Launch of National Knife Crime Centre

INDIVIDUAL

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    INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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GROUP

Is this a knife I see before me? Or is it something else?   Am I being duped and taken for a fool? But, nobody will bother me now! I'm ready...!   I don't think this is right.   Either way, I'm asking for trouble?   Will anybody else listen?	Should I risk trying to buy a knife? How? Shop, or online? Do I look 18? I've seen the signs by the tills. Can I pass as an 18 year old? Should I pick it up and take it? Or, do I leave it exactly where it is hidden?
Do I really need a knife,  because he/she/they have one? Can I ask a friend? My cousin? No they'd grass on me. Could I pay that 5th year? Ben Kinsella Trust	NATIONAL CENTRE FOR KNIFE CRIME   Ronan's Law   ITV News [UK] - 'Bereaved families welcome launch  of national knife crime centre'

My sources: BBC Radio 4 'Today' 2nd April 2026.

Previously: 'crime' : 'knives' : 'law'

NHS Contaminated Blood Scandal UK

UK  - World

Why we need always to acknowledge 

the political in health and health in politics

Individual

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      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

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Group

"In an interim report, the inquiry chair, Sir Brian Langstaff, said 'wrongs were done at individual, collective and systemic levels'."	(UP) contaminated       blood                              blood            donors     'dying for  COVER
	UP   scandal            paid          justice'     (screening?)

My source: Various - over several decades.

Photograph: Daily Express

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1795449/rishi-sunak-infected-blood-inquiry-heckled-booed

... Feathers ... Light ... Corners

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INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES             
HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC   
SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL
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I love you mum You named me 'Peter' ... Grief, is indeed -	Yesterday, I saw a kestrel and a sparrow hawk .                          . - a thing with feathers
... but it was always you, you are still - the rock - my rock - the reason I'm a nurse ... family community humanity	... and why I will continue to explore and follow ...

"Using Hodges’ model to prove light can travel around all the methods corners" ...

I cannot see you but I know you are there Crux.

"A Peculiar Shade of Blue" c/o Rowan Jacqueline

 

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 INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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GROUP

personal grief ..	the facts of life, death and place ..

 

Rowan Jacqueline: https://www.spiderflower.org/

My source: https://twitter.com/artdotearth

"The Ball and the Box"

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group

coming to terms with loss - bereavement pain awareness insight understanding communication
After what has been a surprisingly okayish Christmas, I had a moment today in SuperStore. Saw a lady who reminded me of my 92yo grandma, who even in the early stages of dementia, completely understood that my mom died. I thought I’d share the Ball in the Box analogy my Dr told me pic.twitter.com/YfFT26ffU8 — Lauren Herschel (@LaurenHerschel) December 29, 2017

See also:

Colin Murray Parkes, Brenda Bridgeman, Annie Flower, Margaret Foster, Peter Speck & Colin Murray Parkes (1995) REVIEWS, Bereavement Care, 14:2, 22-23,  

DOI: 10.1080/02682629508657361

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02682629508657361?journalCode=rber20

Goodbye to David McKendrick an 'old' friend and personal reflections

The past three years have been quite challenging both personally and professionally.

Professionally as an IT secondment came to an end in 2007 and brought with it positive and negative changes. The positive of moving back to clinical practice, the negative the vagaries of clinical banding and the Knowledge and Skills Framework which many health sector organisations are still attempting to fully implement. On a personal level, I am now also divorced. Working on the community for so many years - just over the border of my clinical patch - was a gift of convenience in terms of the children's schooling and playing taxi driver.

While there was a very objective interview panel I feel I owe having my current job to my friend David McKendrick. This fact now scares me witless that this was back in 1985 when my eldest son was born. I was so wrapped up in this life-changing event that the secretary phoned to ask if I did want the job. The organisation I still work for has changed its title and status umpteenth times it seems and I have had several roles over the years, including research and service development projects. The truth is though that when it comes to work, this journey began at Chorley with David and that is essentially where I am still at.

I was really shocked then when Sue, David's wife phoned with the news that David had died earlier this month. I'd kept in touch with David through the years. Due to my new domestic circumstances I moved back to Ashton-in-Makerfield - living not far from David and Sue - in July last year. David was so helpful, patient and supportive as I have progressed through the divorce.

We both worked at Winwick Hospital, Warrington, UK and I am pleased I went along this summer to a reunion and saw David in his element with friends, Sue and a pint. I also managed to take quite a few photos which will now be extra memorable for so many of us. Although I didn't work with David at Winwick, as already suggested he was my boss on the community mental health team at Chorley, Lancashire from October 1985 through to his early retirement due to illness.

We shared a love of IT and coding as enthusiasts. In the early 80s David called to my parents home when I'd bought a BBC micro, an upgrade from a Sinclair ZX81. David contributed so much to health IT, through his work with Open Software Library, computer aided learning and his pioneering bulletin board. David was also a co-organiser of a computer based training conference at Keele University 1987-88. Open Software Library distributed several computer programs I wrote on the BBC micro. One thing that makes me smile is the way in the late 80s early 90s I got my underpants into a bit of a twist over the copyright. Now reflecting back, David was a real Gent in how he handled that, my concerns to which he listened, accepted and explained. There was a lesson there also in terms of Hodges' model and Brian Hodges' worries over the same. Where might the model be now, we often pondered, if it had been driven hard from the outset!

When David retired it wasn't the same. Of course you know the job changes constantly, but there was a real loss of impetus: from warp to impulse drive. David was much liked and respected as a boss and colleague. If you were professional in your approach put the clients, carers and families first then he left you to get on with the job. That said his recognition for accountability and governance was communicated and shared by the team. He used an Amstrad micro to produce statistics on the number of home visits, injections and many other details. David was ahead of the informatics game in recognising the value of information for service planning, development and improvement. When David was off a while I kept this effort going for a short while until duties dragged me elsewhere. David's early IT work was published in the Community Psychiatric Nursing Association journal, an association (now the MHNA) which he helped established initially.

I can see us all walking from the team office at Eaves Lane hospital (long gone now), up through the tunnel to the main hospital for the regular team meeting. That was a golden age of sorts, when all the community nurses came together. David was always keen on that. You were a member of a team and everyone was valued and had a role to play.

David recognised my interest (and yes skill -- thanks David!) in computing and sent me on a health care computing conference held in Manchester 1986. I wrote a report and have attended and presented at the HC-XXXX series on several occasions since. We often shared books, papers and plans around technology developments and when to build or buy that next PC.

I really, really can't believe David has gone. He was (very) widely read and we loved knocking ideas around always wondering about what sort of clinical / nursing application might have a future. I only learned since his passing of his excellence as a student nurse. When he qualified as a Registered Mental Nurse (RMN) he was awarded the Gold Medal. He was always keen to read my writing efforts and discuss the same. I remain really impressed with his website on Winwick Hospital - Winwick Remembered. While there is much in the old institutions to say good riddance to and never again this IS social history and as BBC R4's In the Mind featured there is much to record and document. In 2006 David got in touch with a query regarding relatives of patients from Winwick trying to trace details of their family members. I posted his inquiry on the psychiatric nursing list (since closed).

Over the past year or so, we met a few times at Tom & Gerry's the local pub with David riding there on his bike: magic!! Sitting at that usual table (near the plug) sad, but lots of smiles too.

I arrived late to politics and I much admire his involvement in community work, the Three Sisters Recreation area project in Ashton. While I enthused over 'community informatics' David was practicing it, engaging with others. I'm sure I don't appreciate the extent of his efforts, the youth club - helping make IT available to youngsters, environmental projects, and the community forum.

I am truly thankful for having met David, for his friendship, support and guidance over the past 18 months and the years before. If I've three regrets:

1. I never did take my guitar around; as I realise now how good David was - McKendrick's Moonshiners no less - I clearly missed a lick there!
2. Also never did find and show David the old photos from Winwick hospital - the show we put on as students.
3. Being able to explore Ashton Heath, the types of heather and the bees there.

Regular readers here know of the hyperbole over the new website, well now if I ever do create the new website - maybe we'll know why...

David - I'll miss you pal and miss you already!
As the new decade begins bless you, Sue and your family and friends...

Peter

===================================
From: Richard Lakeman, richard.lakeman at dcu.ie
To: Peter Jones h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk
Sent: Mon, 14 December, 2009 14:40:27
RE: [PSYCHIATRIC-NURSING] David McKendrick - CPN - CPN Manager, Winwick & Chorley, UK

I’m sorry to hear about David, Peter. Thanks for letting us know. I never met David, but he marketed some software I wrote for some years and He was a pleasure to deal with.

Regards
Richard

Bee in my bonnet and a place to call home

For some years (over a decade) I've had a bee in my bonnet about the impact of relative-ly sudden house moves that older adults often make following sudden bereavement.

This prompted a first and no longer available website 'Beware Reflex Moves'.

This rather silent issue still stands and is arguably growing in volume.

There are surely a series of studies to be made here. Like most forms of life, the patient-nurse encounters of all those years ago have evolved: the ability of Jo(e) Public and their families to independently visit, select and move their relative into residential care is a new factor.

Self-funding frees up valuable resources as people can essentially circumvent the formal assessment processes of social services (and health), negotiating directly with the home of their choice for a place. This place may be many, many miles away from what was home. Amid increasing demand this arrangement works well much of the time. When it fails though, the impact is a personal and social catastrophe that can also reverberate across two health and social care economies. The person's original social services and their new location - that of their family.

Here the 'diagnosis' may not just be bereavement reaction / depression, but dementia too.

So, the advice remains beware of reflex moves.

Wish those bees had stayed in that bonnet - they might be safe now.....

Image source with thanks: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lelonopo/2378726643/

Rag dolls and empty bottles

Grief is a frightening character.

A thief who can steal you away and get away with it....

Why?

Because grief cannot be denied. We must leave that small window ajar, the spare key under the mat, best wear your collar loose for when you're grabbed by the scruff of the neck...

Sometimes he finds you 'in' when you wish he hadn't.

Like when you're driving on the motorway and the windscreen wipers don't work somehow. He strikes and turns the sensible into a non-sensible rag doll.

Spring last year I found myself with a choice - head North for home from the Midlands or head back in time. The time traveller with a penchant for the past won out.

I headed West past Telford then Shrewsbury into and across mid-Wales. The weather was strange. There was lightening, but no thunder as I crossed the border and headed into Wales.

Rain then sunshine. Through Welshpool, stopping in Aberdovey through Tywyn, I worked my way around the coast then inland towards Cadre Idris and Llanegryn.

Another Home.

It's no wonder time has mythic status. In the village I imagined, the house standing there, the worn step. The many passing feet, tiny hands growing day by day.

There was the former hotel, the school and old chapel. I could hear voices from yesteryear. And remembered my grandfather's steel stomach from working in the slate quarry. True grit. True work.

Heading NE I came to Bird's Rock.

I made my way to the top.

Walking and running alone.












The valley there stretched out before me was like so many in Wales, green, beautiful and timeless.



I could trace out my journey, along the Dysynni valley and see the bay in the far distance, sunlit and misty.

I stood reflected, remembered and rejoiced.

Savouring some deep breathes and that space, I noticed the strong breeze cutting across the Rock and my face. If my mouth was open I found I had become an open yet empty bottle. A special bottle - one of those human ones - full of raw emotion thinking about a lost other.

I've no idea where it came from but I'm still there

My lips moved but I did not speak.

The wind spoke my words for me.

"It's ok son I'm right here and always will be...."

Beware Reflex Moves and the Triple Whammy

In the past working as a community mental health nurse, I had several referrals in which a house move proved a key contributing factor to mental health problems. I'm surprised that moving residence is not ranked higher in terms of most stressful life events. For older people though an often initial trigger to ensuing chaos is bereavement and the degree of stress this causes is obvious and well documented. It was Simmel the sociologist who highlighted the vulnerability of the dyad - the couple:

"for its life, the dyad depends on both its members; but for its death, the dyad depends upon only one"

Whether marital partners or not, we often take this relationship for granted. Key really is the word of choice here, because listening to the 'patient' tell their story you really wonder what prompts such a vulnerable person to put their keys on the market and re-locate? Often still in grief and depressed they are certainly not able to think clearly and make effective decisions.

If you work in health and social care this scenario will not be news to you. Whatever your employment status though you may (sadly) have personal experience when a parent has died leaving your mother or father alone. For many decades now families are tending to live further and further apart, fifty miles or more - transcontinental even.

Following bereavement the cry goes up “come and live near us, we’ll look after you!” Usually for reasons of longevity that call is to 'mum'. Statutory services don’t hear about the instances when this move is the best thing since sliced-bread, but they certainly do when it goes wrong. We can describe it in many ways, but the importance of place, space, geography, community, in short - home has repeatedly been stressed.

Helping pick up the pieces on many occasions three features stood out:

1. The changing demographic – ageing population
2. The highly personal, subjective, narrative, and qualitative content that arose in session
3. The special circumstances of the older person and their capacity to negotiate this critical conjunction

Plus: my need in 1997 to learn HTML.

Given population trends surely this problem will become more common? What do we know about this dislocation? How frequent does it happen, what are the time-scales, personal and family outcomes, what are the socioeconomic consequences?

Surely it is nothing other than pure sentimentality to say:

"I miss the squeaky garden gate, the GP (family doctor) I knew for twenty years, the people who stopped and chatted on the front, even that nuisance-dog-next-door-but-one?"

Is there a double whammy effect? 1. People previously very well medically for their age suffer acute anxiety and depression. Suddenly pathological age = chronological age; and the negative impacts this can bring. 2. While people who may have had stable longer-term chronic conditions develop additional emotional problems, possibly resulting in hospital admission?

Could there be a triple whammy? [Surely not. Enough already!]

Well, that re-location also means of course that it is a new health and social care team who must help this person and their family make sense of the situation and find their feet again. This 3rd whammy will have its own subtleties. The former doctor-patient relationship may not previously have been tested to this extent. The situation can also impact the health of other relatives. The case for electronic health records also comes to the fore.

All this resulted in the [former] website ‘Beware Reflex Moves'. The title announced itself and captures the situation precisely. Creating the site helped me learn HTML and check out the use of frames. It is not maintained, although I really would like to follow this up!

Being able to air this pet research question at the Ideas Factory in October, other people were certainly interested. Their research questions concerned the quality of care and support that follows 'sudden' versus 'anticipated' deaths in palliative, primary care and related care environments.

I must do a Hodges' matrix. One aspect to highlight would be INTERPERSONAL: counselling, psychotherapy POLITICAL: access to counselling services for >65s. Can anyone help out? Any tutors with a class of students who could take the existing website content and do an update - re-design?

At this time of year loved ones and the rest of humanity are always in our thoughts. Take care and beware those reflex moves ....