THE REVIEW INTO SCOTTISH MENTAL HEALTH LEGISLATION – and now breath!!
A slightly more serious and slightly more work focussed blog than usual. By the time this is posted our report of the Scottish Review of Mental Health Legislation will have been to the Minister for Mental Health and published on the website.
It will be so strange to stop this work. The hundreds of teams and zoom calls will stop and in a few days the Secretariat will be disbanded to work elsewhere in Government or in other jobs. We, in the executive, will go our different ways and will see each other far less than we have over the last three years.
For those of you not up to speed with the review; we have been looking at the Mental Health Act, the Adults with Incapacity Act and the Vulnerable Adults Act and on top of that, at all our other rights which are known as our economic, social and cultural rights, in other words our right to health, employment, education, welfare rights and so on.
It has been a huge task and I think we have come up with a framework that in its essence would be very hard to disagree with in that we think the rights that apply to anyone should apply to people with a mental or intellectual disability. As, in Scotland, we are incorporating the UNCRPD and UNCRC and our Economic cultural and social rights into domestic law that is something than cannot really be argued against. But I am not going to get into the detail of it, do feel free to read all 900 pages of our report if you have the energy and motivation to do so!!!!
I knew from the very, very, beginning that I would be extremely excited and also extremely fed up throughout the review. In some ways knowing that I knew that at the outset confuses me greatly into an ‘why on earth did you do this sort of thing?’
I get really fed up with policy, especially when it is so complex the people affected by it might not understand much of it. I also get fed up with the need to be trendy and right on, to automatically fall into stereotyped views of what should happen to people. I get fed up with the assumption that sometimes seems to be made that curtailing our freedom when our right to life is hugely at risk is always a barbaric thing to do and I get really, really, fed up when I find myself questioning the value of the social model of disability or the groundedness of the UNCRPD. At the same time I struggle when I challenge and question. It is such an awkward and uncomfortable position to be in.
But maybe what we have done will make a difference, maybe the people I meet most days will ultimately be glad of what we are proposing.
I am lying down just now staring up at the sky which has blueness mixed with slowly moving clouds. I like to do this sometimes to remind myself that hours and hours of ideals and philosophy and evidence mean very little when compared to a rain shower or the rooks flying home to their trees across the road.
One day, when I have more energy, I suppose I will have to write down something about involving people like me in things like this. There are so many issues, not least the fact that the carer and lived experience members of the executive hardly gained in any way materially from this. It is an honour to be central to something that may lead to fundamental changes in our lives, hopefully for the better, but to be honest with all the cost of living changes financial recognition would have been good too. though and compared to my peers I did at least gain slightly. Still that sort of carping is not necessary at the moment at all.
To be honest I am exhausted. I think our secretariat will be even more so, as I write this, while considering a whisky, they are taking out watermarks from the final document. My hours back at the Commission will go back up next week but I will still have much more free time. That feels like a very good idea just now but it will be strange to see the emails arriving into my in box falling to a trickle and it will be strange not to have my weekly calls with Simon sorting out something that seems terribly important which does always necessitate my reminders that it’s the birds and clouds that matter!!
It is too early for me to know if I have learnt much. I no longer know; at times I have been in tears, at others immensely engaged and excited, at others puzzled and confused and then yearning to point out something I think we have missed.
I have argued occasionally. I don’t like to see that in me, I like my image as someone cooperative and pleasant but on occasion have had to admit that is not always me. I have slipped into illness occasionally and sometimes I think I have realised that I am more impaired by this schizophrenia thing than I have been aware of before.
In a few hours our review will not exist and I will take down my headers from my bio’s in social media saying I am joint vice chair of it.
I don’t know what will happen next; it will be hugely disappointing if the Minister and government don’t get the importance and value of what we are saying but that is not really in my power to influence at all.
I met some lovely people had numerous teams and zoom meetings and now I feel a bit lost; a sort of now what? With the accompanying: hopefully nothing much, I want a break!!
(Photo, flowers at Cardross Station. September 2022)
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