Category: vulnerable adults

capacity to consent, cognitive interview, decisional capacity, Good Question, Grace Eyre Foundation, health care, mental capacity, vulnerable adultsLeave a comment

Decisional capacity: Good Question demo videos now available

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

This is from our blog post after meeting with the two people from Grace Eyre who helped us make the videos: Keith and Mikey had their first look at the videos today and it’s safe to say they were pretty pleased with them. I said we would be posting them up on the site by the end of the week and Mikey wanted to know where that would be. Keith said that they would be on the internet so ‘everyone’ could see them. He was even more pleased to think that his rather fine self would be preserved on film … Continue reading Decisional capacity: Good Question demo videos now available

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law, learning disabilities, vulnerable adultsLeave a comment

Can perpetrators be victims too?

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Today there is a major outcry about what appears at face value to be extremely lenient sentencing of a paedophile and some extraordinary comments made by the prosecution about the child victim’s behaviour. The prosecutor Robert Colover was also criticised after he reportedly told the hearing: “The girl is predatory in all her actions and she is sexually experienced.” I listened to the phone-in on BBC radio 5Live where people with a great deal of experience of sexual abuse – some of them professionals in the field, others victims – were almost unanimous in their condemnation, with a few arguing somewhat … Continue reading Can perpetrators be victims too?

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Holocaust Day and people with disabilities

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Holocaust Day: among the very many atrocities committed by the Nazis up to and including World War II, thousands of people with disabilities were murdered in the interests of eliminating ‘incurable illness’. They called it euthanasia and it is almost certainly still happening somewhere in the world – perhaps so quietly and one by one that no one notices. Let’s try to notice, please. http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007683 Continue reading Holocaust Day and people with disabilities

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Bromley, learning disabilities, NHS: a trilogy in four parts, psychotherapy, vulnerable adults2 Comments

‘My Dad’s gone to Mars’ – when a star chart isn’t enough

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

It’s almost an affectation to say how much things have changed over these last few decades. A way of putting our hands on our collective hips and uttering the professional equivalent of  ‘When I were a lad …’, then shaking our heads in disbelief at the impact of modernity on treasured ways of doing things. Back in the good old days, psychologists were much more hands-on – demonstrating to bemused nurses how to teach an adult with intellectual disability (mental handicap as it was known) to feed themselves with a spoon.They would sit in rows of plastic seats as the live bait – Chris Cullen on one … Continue reading ‘My Dad’s gone to Mars’ – when a star chart isn’t enough

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best interests, capacity to consent, health care, learning disabilities, mental capacity act 2005, vulnerable adultsLeave a comment

Samantha Backler – died of starvation

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Samantha was a 29 year old woman with cerebral palsy who was in the sole care of her mother. It is thought that she died as a result of being unable to care for herself or to call for help when her mother died suddenly. This was in 2010. There had been concerns since 1998 after Mrs Wolf, Samantha’s mother, was admitted to hospital with mental health problems, after which support from GPs and social services was increasingly denied. Mrs Wolf, apparently, was afraid that Samantha would be taken away from her. (St Albans Review inquest report) I can understand … Continue reading Samantha Backler – died of starvation

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