Chocolate
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Mysteries of learning disability ‘care’
Yesterday, I raged enough at the emergency social care guy to get the duty psychiatrist to call me. This is the learning disability team psychiatrist. We had an astonishing exchange that went on for nearly 20 minutes. He kept insisting that, if anything happened this weekend, we had to call the out of hours GP who would give us a prescription for LB. He would email the other psych, who had discharged him, and tell her what had happened for Monday. I tried to explain that when LB goes off on one, he goes off on one and there ain’t really a convenient space to call the GP, collect a prescription and find a nearby chemist. He didn’t get it. LB ain’t his patient. He ain’t seen him. He can’t do anything else.
Blimey, that don’t matter. Dr Crapshite only saw him once before discharging him so no big relationship there.
No dice. He just kept repeating the out of duty GP path. It could almost have been a recorded message.
I don’t get how he can be a specialist in learning disability and have no understanding of what I was describing. I also don’t understand what the point of a duty psychiatrist is if they ‘can’t’ do anything. Stupid, meaningless layers of process that just mean ultimately, nothing happens. Eventually he asked me if LB had got worse recently. “HE PUNCHED HIS TEACHER IN THE FACE THIS MORNING!” I exploded. “Oh, has he not done that before?” I hung up.
The phone rang straightaway. He’d leave a prescription for lorazepam at our surgery.
“Thank you,” I said.
Comic relief day. No.
LB punched one of his teaching assistants* in the face this morning.
Horror.
I rang the emergency number on his Care Manager’s ‘out of office’ email and was told someone would ring back. The guy called back ten minutes later and suggested a referral to the learning disability team nurse who specialised in challenging behaviour.
“Ok, how long will that take?”
“Well I’ll put the referral through next week and she’ll get in touch when she gets it. I’m not sure how soon she’ll be able to come and see him though.”
“Eh?? Have you listened to what I’ve said?????”
“Er, sorry?”
“What are we supposed to do in the meantime, if he turns on someone else?????”
“Well, I could make it an urgent referral I suppose… Ok. I’ll put it through as urgent then. And there is a psychiatrist too. I don’t know if….”
“She.discharged.him.last.week.”
“Well I could try ringing her this afternoon.”
Thirty minutes later he rang back.
The psychiatrist had gone home, he’d spoken to the duty psychiatrist; we have to go to the GP and ask him to ‘escalate’ LB to the psychiatrist.
I’m putting it out there now, the support and services for young learning disabled people in Oxfordshire is worst than crap-shite. Unacceptable. Please feel free to pass this link on to anyone in health and social care. Or anyone really. Things HAVE to change. And not just for LB.
*Sue, who has gone about as far beyond the call of duty as you can with LB, including getting in contact with mermaids around the world and sitting around in a stinking, freezing cold workshop every Wednesday, while LB does mechanic training.
Manchester women
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Limits and horse-shite
Well the light hearted, fun chit chat involving LB and his unusual take on the world, that partly inspired this blog, seems pretty distant now. I’m glad I captured some of it on these pages. It’s currently masked by reasonably regular extremes of behaviour that are unpredictable, aggressive and deeply upsetting. The trouble is, there isn’t any real (effective, valid, meaningful) support to deal with this.
I got a call at the beginning of a meeting in Manchester on Monday, after a Mother’s Day that included, in equal measure, horror and lovely, lovely love stuff. LB had had a serious meltdown? crisis? situation? at school. It sounded awful and his teachers and the school nurse were understandably shocked and upset by it. I could only say, standing in the corridor, trying not to cry with the futility of the situation, ‘I don’t know what to do’.
Cripes. Well who does know? Who should know?
Er, health professionals? Highly trained specialists who have the relevant knowledge to help LB and guide us through this.
No. Not really.
Trouble is, they won’t say that.There is a faux professionalism that involves sticking to a script that is irrelevant. Without that script there is nothing. LB’s unusual behaviour challenges, tests or confounds the boundaries of their knowledge. And this, in turn, is complicated by the resources available. This is not a comfortable situation for anyone, so we go through the motions in a performative way. Questions asked. Answers given. And they (pick your health professional) ease out of our home. No further forward. No change.
Tomorrow it’s the turn of the (learning disability service) psychologist, who was passed the baton by the (learning disability service) psychiatrist (who did nothing). Our GP embraced her contribution this afternoon in an obviously appalling situation. I promised to be open-minded when I meet her.
“Can you prescribe something like a horse tranquilliser as well, maybe with a dart gun, for those particularly tricky moments?” I asked. “No,” he coughed, “this can’t be resolved through medication. LB needs help to learn strategies to manage his behaviour, aggression and anxiety. That is the role of the psychologist.”
“Ah, okeydokes,” I said, leaving his office, with my promise taking a hammering.
The train home
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Manchester cool
Strike a pose and the stool pic
Through an increasingly common, though still unusual, turn of events facilitated by twitter*, I agreed to take some photos today at Turl Street Kitchen, a social enterprise cafe set up in Oxford, on the off chance they may be accepted for a piece about them in Vogue. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Yes. Vogue. Stop laughing.
After a bit of a misunderstanding (I thought it was a group staff photo), I loitered there for 10 minutes this morning snapping customers, staff and space. The deadline was today, but as I was running a (slightly chaotic) focus group this afternoon, I didn’t get home till almost too late to look at the photos. There were a few quite goodish ones I hurriedly edited and sent to TSK. I got an email an hour later saying ‘lovely pics will get back to you in an hour’, then an email saying ‘they’re looking at the stool pic. Will keep you posted’.
O.M.G. They?? Vogue? Looking at my stool pic?????? Really??????
I looked at the stool pic I’d sent them. It was a bit fuzzy round the edges. I went back to the original photos. There was a much sharper photo I’d overlooked. A bit like I didn’t have enough shop vouchers at the end of the focus group earlier and wondered if I’d given someone two by mistake. It was tucked in among some paperwork. So careless.
I added the (heaps) better stool pic to my submission (is that the term?) but it was probably too late. I don’t suppose these big Vogue guns go back to look late entries. My almost hugely special-funtastic photographic moment dashed.
Finding the ‘missing’ voucher was important to the focus group participants though. Important to their sense of integrity. Much more so than a sharp photo of stools.
Vogue can wait.
*thanks to @abiccles for her thoughtful retweeting
Meat delivery and fruit
Another early morning meeting yesterday. Again pure pleasure as the sun was shining and I love wandering around places as the stuff that happens to get ready for the ‘main’ day is going on. The Covered Market is always brilliant before the shops open. Though pretty meaty. I followed one delivery to Brasenose College.
“Do you mind me taking your photo?” I asked the butcher. “Nah, I don’t mind darlin’,” he said.
Two sides of St Giles…
…or if the cap fits..
mydaftlife 