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Mental health services face a ‘judge and jury’ dilemma
• CAMDEN was at the forefront of the anti-psychiatry movement and has a long and rich history of involvement of users of the mental health services in the monitoring, evaluation and development of those services.
Camden Mental Health Consortium has been at the centre of this in a number of incarnations throughout the 30-year period since the closure of the great Victorian mental hospitals and Friern Barnet in particular. It is extremely disturbing that in 2009, when psychiatry is becoming yet more restrictive and oppressive, that Camden Council has decided to end CMHC’s funding and effectively take away the user voice.
As if that is not bad enough, they have decided on a novel venture of taking service user involvement within adult social care, the very same department which commissions the services of which those service users are often so critical.
This is a very clever illusion, if they can pull it off, since they would effectively become judge and jury on their own work.
It seems unlikely that any criticism would come out of their user involvement department and they would be able to say how good all the services they provide are.
This would be very different and more helpful than being under the ever-watchful and critical eye of CMHC.
The council argues that this will be good for the development of user involvement.
The truth is that it will allow the council to do what they want without the fear of criticism.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and Camden has decided that it is no longer prepared to bear that cost.
Scott Stevens
for Camden Mental Health Consortium
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