“Throw a seed in the seemingly empty earth and watch life spring forth from the emptiness. Think of the creative artist. She knows that for all her searching, concentrating, and disciplined effort, the really exciting breakthroughs will come as inspirations from the emptiness.” – Laurence Boldt, Zen and the Art of Making a Living
Leftover night is one of my favorite dinner nights. Sure, it means I don’t have to cook or even think about preparing dinner until five minutes before it’s time to eat – but a lot of leftovers are better after they’ve had a chance to sit. Chili, for example. Or lasagna.
Or perhaps these pictures from VBS that I’m just now getting a chance to post? Each VBS evening, I took the boys to the gym and then we headed to church to eat the dinner I packed for the boys. After dinnertime, they got to enjoy a little bit of playtime before we all got checked in and VBS-ified.
It’s not the best quality photo, but sweet Bug eating his cheese sandwich. That boy loves him some cheese sandwiches right now!
Playing in what’s called “The Cube”- a giant indoor playground. This was the perfect option for us because the boys were able to run around ’till their hearts content, but also be safely in air conditioning in the heat of Texas July.
The theme for the younger kids’ VBS this year was “hero,” and Bug was all about his little Superman.
Even though Bear couldn’t go down the slides yet or enjoy The Cube to its full potential, he still had a blast crawling, balancing, and watching his big brother go crazy!
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CRUNCH talks between union officials and the States were due to take place after public-sector workers overwhelmingly rejected plans to overhaul how the workforce is run.
Prospect – which represents thousands of the Island’s civil servants – announced that their members had followed Unite the Union and the Jersey Nursing Association in rejecting the States’ pay and workforce modernisation offer.
Both Unite and the JNA suggested that potential industrial action could be the next step for staff if the States failed to improve its proposal.
However, the States Employment Board have said there is no money left in the pot to increase its offer and that the workforce modernisation programme was the ‘best deal possible’. Under the £47 million programme, all States staff would be subject to one set of terms and conditions and a standardised pay scheme. Entitlement to maternity leave, holidays and overtime would be the same throughout the workforce.
In order to achieve a standardised pay structure, several groups of workers, including 35 ambulance service staff and residential child care officers, would receive substantial rises in pensionable pay by 2020. Other sectors would see rises as little as 2.5 per cent.
However, the unions argued that thousands would be left out of pocket by the changes, with the 3,229 civil servants working in the public sector set to receive an average rise of 3.3 per cent by 2020 – below the expected cost-of-living rises.
Prospect said: ‘This is a very strong message to the employer that their package is seriously flawed and is not acceptable to staff. Our hope and expectation is the employer will now work towards a new proposal that will be acceptable to staff while there is still some element of goodwill in existence.
‘The [States] new chief executive, Charlie Parker, has acknowledged in a recent email to staff “we’re about ten years behind other public sector organisations and businesses in how we treat our people. Staff are our biggest asset, and if we’re serious about building a modern, joined-up States of Jersey, we have to start with pay and conditions”.
‘Now the employer has the opportunity to prove these are not empty words and show public sector staff they are respected for their work and effort and are valued accordingly in line with other equivalent market sectors.’ Several unions have claimed that the States ended the negotiations prematurely, rushed the deal and had failed to deal with concerns in several key areas.
A States spokesperson said: ‘The States Employment Board is disappointed in the outcome of the ballot. SEB maintains that the offer is the best deal possible for employees within the Island’s financial constraints, and it provides guaranteed pay rises for three years.
‘The Workforce Modernisation programme will enable the States to streamline and harmonise pay and conditions for 5,000 employees as part of essential public service reform.
‘States of Jersey representatives will be meeting the unions to discuss the results with them and will then consider its position before informing employees and the wider public of its next steps.’
After LaComtesse pointed out that the two sets of identical twin boys names are Ace, Blaine, Cash, and Dylan, insomniac1729 saw an alphabetical problem with it:
JAMA Viewpoint Characterizes Current Model for Treating Mentally Ill as “Ethically Unacceptable and Financially Costly”
PHILADELPHIA — As the United States population has doubled since 1955, the number of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States has been cut by nearly 95 percent to just 45,000, a wholly inadequate equation when considering that there are currently 10 million U.S. residents with serious mental illness. A new viewpoint in JAMA,written by Dominic Sisti, PhD, Andrea Segal, MS, and Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, of the department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy in the Perelman School of Medicine at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, looks at the evolution away from inpatient psychiatric beds, evaluates the current system for housing and treating the mentally ill, and then suggests a modern approach to institutionalized mental health care as a solution.
“For the past 60 years or more, social, political and economic forces coalesced to move severely mentally ill patients out of psychiatric hospitals,” write the authors. They say the civil rights movement propelled deinstitutionalization, reports of hospital abuse offended public consciousness, and new drugs gave patients independence. In addition, economics and federal policies accelerated the transformation because outpatient therapy and drug treatment were less expensive than inpatient care, and the federal legislation like the Community Mental Health Centers Act and Medicaid led to states closing or limiting the size of so-called institutions for mental diseases.
However, the authors write, “deinstitutionalization has really been transinstitutionalization.” Some patients with chronic psychiatric diseases were moved to nursing homes or hospitals. Others became homeless, utilizing hospital emergency departments for both care and housing. But “most disturbingly, U.S. jails and prisons have become the nation’s largest mental health care facilities. Half of all inmates have a mental illness or substance abuse disorder; 15 percent of state inmates are diagnosed with a psychotic disorder.” According to the authors, “this results in a vicious cycle whereby mentally ill patients move between crisis hospitalization, homelessness and incarceration.”
Instead, the authors suggest that a better option for the severely and chronically mentally ill, and the most “financially sensible and morally appropriate way forward includes a return to psychiatric asylums that are safe, modern and humane.” They argue that the term ‘aslyum’ should be understood in its original sense — a place of safety, sanctuary and healing.
“Asylums are a necessary, but not sufficient component of a reformed spectrum of psychiatric services,” write the authors. Reforms need to expand the role of these institutions to address a full range of integrated psychiatric treatment services — from providing care to patients who cannot live alone or are a danger to themselves and others, to providing care to patients with milder forms of mental illness who can thrive with high-quality outpatient care. These fully-integrated, patient-centered facilities do exist in the U.S. today, but more are needed to provide 21st century care to patients with chronic, serious mental illness.
January 23, 2015 Posted by Janice Flahiff | Public Health	| Alzheimer's disease, asylums, deinstitutionalization, Ezekiel Emanuel, health policy, mental health care, mentally ill, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Psychiatric hospital | Leave a comment