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Organised Protest against IAPT treatments on March 21st London

Countrygirl

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UK
https://dpac.uk.net/2018/02/protest-against-iapt-therapies/

protest against IAPT therapies – March 21st 8.15am onwards
Action, All Posts, Disability Rights, Mental Health, MHRN, NHS, PoliticsAdd comments
Feb252018

The Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy has organised a demo at the New Savoy conference again this year. It’s an early start at South Kensington.

Here’s the programme for the conference – http://www.healthcareconferencesuk....528_Psychological_Therapies_2018_Brochure.pdf

Wednesday 21st March 2018 from 8.15am!

Millennium Conference Centre!

4-18 Harrington Gardens!

South Kensington, London, SW7 4LH



The New Savoy Conference is the annual gathering of professional and

charity bodies providing psychological therapies (IAPT) in NHS primary

care.

IAPT is an assembly-line service providing short-term therapies to over

a million people every year. Despite the commitment of its frontline

therapists and psychologists, IAPT is failing the mental health needs of

communities all over England, while working with government policies

that themselves generate psychological distress and social alienation.

Come and join therapists, mental health activists, psychologists and

welfare campaigners. Meet at the Harrington Gardens entrance of the

Millenium Conference Centre (Gloucester Road tube) from 8.15am to

greet conference goers.



Contact info@allianceforcandp.org for more information.
Some context:

• The hierarchy of IAPT and psychological services in the NHS who gather at these conferences continue to offer liberal mouthings about DWP welfare reform policies, WCA and PIP, sanctions, coercion around Work and Health. But they’ve actually taken no real action to boycott DWP/Health collaboration, despite all the developments re judicial reviews, UN condemnations, the recent Parl Committee report, and the UC debacle.

In his intro to the conference, in the programme link above, Jeremy Clarke (NS chair) says:

“The second issue is the running sore of welfare benefit reform, and its negative impact on mental health, that undermines whatever benefit we make to population wellbeing. Have we reached a consensus now for how we can turn the tide? The BBC’s Mark Easton will find out”

• The overall theme is depression; there are sessions on the crisis in the IAPT workforce, latest staff survey, impact of targets; session on Work and Health Unit; Wessely’s review of human rights and compulsory treatment; session on Employee Assistant Programmes (often run by people like Maximus); familiar faces in the list of speakers

•The scam of IAPT as a service in local communities. It has a massive evidence base, tons of statistics for every CCG in England including “recovery” rates; ethnicity stats; deprivation stats; etc etc No-one really analyses the figures. For IAPT it seems just collecting the stats is their claim to being evidence based and therefore their claim for funding from the Government. In fact, their stats reveal a shockingly failing provision.

For example, ot of 1,350,000 referrals a year 85% either never enter any kind of therapy, or never finish a course of treatment, or don’t “move to recovery” (as IAPT jargon has it). In my CCG (Tower Hamlets) only 6.6% of referrals to IAPT “recovered” and among the Bangladeshi community who make up over 30% on TH population only 3% “recovered”. Farmer’s Taskforce target for % of population who “need IAPT therapy” is 15%, rising to 25% by 2021. In TH about 2% of the pop were referred/referred themselves to IAPT, of whom as I say 6.6% “recovered”.

IAPT will be a major part of the propaganda around the NHS reorganisation now in progress, via the STPs and the ACOs they are developing . STP management have “the mental health crisis” high on their agenda – certainly their PR agenda – and selling more provision for IAPT services will be a major plank of the campaign. See Hunt on this role for IAPT here.

IAPT is rarely taken to task as a service that is massively failing communities all over England. This is true in the Labour Party as much as any where ekse. This has to stop. It is a propaganda service for neoliberal capitalism and its dissemination of psychological scapegoating and coercion across society

 

Countrygirl

Senior Member
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Location
UK
Really good to see IAPT sausage machine being challenged @Countrygirl

Doing CBT on the cheap using people who have had 9 weeks training was never going to be effective but they aren’t looking past cheap.

@NelliePledge I really, really look forward to the day that someone who was stacking shelves in a nearby supermarket six weeks ago, phones me following my GP's referral to tell me how I need to change my behaviour and false illness beliefs in order to cure myself of a severe disease I have had for 40 years and how to cope with severe neuropathic pain of ten years standing. :D:mad:

I abhor blood sports, but in this case.....................I make an exception.

My neighbour who has fibro has already had the pleasure of six weeks of 'treatment' from the shelf stacker. She is still mostly confined to bed.
 

NelliePledge

Senior Member
Messages
807
@NelliePledge I really, really look forward to the day that someone who was stacking shelves in a nearby supermarket six weeks ago, phones me following my GP's referral to tell me how I need to change my behaviour and false illness beliefs in order to cure myself of a severe disease I have had for 40 years and how to cope with severe neuropathic pain of ten years standing. :D:mad:

I abhor blood sports, but in this case.....................I make an exception.

My neighbour who has fibro has already had the pleasure of six weeks of 'treatment' from the shelf stacker. She is still mostly confined to bed.
I believe I read that the staff working in these sausage machine “therapy” organisations suffer a lot from work related stress I think the problem is largely down to the system not the individuals working within it. The young woman who did my CBT was pleasant enough. The content and approach was highly controlled she may as well have been a call centre worker reading from an on screen script.
 

Countrygirl

Senior Member
Messages
5,468
Location
UK
I believe I read that the staff working in these sausage machine “therapy” organisations suffer a lot from work related stress I think the problem is largely down to the system not the individuals working within it. The young woman who did my CBT was pleasant enough. The content and approach was highly controlled she may as well have been a call centre worker reading from an on screen script.

Yes, it is the system not the individuals, but how do we stop the 'system'?