Al Tue 10 Mar 2015 1:36AM
Firstly, the projects and ideas sound fantastic.
I don't have any contacts who are social workers as far as I'm aware, although there was a Christian guy back in Nottingham who was one. I'll see if I can get in touch.
Sorry for not replying for ages, it feels like I'm just starting to wake up a little bit.
Priya · Wed 18 Feb 2015 10:07AM
Hi!
So I thought it might be good if I just wrote a bit about the project I am working in atm.
The house is autonomously run and the quota that is tried to hold is 50% people that have experiences with psychiatry etc. The people living in there have house meeting where they can make decisions. All workers there have equal decision making power.
Basically the house is a shelter for people that have experience with psychiatry violence or are in danger of being put into psychiatric care against their will.
They can live there for up to 1,5 years and have a space to sort their lives out, be "crazy", experience what their psychotic episodes are like without medication or without the social pressure of functioning "properly" at all times. They get support with sorting their lives out and they can stop taking their medication if they wish so.
I am reading some stuff about anti-psychiatry at the moment and would like to go into discussion about that at some point. One main concept that I have already found to be one of the main parts integrated into working there is, that you give people back their self-responsibility. That does not mean blaming them for what has happened in their lives with no understanding privilege and oppression, etc. but rather give them the chance to have a kind of safe haven where they do not have to worry about not knowing where to live, jobs etc. and from that moment on taking responsibility for what they make out of it.
I feel that that is very important, because from my experience the people that have been to psychiatry have been through an incredible process of being incapacitated and not taken seriously and having had decisions being made on their behalf "only for their best" etc.
The "weglaufhaus" and similar institutions object to the concept of diagnosing and its consequences for how people then get treated and not taken seriously anymore due to having a condition that makes them act in a way.
Financially, the project is being financed by law by the German government by the social code as a "crisis institution" which is coined for people that are also in danger of homelessness.
I think it would be good to find out how projects in the UK can get financed. Do people have contacts to social workers that would have relevant knowledge?