who were at risk of sexual abuse (which likely means further sexual abuse, i.e. they already had experienced some), it shows that we are recruiting people to both management and to non-clinical caring roles without a moment’s thought, without vetting for anything other than criminal convictions, without ensuring that their attitudes are consistent with delivering care to people who might not always be easy to care for, without ensuring that they would respond appropriately to challenges — for example, there are adults who believe that when a child or a teenager does not do as they are told, when they are told, the thing to do is to force them, as in the case of the young girl intruded on in the shower. The BBC’s reporter described them as in some cases burly men with a background in the security industry. Such people are not fit to work in a sensitive job with any young person, of either sex.

We have a crisis of recruitment in our health and social care systems; but the problem is not just quantity, but quality. We have know-nothing managers recruiting carers who do not care.

Possibly Related Posts:

• The ‘special’ schools that aren’t schools
• Who really “hates the NHS”?
• Why are children in care being sent miles from home?
• Travesty of justice, travesty of science
• This scandal has already broken