Nov 2007
8 Home Office Reports Partially Digested
Wednesday/28/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Research - Drug
Treatment
Last week on the last day of
the ACPO conference, the Home Office released 8 separate research
briefings covering drug issues. Below is an overview of some of the
key points plus links to more commentary from others where I've
found it. These are just my initial pick-ups on a first quick read
of the reports. I'll have missed loads of interesting stuff I
imagine, so if what I've grabbed whets your appetite, I've put
links in to all the full documents. Read
More...
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Same Old Anorak - Local Government Indicators 2
Thursday/22/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Local
Partnerships and Administration - LGI2
More on those pesky Local
Government Indicators for those of you for whom the anorak is just
a second skin...
To remind you, these are the indicators that will sit at the heart of the LAA, the CAA and the SCS (That's the Local Area Agreement, The Sustainable Communities Strategy and the Comprehensive Area Assessment - the divine troika of local partnership planning, measurement and delivery). Read More...
To remind you, these are the indicators that will sit at the heart of the LAA, the CAA and the SCS (That's the Local Area Agreement, The Sustainable Communities Strategy and the Comprehensive Area Assessment - the divine troika of local partnership planning, measurement and delivery). Read More...
Complex services, straightforward needs
Friday/16/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Drug Treatment
There's a conference being
advertised at the moment looking at Complex Needs in Drugs and
Alcohol. Complex needs, the organisers tell us, are the needs of a
someone in treatment to have access to employment, housing, or
healthcare and they'll be a key focus for drug and alcohol
providers in the next drug strategy.
This is not a definition of complex needs that I've ever heard before. Most usually "Complex Needs" refers to people with multiple disabilities or a profound depth of need relating to a primary condition. While I am willing to accept that someone who uses drugs may have more difficulty in accessing housing or employment or primary healthcare than someone who doesn't use drugs I don't think that this means that their need for housing or employment or primary healthcare is complex. Surely housing and employment and healthcare are basic needs that mainstream services should be capable of satisfying? Read More...
This is not a definition of complex needs that I've ever heard before. Most usually "Complex Needs" refers to people with multiple disabilities or a profound depth of need relating to a primary condition. While I am willing to accept that someone who uses drugs may have more difficulty in accessing housing or employment or primary healthcare than someone who doesn't use drugs I don't think that this means that their need for housing or employment or primary healthcare is complex. Surely housing and employment and healthcare are basic needs that mainstream services should be capable of satisfying? Read More...
Fries with those double standards sir?
Friday/16/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Misc
I was in the dog park
yesterday with a woman who I’d not met before who had a young staff
called Boris. As Boris repeatedly and enthusiastically tried to
convince my dog of the advantages of male only friendships – with
some success - she explained to me that Boris was “a nightmare” and
that she was trying to get her vet to give him “something like
Ritalin” as that had done wonders with her son. I asked how old her
son was – she said he was 18 now and doing well. He’d had some
problems with drugs last year but that was all over now and he was
in college doing GCSEs.
This made me think about our desperate search for a psychopharmacological solution to everything. While not for one minute disputing that some parent have great difficulties with some children (maybe that should read ‘most’ and ‘most’!), and that some children experience distress and unhappiness as a result of behaviours and symptoms that we now attribute to the somewhat subjective diagnosis of ADHD, I think as the BBC Panorama programme this week pointed out, we may be getting this out of proportion. Read More...
This made me think about our desperate search for a psychopharmacological solution to everything. While not for one minute disputing that some parent have great difficulties with some children (maybe that should read ‘most’ and ‘most’!), and that some children experience distress and unhappiness as a result of behaviours and symptoms that we now attribute to the somewhat subjective diagnosis of ADHD, I think as the BBC Panorama programme this week pointed out, we may be getting this out of proportion. Read More...
More than your job's worth? - Local Government Indicators 1
Monday/12/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Local
Partnerships and Administration - National Indicator
set
Its one of those anorak
moments - the Department for Communities and Local Government has
today opened a consultation on the indicators for the new
performance management framework for Local
Government.
Read More...
Read More...
Supersize them
Saturday/10/Nov 2007 Filed in:
Local
Partnerships and Administration - Drug
Treatment
You might have just missed it,
but in the Queens Speech last week was the announcement of the long
awaited Health and Social Care White Paper to merge the current
regulatory bodies - CSCI, The Healthcare Commission and The Mental
Health Act Commission into a single organisation called The Care
Quality Commission. Read More...