Tory cabinet minister Liam Fox has accidentally revealed today how Theresa May plans to replace the qualified doctors, nurses etc who have left or are planning to leave the NHS due to Tory cuts to NHS budgets.
Fox revealed the Tories are planning to replace paid NHS professionals with unpaid volunteers – and May’s government plans to dish out just 15 QUID EACH to train them:
What could possibly go wrong?
Pride's Purge 
in word… EVERYTHING!
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I understand what you say and I’m as nervous of the outcome as you are. Not only are they mean and mean-spirited but fundamentally stupid and totally incapable of organising anything more complex than microwaving their dinner. But the real question is “How the fuck do we get rid of them?”. The Tories themselves cant even rid the system of the white elephant aka Maybot
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Stupid indeed ! always were – always will be !
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Put taxes up and stop playing with people’s lives.
Funny how we have money for HS2 BREXIT ETC but no money to look after our hard working citizens. SHAME ON YOU.
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Reblogged this on Jaffer's blog.
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It seems to follow that the insaner these people become the more plausible in their supporters eyes.
Liam Fox was supposed to be a doctor??
Clearly these idiots are just making it all up as they go along, but who in their right mind would vote for this.
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At just £15 a head – it’s probably an online course! Wonder which mental health specialists they had planned as the providers of such a service…. perhaps they can offer 3 for 2 courses and throw in a bit of first aid that becomes a paramedic certificate if you can cope with more than 2 videos!!
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I think you may not have noticed the words “first aid”, so it’s clearly not replacement of qualified NHS staff. Even so, £15 per head is pathetically low, so I suspect part of the cost will be sought from the relevant public sector employer, who are obviously already severely short of money. Further information can be found here – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_health_first_aid
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Rules regarding Volunteers require that they are recompensed for travel and out of pocket expenses. So £15 a head is hardly going to cover much at all. These Tories are frankly despicable.
The Samaritans take months to train their volunteers and will not let anyone ‘loose’ on a vulnerable person even on the phone until extensive training has been completed to supervisory standards since they know the cost of one life lost through inadequate training is greater than the cost of training a Samaritan to professional standards and it is a darn sight more than £15 a head!
The Samaritans also reject many people who they feel cannot be entrusted to listening to a vulnerable person.
https://www.samaritans.org/branches/samaritans-tamworth/volunteering-faqs
And that is just The Samaritans. I supervised and helped volunteers who supported despairing people experiencing life-changing gender issues either personally or relating to a family member and the shifts were very gruelling, requiring not only an understanding of what these people were going through but a great deal of knowledge and an ability to signpost people to seek professional help themselves and it cost a heck of a lot more than £15 a head. Getting volunteers to the 2 day course costed travel and an overnight stay for all participants and the drop-out rate was in excess of 50% when people realised the level of skill needed to support these vulnerable people.
Other skills for those living with abuse, eating disorders, grief, bad life outcomes and the consequences of those all require highly professional care and that is only supporting those with Depression and Anxiety.
If one then adds in those coping with Bipolar Disorder, Border Personality Disorder and many other serious mental conditions, there is absolutely NO WAY a volunteer should be left to even take down the person’s details, let alone counsel and support them.
It also begs the question where the Tories are actually going to FIND 1m suitable people to do this work and how they are also supported by counsellors to help them to cope with the sadness of caring for vulnerable people with problems. And if you actually FIND 1m people, you are going to have to find 1m more the next year and the year after that as volunteers burn out or discover it is making their own sanity worse.
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The truth is this is just more Tory hyperbole, but is maddening beyond belief that they can raise their deceit to such incomprehensible levels.
What sane person would vote for these creatures?
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So Mental Health First Aid or MHFA is an international franchise whose British arm is run by CEO Poppy Jaman as a Community Interest Company.
They currently run half-day and two-day taught courses. These are led by instructors who require zero mental health background or qualifications; more important is the ability to fund a £2790 seven-day course. Two days of which is taking the course yourself, four purely on delivering parts of it with feedback, and one spent with invited speakers on mental health.
The focus of the outcomes appears to be on identifying disorders, ‘stress reduction and resilience’ and signposting. Medical and self-care models with little or nothing on social or environmental factors. And this is what £300 (the attendance cost for the two-day course) gets you – who knows what deep insights the £15 version will bring.
An MHFA press release confirmed that they would be working with Public Health England and others to develop the online training that forms the entirety of this ‘groundbreaking’ campaign. One of the two non-executive board members of Public Health England? Why, it’s CEO of Mental Health First Aid Poppy Jaman! What are the odds?
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This is another example of what will remain after the full destruction of the NHS for those who can’t afford to pay for “proper” mefical care.
It is already planned for practitioner nurses to staff A&E without a Dr in sight. As you say, what could go wrong? I nearly died after being dismissed from an emergency consultation with a locum GP at an out of hours service i was “signposted to” by the NHS 111. I should have gone direct to A&E. What then if A&E had been staffed with nurses? What if anyone having a MH crisis is directed to one of these £15 amateurs? This is more dangerous than doing nothing in my opinion. It gives a false impression of “something” being done, and apart from the danger to those having MH problems from inept and inappropriate “first aid”, it is likely to actually cause harm and MH problems in those who are foolish and kind enough to want to help. It’s like replacing firefighters with the govt giving one person on every street a plastic bucket.
The current fad for forced CBT by the DWP also shows they have a reductive view of mental health issues in the wider population. Then there are the many now banged up in prisons (again with under-trained staff) who simply need support and decent access to professional help.
The UK Is suffering collectively from a MH crisis too, with record numbers being ill, and the likelihood of millions more joining them as UC and crushing poverty is rolled out.
All because the neoliberal want the working class too weak from hunger or illness to be able to build a proper resistance.
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what excellent posts by intelligent people with understanding here . Well said you guys…such a shame this administration gov is so shambolic that they havent even 1 person with your insights on the MP inform committee or front or back benches.
The worst scenario under this rule just keeps getting worse ..dire future for millions ,you wouldnt think it was possible with world communication at such a high level but wow to shockingly inept governing right accross the spectrum. Even here is on a blog there 100 percent more common sense.
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lol..correction
even here on a blog there is a 100 percent more common sense..
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Yes, more nonsense from the Tories. Do you think these people are in Zen training? I mean maybe they are ‘Koans’?
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This article misses the point completely. It has nothing whatsoever to do with replacement of doctors or nurses. The real problem with this latest Tory nonsense is that minimal mental health first aid training will leave the participants thinking they are experts when they actually know nothing, and they may do more harm than good in a real emergency situation where somebody is suffering from a mental health problem.
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Incidentally, to the people above commenting on mental health first aid course prices… Remploy quote their 2 day course at £2450 for 16 delegates (= £153 per head) or a half day introductory course from them and others is about £60 per head. Presumably the government will get a bulk discount, but £15 seems ridiculous.
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Mental health first aid training (just like ordinary first aid training) is a very good idea for anybody in a job which brings them into contact with the public. But there’s no way it can be done properly for £15 each.
I’m not sure where the idea that this training is intended to replace qualified doctors and nurses comes from. Would anybody in their right mind say the same thing about normal first aid training?
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So it’s a part-time, volunteer system for the NHS Mental Health Service. Oh happy days…
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Can’t believe anyone actually believes this….have you looked to the source of this?!!!
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Maybe we should replace some of our politicians with random volunteers too..
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bananahotel …thought they had already as the last publicly nominated elected westminister MP was in 1972 🙂
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Reblogged this on campertess.
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