February 2011 Archives

On a related note, pressures of the job mean social workers often struggle to get a decent work-life balance. Lifehacker has 10 tips which might shift the balance in a small but possibly meaningful way. I particularly like the idea of finding ways to bring the things you love to the job you already have.

(Pic: YuvalH on flickr)

The bank is 83% owned by taxpayers.

The comparisons with social care spending, which faces heavy cuts along with much of the so-called "bloated" public sector, are interesting.

The amount RBS paid in bonuses last year amounts to 5.6% of the total adult social care budget for England in 2009-10.

It is the equivalent of 27.9% of the total amount spent on residential care for older people in England last year.

Based on average costs, £950m could have paid for a year's residential, nursing or intensive home care for almost 30,000 people or 190 million meals on wheels.

And if one averages the remuneration for a foster carer at £30,000 a year, that could have provided an extra 30,000 foster carers.

Feeling sick yet? It doesn't seem to be bothering the government too much. But don't worry about it - we're all in this together.

(Pics, left to right: West Coast Surfer/Mood Board/Rex Features, Sinoplx/Rex Features, Frederick Sierakowski/Rex Features, Onne van der Wal/bluegreenpictures.com/Rex Features, )

It seems like the coalition's public service cuts are really starting to hit home now.

My colleague's at Community Care reported this week that some mental health trusts are planning to cut 15% of staff.

The cuts come despite government pledges to protect the NHS from cuts and make mental health a priority.

Not surprisingly, social workers are angry about the impact cuts will have on frontline services.

Meanwile, a new guide has been launched to help people with mental health problems deal with debt.

Far be it from me to blow my own trumpet, but I feel compelled to point out that I have written my first weekly round-up of the best bits from CareSpace - the forum for UK social workers. Do feel free to read and comment.

Do you drive around in one of these? It's a Renault 4, by the way.

According to appropriately named spoof news site The Spoof, social workers will be freed from a number of onerous regulations in April, including requirements to:

• drive a Renault 4
• carry their work round in a plastic bag
• wear long woollen skirts and socks.

I thought the article was rather funny, but it does show how outdated perceptions of social workers remain strong. I'm not quite sure where they got the "public school accents" from though - I don't think I've ever met a social worker with a public school accent.

And surely it should be a Citroen 2CV?

(Pic: FaceMePLS on flickr)

World of Psychology has an account of how living in a shared house helped improve one person's mental health. Shared living, the author says, helps tackle isolation and excessive rumination. Got to get the right flat mates of course - the Young Ones anyone?

On a related note, peer support shows promise as a treatment for depression, a survey suggests.

And finally, preliminary research suggests behavioural activation therapy, delivered by non-therapists, could be an effective treatment for depression. According to the researchers, mental health nurses could be trained up to deliver the therapy in just five days potentially opening up the therapy to far more people.

(Pic: Sheila Rock/Rex Features)

The research suggests meditation can change brain chemistry, but successful talking therapy might also change the brain, according to a separate piece of research.

Meanwhile, social workers know all about attachment in kids but what about attachment in adults? Apparently it can be significant in terms of relationship building in adulthood, says Time magazine. I bring you this information because it's the day after Valentine's Day, so it's somehow relevant.

Finally, a new book by a psychologist cautions agains the unrealistic goals associated with instant access to global information. It has left us with an ever growing fear of insignificance as we compare ourself to the most 'significant' people around the world.

Strenger counsels that people stop measuring their achievement through cultural fantasies of riches and celebrity, which reflect a media craze for ranking and rating people and cannot lead to fulfillment.

(Pic model released: David Oxberry / Mood Board/Rex Features)

First up, various academics, therapists and doctors have written to Channel 4 complaining about some of the messages communicated in its Joy of Teen Sex programme. We reported a couple of weeks ago that Channel 4 stopped referring to Ruth Corden as a social worker on the programme, as although she has a social work degree she was not yet registered.

Meanwhile there is a fascinating story in the Guardian about a new approach to social care being pioneered in Swindon, in which families get to choose the professionals they want to work with and workers are encouraged to show 'love' to service users.

Love is not a word much used by many professionals working with vulnerable families, and one of the first things Participle had to do when training the team was to define love as trust, respect, non-judgmentalism and a willingness to share who you are. Such notions turn upside down all the usual conventions of the distant professional whose job it is to make decisions.

It sounds like an interesting approach although I wasn't too impressed with the paragraph where social workers were seemingly criticised for wanting to leave a violent situation.

Finally, any Archers fans out there? Here's something I didn't know: the character Susan Carter is played by Charlotte Connor, senior research psychologist at Birmingham and Solihull mental health foundation NHS trust. Talk about multi-talented.

Anyway, according to The Guardian, Connor has been helping to develop a new site aiming to engage young people experiencing early signs of mental health problems. It's called YouthSpace and it looks rather good.

It's good to see sports stars backing mental health campaigns. Young men are a particularly hard to reach group when it comes to anti-stigma messages and sportsmen tend to be the kind of people they listen to.

So it's good to see Leeds Carnegie players backing the Time to Change campaign at their game on Sunday.

Cannabis use appears to be linked with the earlier onset of psychosis, a new study suggests.

The meta analysis of previous studies found people who used cannabis developed psychosis on average over two years younger. Although the nature of the link is not known for certain the authors of the study in the Archive of General Psychiatry say its findings "support the hypothesis that cannabis use plays a causal role in the development of psychosis in some patients" and suggest renewed warnings about the dangers posed by the drug.

Meanwhile right-of-centre thinktank the Centre for Social Justice says family breakdown is leading to a rise in mental illness.

(Pic: Jon Santa Cruz/Rex Features)

My Community Care colleague Mithran Samuel has interviewed the adviser sacked by the government for pointing out that its mental health strategy was backed up by no new funds.

Professor David Richards told Community Care that ministers risked raising false hopes among mentally ill people by pledging universal access to talking therapies without the means to make it happen.

Meanwhile, on a different note, exercising outdoors is better for your mental health than exercising indoors, research suggests. I guess it depends where... running in a forest or swimming in a lake - yes. Pounding the pavement by the side of traffic-choked A-road - I suspect not.

If you're a fan of the crime thriller genre you might be interested to know that a new offering from Ann Cleeves revolves around the murder of a social worker.

Apparently the investigation by DI Vera Stanhope in Silent Voices revolves around a case the social worker was involved in. "Soon, Vera is unravelling a complex plot that leads back to the death of a child whom social workers were supposed to protect," the Independent reviewer writes.

CareSpace blogger, Normms, who suffers from early onset dementia is campaigning to set up a UK Dementia Awareness Day on September 17th.

You can pledge your support to the campaign here.

There is a very comprehensive account of the concerns some people have with the compilation of the latest version of the diagnostic and statistic manual of mental disorders in Wired.

There has been particular concern that the widening of the definition of various mental disorders and the creation of new ones will medicalise too much of what is everyday human suffering.

The manual is very influencial in the US and is also used by psychiatrists in the UK to help diagnose patients.

(Pic by twicepix on flickr)

Comedian and actress Rebecca Front has kicked off a remarkable trend on Twitter in which people admit to their mental health problems as part of a bid to tackle stigma.

The star of The Day Today, Knowing Me Knowing You and The Thick of It posted this message earlier today from her @RebeccaFront profile:

Hey well known Twitterers.Fancy taking the stigma out of mental illness? I'll start: I'm Rebecca Front & I've had panic attacks.#whatstigma?

The post has prompted loads of responses (sorry - can anyone work out how many?) on the social networking site from other people revealing mental health concerns.

The #whatstigma hashtag is now trending in the UK, according to trendsmap.

I've not had time to look into the government's new mental health strategy today but luckily my colleagues at Community Care have been all over it.

Much of it seems positive, such as patients' ability to request a referral to talking therapy services. But I do wonder how it will be delivered when the money appears to come from existing budgets. Will there be the supply to match the demand?

Rather sad story in the Mail  about a 100ft houseboat rennovated by two social workers and featured on the TV show Grand Designs in 2007, which was left uninhabited on the Thames Estuary, broke free of its moorings and washed up on a beech in Westcliff-on-sea.

The boat, designed to be environmentally friendly, was made of reclaimed timber and corrugated metal and looks a bit like something out of Mad Max.

The rejuvenation project ran into cash problems and the couple were forced to abandon plans to live on it and it has since suffered vandalism making it an unviable proposition, the Mail reports.

The coalition government's mental health strategy is expected this week, trumpets the Telegraph, and it will promise to "end the stigma" associated with mental health and promote alternatives to drug therapy.

Really? Isn't that what the last government said it was going to do? Obviously the Telegraph doesn't remember that far back. Still the apparent focus on group therapy looks like a new thing and is obviously more cost effective than one-to-one therapy.

The reported claim that the strategy hopes to 'cure' a million people before the next election has raised eyebrows in some quarters.

And of course a crucial factor will be whether the £400m fund to implement the strategy will be new money or drawn from existing resources.

(Pic: computerjoe on flickr)