The Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy has organised a demo at the New Savoy conference again this year: 8.15am Wednesday 21st March 2018.
Paul Atkinson writes> 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.
(luxury Hotel details https://www.millenniumhotels.com/en/meetings-events/europe/united-kingdom/london/millennium-gloucester-hotel-london-kensington/)
In his intro to the conference in the programme http://www.healthcareconferencesuk.co.uk/conf/uploads/brochures/1210_20180214-104528_Psychological_Therapies_2018_Brochure.pdf 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 https://www.maximusuk.co.uk/health-programmes/health-promotion-and-wellbeing/employee-assistance-programmes); familiar faces in the list of speakers
• I’m working on 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, out 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 (link here for more info on this https://keepournhspublic.com/campaigns/accountable-care/). 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 https://www.newstatesman.com/microsites/healthcare/2017/10/planning-new-mental-health-paradigm
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
Hope to see some of you on the 21st!<
Flyer as PDF here New Savoy 2018
Recovery in the Bin 