Wednesday, July 18, 2007

ELEPHANT TALK:DHHS only cares about the paperwork; torpedo-ing Carl Rogers 'client centered thinking',humanistic psychologist of great fame

Dear Jennifer (Hancock: of MHA , Mental Health Association, in Wilson County):

I appreciate your thoughts below re: the value of person centered thinking as associated with perhaps shaping DHHS protecol. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Carl Rogers, a famous humanistic psychologist, invented this over 50 years ago. He was a gentle soul, this creator of client centered thinking but his simple and elegant application is simply lost to this system.

More recently, the DHHS crowd has simply been skimming the web or hanging out in Minnesota so they can launch this 'person centered thinking' to the ooh/ aah of the less well educated crowd who will surely remark about the fine weave of the Emperor's New Clothes:

"Person-Centered Planning has distinctive practices, but all share a common foundation of beliefs: The person at the focus of planning, and those who love the person, are the primary authorities on the person’s life direction."
http://rtc.umn.edu/docs/pcpmanual1.pdf

WHOOPEEE!!

King Crimson - Elephant Talk Lyrics
http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/King-Crimson/Elephant-Talk.html

(Belew/King Crimson)
Talk, it's only talk
Arguments, agreements, advice, answers,
Articulate announcements
It's only talk

Talk, it's only talk
Babble, burble, banter, bicker bicker bicker
Brouhaha, boulderdash, ballyhoo
It's only talk
Back talk

Talk talk talk, it's only talk
Comments, cliches, commentary, controversy
Chatter, chit-chat, chit-chat, chit-chat,
Conversation, contradiction, criticism
It's only talk
Cheap talk

Talk, talk, it's only talk
Debates, discussions
These are words with a D this time
Dialogue, dualogue, diatribe,
Dissention, declamation
Double talk, double talk

Talk, talk, it's all talk
Too much talk
Small talk
Talk that trash
Expressions, editorials, expugnations, exclamations, enfadulations
It's all talk
Elephant talk, elephant talk, elephant talk

How about some person centered thinking as pertains to the mental health practitioners? That might include mechanisms like: decide on a route and think about it carefully enough that you don't change in several months OR when you determine that you want to provide consumers services like Community Support, you don't turn around 1 yr hence and then state that records will then be inspected for services e.g., Community Support, for over-use----when the use hours were available at the beginning of the agreement OR stop torturing the providers of Community Support to the extent that the citizens simply will not, under any circumstance, obtain more than 12 hours/ week re: intensive overview. It reminds me of being out the other night, dropping the outgrown clothes over at the Goodwill, and being stopped by the police who thought I was looking for crack because I was driving past Deaverview housing projects in West Asheville. I don't need that kind of scrutiny. They searched my car for 45 minutes and got very excited about my orange enteric coated aspirin.

Until DHHS, and the LME's in association with DHHS, stops creating confusion via an uninterrupted flow of paperwork changes (we now have as of July 15th, a short version of the PCP, which means we have to take our long versions, reformat it, send it back in, along with an ITR, to Value Options, in order to obtain Community Support service.....(not thru yet) .....and then within 30 days create the fuller PCP (15 plus pages) and an assessment (we now have a menu of choices all the same in terms of more work and no new information) and then we turn that into the LME.

It appears that these people have nothing to do but create some new way of thinking about matters WHICH MATTERS NOT A WHIT RE: PATIENT CARE.

We do not have time to see the clients. However the paperwork looks GREAT.

And you don't dare ask for more than 12 hours of Community Support or your case, whether well put together or not, will then be sent by the LME to DHHS whereupon, undoubtedly, they will gig you and ask you to pay back money.

Enough already. This state is lucky to have ANY mental health providers other than those who prescribe meds----and there are way too few of those. I have become more and more pessimistic and am actively seeking ways to disengage myself from any of this.

And don't get me started on the additional paperwork for state funded clients. The news services and their commentators will wax on, as did recently a Greensboro woman, reporter even! about how providers seem to avoid the more difficult, indigent clients. My dear: that is only because the paperwork will drown the most determined practitioner.

Marsha Hammond, PhD, Licensed Psychologist, buncombe and haywood county

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