Thursday 20 March 2014

Story Six - Home

On the 16th April 2010, the professionals held a minuted meeting. There are four action points at the end of the minutes:

  1. Steven will not be allowed to return home to either parent.
  2. The council will start looking at long term secure residential placements for Steven
  3. Mr Neary senior must not be informed of this.
  4. The Unit manager to consider implementing the deprivation of liberty safeguards for Steven.

One of the Unit's staff told me once that one method they use to change thinking or behaviour is "subliminal messaging". Steven's language is very direct (frighteningly so at times), so it struck me as interesting that the professionals would use a covert, some might say, manipulative approach to deal with this.

It started straightaway after 16th April.

Steven always refer ed to his home as either "home" or "the Uxbridge house". On the care plan for the fake transition home plan, it had always refer ed to Monday afternoons as: "Steven's visit home". That all changed and home suddenly became "Dad's house". (and later, when they were trying to destabilise our relationship - "Mark Neary's house"). I would never buy into this and insisted the support workers still used the word "home".

A couple of weeks after 16th April, Steven had his first mental capacity assessment to determine if he had the capacity to decide where he should live. In the assessment, Steven was asked lots of comparative questions - "which is better - M House or Dad's house?". Bearing in mind that the MCA code of practice says that people should be supported through this process and be given every opportunity to demonstrate their capacity, the Unit had a cunning plan. To aid their questions, they had a photo of the Unit, a photo of the respite house and........ a clip art picture of an anonymous house which they called "Dad's house". We've got tons of photos of Steven at home, inside and out - they only needed to ask.

I found it very scary that, in order to carry out their plan, they had to change all of Steven's thinking as to what a "home" is and turn it into an abstract concept. Of course, it also gave him the subliminal message - "Steven - you don't have a home".

#107days #justiceforLB

3 comments:

  1. This is grooming and is a clear case of it. grooming involves psychological manipulation in the form of positive reinforcement and foot-in-the-door tactics, using activities that are typically legal but later lead to outcomes decided in advance by the manipulating behavior of the person in power, exploitation to occur at a later date.By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive.The ordinary life evangelists [for people who are not ordinary ] are using similar tactics just watch any meeting where a person with LD is present all these tricks are in play.The personalisation agenda and ITU's are corrupt as hell and run by people who like to control others and we know what the mental health practitioners say about that! Pot calling the kettle black I would say.Adult grooming is the adult equivalent to child grooming and applies to any behaviour where an adult is prepared so they unwittingly allow abusive behaviour or exploitation to occur later. The abuser typically befriends or builds a relationship with the victim in order to establish a relationship of trust. Well known examples of such abusive behaviors are sexual abuse, elder abuse, financial extortion, human trafficking and sexual slavery.

    Although it is a common belief that grooming is most relevant to children, the same or similar psychological processes are used to exploit adults. As with child grooming, adult grooming typically involves:

    positive reinforcement (gifts, money, praise, superficial charm, flattery, smiling etc)
    normalization.Yes NORMALISATION or an ORDINARY LIFE all wrapped up in positive tidal wave of deceit.Sorry for the long post but I am fuming here most of this is pulled from Wikki but inferences are my own.Social workers also use this process during meetings and assessments hence the title some of us use of smiling assassins or snakes in suits .

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