In this Blog post i am going to be talking about, what happened in the meeting, and my views.
The event was held at the Jubilee Church on the 18th July 2017.
The agenda of the meeting was to discuss which areas impact Lincolnshire the most, after which there would be a meeting In September 2017 to look at those areas in more detail to put a draft new Strategy by march 2018.
As you entered to give your name so they could mark you as here, they told you what table number you would be sitting on.
as more people turned up i recognized a few people which was on my table.
One of which being, Mark Whitington from the country Council which i am sure i saw him at the Lincolnshire county council meeting i went to In December 2016.
I wasnt sure about the other tables put it seemed there was a lot of people who work in different parts In Lincolnshire.
Sarah who i didnt catch her last name worked in SKDC, you also had Sally who worked in the Children services sector.
A small presentation started about the purpose of this meeting, mentioning that you would notice around the room, the topics that were up for discussion, on each topic would be stats and evidence of each topic.
such as there are currently over 500 adults with learning Disabilites supported in long term Residential care at a cost of about 22 million a year, there are 13.563 Individuals or households waiting for a council housing, which i do talk about later in this blog.
Each table has a spokesperson who would pass on the tables discussions at the end.
The idea was each person had 5 gold stars to put on 5 different topics they thought should be in the plan for 2018.
a long list of topics but a few of them were. mental health in Adults, mental health In Children, food and Nutrition, housing & Health, Learning Disabilities and many more.
We all got to each talk about what choices we made and why, which was great because I got explain my situation with the way the mental health system works, that it should no longer be a scored format which decides what help you should get, but rather a system that listen to the person needs and after x amounts of session, based the help on what has been said.
I also brought up the battle of long waiting times, that for someone who needs the help, and wants to live a better life, the case of having to wait 4+ months to receive it, is just outrageous, but even more is the fact that after your sessions, of which CBT being only 5weeks your told bye you cant have any more help, refer yourself in 3 months time oh but wait then there is the added time of the waiting list.
its no wonder Lincolnshire has a lot of mental health cases when the support is just not there.
I was happy to see that my table agreed on this a lot and we had a long discussion about it.
it was also mentioned that the lack of support transitioning between services as a child to a adult, is a disgrace, that your supposed to magically be able to cope.
Learning disabilities was another talked about topic.
I did not get catch to mention about it from my point as i felt mental health was more of an important sector to talk about.
for me this also had an impact on your mental health state, After a year and a half of people around people who pick up on your day to day life, they can sometimes know what you might be suffering from better then a doctor and other services.
I have been told, from others and my own experiences that i could suffer from dyspraxia, and also a little bit of dyslexia.
Again the lack of funding and services has meant that after a year and a half of extinguishing every angle, being told there is no funding, or we do not look after people who have these issues, your left with a battle to get help still.
Which leads with the poor housing situation In Lincolnshire.
Again from my own Knowledge and experience, i know what the system is like.
If you have no where to live, and become homeless, you are put on what is called the avenue.
which is a list, to be transferred mostly to a homeless shelter in Lincoln itself,
if your lucky, you are sent to a housing association such as Narco which i am under, or others across Lincolnshire.,
This is a no means permanent fix, it is just temporary accommodation.
I find myself in a loop from being in shared houses by a landlord back to Narco, because i find it hard to cope, at least if i have kind of a support worker from Narco, life is a little easier.
I have been on the Council list ever since i moved to Grantham, 6 years a go, and on band 4 which in my terms is your never getting a place.
this is where the circle for me comes into place, Because Narco is temp accommodation, your forced, to either be with their move on flat for 2 years, which for me, yes i like my own place one day but at the moment just the comfort of knowing people are in the house makes me feel more relaxed, i could not manage a place on my own.
so because i have also not been able to get a proper assessment on paper saying you have this etc, my bracket on the council list is still band 4 which again means, good luck getting a place.
If you want to live in a affordable place to rent by yourself you have to go through letting agencies, which do not let you have a place anyway without the support backing from a parent, and then on top of that hundreds of fees etc.
So for me this all impacts my mental health a lot, that is why i talk about it a lot, because its about time, funding and knowledge on how to do with the issues get sorted.
Anyway back to the meeting, Mark from the country Council had a lot of good points he was speaking about, i cant remember what they were but it seemed there was a common theme on what services needed to be looked at for 2018.
After this we was then given 5 sliver stars, to confirm these choices, or even change a few if we felt from the discussion of the group that we put a star on a wrong topic.
One of the topics i noticed had a lot of stars, which would of also been from the other tables of people, was Mental health in Children, which was great as i suppose it is good to crack down on the issues at hand so they stand a better chance later in life.
It did confuse me towards the end when is table got to talk to the others about what they felt needed to be looked at that, everyone in the meeting all highly expressed about the mental health services and yet there was only a few stars, for the adult services of mental health.
Something that is clearly lacking in Lincolnshire.
its also the case that although it was good to put our point across, the results of the day, did not reflect much, as across Lincolnshire there was 7 of these meetings,which meant they would be putting all the results from across the border, totally to tally what areas need looking at the most.
Another thing that i felt was a little pointless was the idea of the stars, fair enough it was a way to gather the results but it some way it felt tacky, more so when we had to confirm our choices again ??
Mentioned was that, at some point, do not know when, they would be contacting smaller groups for more input, which i guess its about trying to see if those results match the larger groups but dont see how it would make to much difference.
on the other hand, its about time Lincolnshire holds more Public meetings, to discuss topics at hand.
To my surprise toward the end of the meeting i got chance to have a long talk with, Marianne Jane Overton, Known From the Lincolnshire Independents.
I had met her a few times, and even got to do a video Type Interview, last year, i will leave the link to that at the end of this blog.
She seems to be everywhere in the past year, always making strong points, and trying to be a part of moving Lincolnshire forward (:
My overall experience that it was good to be part of something, that i could really talk about, and get involved with, i had never done anything like that before and it felt good.
In terms of the meeting, again this was only one part of the process, to me no matter what we discuss, you have so much lies with services not only In Lincolnshire but with NHS, Hospitals closing, funding not being there, and well i could go on all day but i wont (:
lets just say until, The Nhs is a little more fixed, the issues in the meeting, will be a very slow process moving forward, People might be asking why are they are going to focus on some areas and not others.
In a perfect world it would be great to be able to have the funding, staff etc to be able to fix everything, but with limited things, i suppose all we can do is focus on the areas that matter the most (:
If you want to see some of the photos i took, of the topics that were at the meeting please check out my photography page.
If you have any questions about the event, please feel free to ask, i cant say i would be able to answer fully but i can give it a shot (:
I hope this blog, information post helps, in some way, of letting people know whats going on in Lincolnshire (:
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Thank you for this Daniel. Sorry we weren't able to attend and support you on Tuesday. This information is very valuable. I am currently arguing for more child mental health support for a friend of mine and this has been very helpful x
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