The State of Services

So it appears that 1in4, a mental health support service I used briefly last year and have mentioned (not always favourably), is among the latest victims of austerity, along with Second Step, who are primarily a housing association. They were never very helpful in my experience, but they don't really provide services pertinent to my needs. Emblematic of these destructive decisions (regardless of my opinion of the services) is that neither have updated their websites to report on this turn of events at this time.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs, to say the least. No alternatives seem to be forthcoming. From what I have gleaned, the attitude of the (Tory) council is that they don't want such people as would be service users in this leafy green shire. This is for the posh and the perfect. Nearby Bristol is where we 'should' go, but of course without being a resident that's impossible. Services do not extend beyond the city limits, even though Avon Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership (AWP) are meant to cover this area, the reality is that they prioritise Bristol. We get the scraps, as  my experience trying (still) to secure a diagnosis attests. In respect of that, the attitude is still to question why I would need one anyway. How will it help you, they ask; what good will it really do, anyway?

If you have to ask...

Weston super Mare, the main port of call in the area, is bereft. The exorcism of mental health services can only exacerbate its many problems. It has issues with poverty and has a sizable community of people recovering from problems. The high street is a graveyard of yesteryear: where once Woolworths was a fixture (if a pretty rubbish one to be honest) there is now the obligatory Poundland. Diseases like Caffe (caffe?) Nero are common often bringing with them a rash of independent 'fone' shops (fone?) as well as their nastier big brothers in the established market. O2 is within sight of Vodafone (FONE?) is next to Carphone Warehouse is...

You get the picture. Perhaps the best example is the state of that perennial of the retail world, WHSmiths. Once a proud purveyor of books and magazines, as well as 'light entertainment' (ie expensive hit parade based films and music), as well as stationery. It has been pulled every which way by the likes of Waterstones, HMV, and a ton of other specialist shops - not to mention the arrival of online shopping. WHSmiths survives in Weston, but not much more than that; the carpet is shabby, the frontage is tired, and they seem more eager to upsell junkfood than anything else.

And now, sandwiched between the shops and hunkered down on the well-trodden pavement, a growing tide of homeless people at a rate unparalleled in the town's history. The council has no answer other than to put up accusatory signs 'reminding' people that begging is an offence. That is to say, the act of a desperate human being calling for help. Yet because said human is cloaked in the muck of precarious living and sleeps in the detritus of capitalism, they are to be branded as beggars; an unkind term intended to create distance between the reality and the perception. The reality of life under capitalism and the Tory-created perception that these people have only themselves to blame. Of course begging is to be punished; a practise as counter productive as it is desperate. The last gasp of a dead system printed on a bent metal sign fixed to a lamppost. It will, and should be, ignored.

This is the backdrop for the much awaited (by me, and no one else) meeting with my adviser.

There isn't much to say really and no point dragging it out for artistic purposes. There was no mention of the issues raised, no discussion of any of the things that were mentioned before (bus pass, writing opportunity, music). I knew there wouldn't be, so I didn't bother pushing it. It was, essentially, business as usual. In effect a polite waste of time. A couple of telling points:

Firstly she told me that they've had a bit of a staffing restructure. Given that they aren't a huge operation I find this significant. Could this be related to the claim before about funding limits imposed (no confirmation of this either) on service users? Fifty quid won't buy you much support. Amongst these casualties was the colour therapist who has apparently gone to start her own business. Not sure whether that's anything to celebrate but I guess it's her choice.

Secondly in regard to the 'Solutions' service they offered, this seems to have changed, dulled. Prior it was the happy clappy simple simon corporate approach to mental health. I refused this and it seemed to be a problem (although that wasn't mentioned either) for me to do so. I am not interested in that approach, it's the same approach the government is pushing, nudging, people into. It is dangerous because it ignores the societal causes of mental distress in favour of kludging together the idea of work and wellness - under a capitalist system (which itself is that societal cause quite specifically).

Instead it's just become a more perfunctory run of the mill back to work course: CV writing, interview techniques and all that stuff. Again, if people benefit from it - great! My problem is that I don't know these things, it's that my CV is simply going to be barren and my ability to be interviewed (again dependent on societal expectations, not taking the individual into consideration) is affected by my cognitive ability. I can't get away from that, nor can I mask it, nor should I have to.

I declined, and so all that was left was a few threadbare volunteer opportunities only tangentially related to writing that, quite honestly I'm not interested in. What frustrates me is that they can't see this. I have to be seen to be doing something and so, if there are few genuine opportunities, it doesn't matter, I get judged just as if there were hundreds and I'd refused them all. Those are different propositions. I do not want to be compelled, guilt driven, into doing something just because it satisfies the needs of an organisation that cannot or will not understand the reality of the economics and politics that prevail today. I do not think that makes me lazy at all - in fact it is the very definition of laziness to resort to that kind of thinking.