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Two new podcasts and two new movies from The Care Guy

I’ve been busy again.

I’m currently in Manchester for a few days delivering training on working with people who use alcohol and other substances which leaves me at a relatively loose end in the evenings. But I’m not one for sitting around when there’s stuff to be done.

So I’ve made two new podcasts and two new movie files for The Care Guy’s ‘Mental Health Support Workers’ Guide’. If you haven’t discovered it yet it’s a series of blog posts that are accompanied by PDF downloads, podcasts and movies. I schedule a new blog post weekly (usually on Fridays) but the PDF’s, Movies and podcasts tend to come a few at a time in advance of the scheduled blogs.

You can follow the whole series by clicking here

Alternatively, the links below will take you to the most recent offerings (episodes 20 and 21).

The Guide 20: Sympathy isn’t usually helpful movie and podcast

The Guide 21: More on the Stress & Vulnerability model of mental health & disorder movie and podcast

Enjoy.

The care that we give

This simple poster is a direct quote from one of my old nurse tutors. She was a long time dementia care specialist with the unlikely but memorable name of Sally Scattergood.

Sally often talked about the responsibility we had to improve practice by teaching only the best current principles to students and other colleagues. She summarized this with a simple phrase (nowadays we’d call it a soundbyte). The phrase is….

The care that we give, and the care that we teach is the care we will recieve.

Click here to download the poster for your office wall

Deliberate self-harm: tackling the myths

I’ve just uploaded another poster to The Care Guy website

This one is about the myths that surround deliberate self-harm and the idea that it’s all ‘manipulation’ or ‘attention-seeking’.

This short ‘poster format’ is designed to go on office walls in social care offices and nurses’ stations and raises a few interesting questions that expose the myths for what they are.

Click the link below to view and print the poster….

Deliberate self-harm is not about us

Enjoy

 

Quick guides: 3 types of legal status

One of the more confusing issues for health and social care workers seems to be how to tell when to intervene in someone else’s choices and when to stand back. So the second of my single page ‘quick guides’ looks at the  3 types of legal status and how to make sense of people’s differing levels of capacity.

This is designed as a poster style reminder rather than a comprehensive guide. Much more information is available in the PDF ‘Decisions’ for those who’d like to know more.

Unashamedly stealing other peoples’ ideas

My newest project is a blatant rip off. The materials are my own but ther format is very definitely inspired by two bloggers and tweeters whom I admire so much I intend to emulate them. They do say (whoever ‘they’ might be) that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Recently Twitter’s excellent @nurse_w_glasses who is responsible for the immensely popular 20 commendments for mental health workers and the ’20 commandments’ blog has seen her 1 page summary of the commandments posted in nurses’ stations all across the globe. It’s such a good format.

Even more recently a Leicestershire police inspector @MentalHealthCop who hosts his own extremely popular blog has begun posting ‘quick guides’ for serving police officers who may need fast access to pithy information as situations arise.

My project is based upon a combination of both these ideas. I plan to create relatively brief ‘quick guide’ summaries of mental health and social care principles that can either be used for quick online reference (like Mental Health Cop’s guides) or posted in staff rooms and offices (like Margreeth’s 20 commandments). I’m essentially ripping off two basic formats to create my own hybrid. Fortunately neither Margreeth nor Mental Health Cop seem to object. After all – we’re all chasing the same thing – information getting ‘out there’ to the people on the fromt line.

So my first offering in this series is a single page summary of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for front line workers in England & Wales.

You can download it here: MCA 1 page summary

Feel free to print it off and post it in the office, nurses’ station or keep it in your bag for quick reference should you need it.

You can also download my longer PDF that explains the Mental Capacity Act in more detail here if you fancy something a bit more meaty.

Enjoy.

Enjoy.

Some memories never die

Back in 1993 I split with my fiancee. The reasons for that decision are not important except to say that I was attempting to keep faith with my God. My belief at the time in fundamentalist Christianity left me no choice.

The young lady in question responded by making a number of accusations against me resulting in me being ostracised by almost all my fellow students. It didn’t matter that not a word of it was true. Even after she admitted that she’d made it all up (following my solicitor’s intervention) the ostracisation continued. It became clear that I was unwelcome at the church too – her admissions of slander notwithstanding. The congregation reasoned that since the students who knew me believed it then it must be true. I was a new student in the town and so still a relative newcomer to the local church as well. That assumption about ‘guilt’ quickly acquired the weight of ‘divine guidance’ in their collective opinion.

As soon as I qualified I left the town I trained in (despite the offer of a good job) just to get away. But I still had to endure two and a half years of extremely difficult student life first.

The thing that sealed my reputation’s fate was not this woman’s lies. To be honest they were always pretty transparent. The problem was the readiness, even eagerness of a largely female student body to believe that ‘all men are bastards’.

So for the record, and to provide a context to explain yesterday’s ‘spat’
for those who still don’t get it….

That’s why I will always oppose female chauvinists who believe all men are bastards. It’s because I know from first hand experience how destructive those myths can be. I very nearly abandoned the career I love before it even began as a result.

The myth of ‘Man Flu’ & why I oppose feminism

Yesterday I did something really unusual for me. I allowed myself to get into that most unhelpful of online discussions known as a ‘Twitter spat’. Yes, I know – it’s not big & it’s not clever but there it is.

Ostensibly the issue was ‘man flu’, a mythical condition that has about as much basis in fact as the idea that all women are ‘gold-diggers’ Both of these notions have two things in common:

They’re offensive;
They’re untrue.

I made the point that many men work themselves into early graves to feed their families. That’s not the behaviour we might associate with workshy malingerers.

The result was nothing short of bizarre.

Because I onject to the ‘Man flu’ myth I found myself embroiled in a protracted discussion about womens’ right not to be imprisoned in the home. The main protagonist seemed to equate my simple statements about the ‘man flu’ nonsense with a general opposition to womens’ rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Objecting to a sexist myth that seems only to benefit cynical advertising campaigns that revolve around the phrase “Here come the girls” does not mean I oppose womens’ rights.

However, this refusal to accept (and the deliberate attempt to misrepresent) even this basic and obvious truth has a far deeper implication…..

I support the rights of all people but because of reactions such as this I and a great many men cannot support feminism. This is not because I disagree with womens’ rights but because I cannot & will not ally myself with this sort of bigoted, superficial reasoning.

At its heart feminism has some very laudable aims which I do support. But I’ll never call myself feminist because I don’t want my support for reasonable political principles to be hijacked by those who seem determined to maintain a divide between the sexes.

People are just people. Myths that stereotype and villify either sex create a false dichotomy and undermine the rights of all.

I’ll never support the ‘man flu’ myth or feminism precisely because I support equality and universal human rights.

Update – an article from The Guardian dated 14th May 1012

Abu Qatada – the law at work

Not so long ago I made myself a little unpopular by posting a blog

Today’s multimedia offerings

I’ve been a busy little bee today. Here’s what I’ve done so far…

Click here for part 4 of The Care Guy’s ’Mental Health (the basics)’ course I recorded last week in Glasgow

Or…

Click here for The Care Guy’s latest podcast ‘Why I’m not anti psychiatry’

Or…

Click here to visit me on (and hopefully like) The Care Guy’s facebook page

Or…

Click here to see how much more stuff is available to download on The Care Guy freebies webpage

You can even follow @stuartsorensen on Twitter if you like.

Mental health (the basics) part 3

This is the third of four recordings made during a training day with Glaswegian support workers in May 2012. The recording does not include exercises which also formed a significant part of the day and some of the group discussions have also been edited down for brevity.

I hope you find it as enjoyable to listen to as I found the day itself. The participants were a joy to work with and I’m grateful to them for consenting to these recordings being posted on the internet.

Thankyou, Glasgow.