A:
Accessing the Community: Whereas you and I go out, learning disabled people access the community. It means the same thing. This activity usually involves window shopping in the precinct but may occasionally involve a Panda Cola from the newsagents.
Assessment & Treatment Units: A warehouse where learning disabled people are incarcerated, often for many years, to stop them spoiling the appearance of the community.
Apple Catchers: Very popular activity amongst NHS movers and shakers. Usually undertaken after shakers have shaken the apple cart on which the apples reside.
B:
Berryman: Modern slang. “To do a Berryman” means to do your Father’s dirty work for him.
Best Interests: What a group of professionals decide is the best way of living your life. Often involves removal from family home and incarceration in assessment and treatment unit (see A)
Boat Rocker: Currently fashionable with Radical Change Agents (See “R”). Boat can only be rocked from the inside. Woe betide anyone who tries to rock the boat from the outside.
Bubb Breakfasts: Where the great & good gather under a noble Sir for bangers and streaky and change the world.
C:
Candour: Obviously different meaning from common usage. Something the Minister for health calls for, every seven months or so.
Care Navigator: A newish replacement for a professional that assesses you. Not sure what they’re navigating but they don’t wear goggles or bomber jackets.
Care Quality Commission: Seen within the trade as a bunch of busybodies. Probably akin to the X Factor Panel (but for Care Homes & Hospitals)
Carer: Very little known of this species but said to be fond of cardigans and moaning about their lot.
Carers UK: The collective noun for the Carer (see above). A tribe who encourage people to knit or hold coffee mornings so their members can buy more cardigans.
Category Manager: Inspired by USA Hardware stores. This rung of the hierarchal social care ladder enables you to turn human beings into categories (see loofahs & grouting).
Challenging Behaviour: Believed by some to be people in distress trying to be understood. In professional circles seen as justification for anti psychotic medication regime & incarceration in Assessment & Treatment Unit (see above).
Challenging Behaviour Foundation: An evangelical group who gain a lot of attention by calling for things. Known to work best in pairs.
Change Champions: Modern day cheerleaders who don’t necessarily wear blazers or carry pom poms.
#Change is Changing: A 21st Century clan who like to make up three letter phrases with the same noun and verb (see also Chiropodists are Chiropodising).
Choice; An opportunity to pick between one thing or nothing.
Circles of Support: A modern trend for getting your next door neighbour to provide your care, bringing immediate efficiency savings.
Commissioners: An anonymous group of people, who control the purse strings and have a penchant for sending people to their doom.
Concordat: The collective noun for ten or more concerned, strutting peacocks.
Continuing Care Assessments: A sporting term. An arm wrestling contest between social care and health professionals over who funds a care package.
D:
Day Centre: A 1970s building of no historic significance, where people congregated before they started accessing the community (see A).
Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards: An often played trump card when you want a person to know where the power lies.
Direct Payments: A sum of money to purchase care (hahahaha) which will be micro managed by a professional as if their life depended on it.
E:
Eligible Needs: What’s wrong with you.
Empowerment: An illusory gift from professional to a not quite human.
Exnovation: Something you do before you innovate. Very fashionable in July 2015 but had shot it’s bolt by August 2015.
Expert By Experience: A term bestowed on a Carer (see above) to stop them whinging and for them to think they are involved in some fashion.
F:
Fairer Access to Care Services (FACS): A guilt inducing iniative to deflect attention away from something very unfair taking place.
Fairer Charging Policy: Inspired by the FACS (see entry immediately above). Another layer of guilt whilst bleeding someone dry.
Families: Editors Note: This may be a made up word. Despite our extensive research into 1000s of social care records, we can find no mention of this term.
#Fuckingpest: A term of endearment, used amongst the sons of Board members to family members who are a little miffed.
G:
Gardening Leave: A time to reflect, offered to boat rockers who rock a little bit too hard.
H:
HSJ Awards: An annual shindig where CEOs who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery gather to celebrate their greatness.
Hub: A Post Office conversion property where people assemble before going window shopping or buying a Panda Cola.
Human Rights Act: A little known and even lesser used piece of law that doesn’t really apply to the people this dictionary covers because they’re not really human.
I:
Inclusion: Having a Panda Cola with someone who is human.
Independence: Being in your pyjamas by 5pm and being on your own with an alert button between 7pm and 9am.
Independent Mental Capacity Advocate: An endangered species, usually employed to give someone a voice. Now rarer than Kajagoogoo hit records.
Indicative Budget: A sum of money that empowers the person to purchase their care from Poundland.
Innovation: The mantra of all NHS Change Agents. It means to do something that has already been done before but to pretend that it hasn’t.
Integration: A reminder that you will always be on the outside & meaningful life can only be bestowed on you by an insider.
J:
Joint Commissioning: A ruck between LAs & the NHS over who pays for the vol-au-vents at the Supported Living Christmas Party.
Journey: Cribbed from Reality TV & used by floundering CEOs as an excuse for unexplained & uninvestigated deaths (“We’re not there yet. We’re on a journey”).
K:
Katrina Pearcey: To lose one’s soul through rampant narcissism. Soon to be a DSM category.
L:
Leader Love: No idea to be honest but probably the sort of thing that a Katrina Pearcey would aspire to.
Least Restrictive Option: A choice between prison and an assessment and treatment unit (see “A”)
Lessons Learned: An involuntary Tic, particularly prelevant at times of catastrophic failures. Shuts up inquisitive journalists remarkably quickly.
Lilley: A modern euphemism (“To do a Lilley”) meaning to throw aspersions at reports into uninvestigated deaths & then run a mile.
M:
Measurable Outcomes: Having everything you do logged and judged.
Mencap: A collective who give voices to people without voices and are always in the papers, calling out for things.
Mental Capacity Act: An 11 year old piece of legislation that is widely ignored by professionals as it is still “being bed in”.
Modern Way (The): Will probably be the old fashioned way by the time you read this.
Multi Disciplinary Meetings: A get together of anybody who is anybody. Except you of course.
N:
Needs: A catalogue of things that mark you out as not quite human. Nobody else on the planet has these things.
O:
Occupational Therapy: Three years of intensive, intrusive assessments to get a bed pan.
One Page Profile: Reducing your whole life to one side of a piece of A4 paper. Popular amongst a certain group of happy clappers.
Outcomes: Something we can use to withdraw your entire support package. Fail to meet a nebulous outcome and, whoosh, watch that support disappear.
Outsourcing: Getting rid of all those expensive things. A win win because you can get rid of accountability as well.
P:
Panel: Modelled on the Masonic Lodge, this is a mythical gathering of people with extraordinary powers who wear hoods and masks.
Parental Grooming: A novel & well researched theory that a solitary parent can manipulate a whole team of multi disciplinary professionals into his/her way of thinking.
Passionate: An emotion felt and shouted from the rooftops by Radical Change Agents (See R) about any word in this dictionary.
Pathways: Not sure. But modelled on Hampton Court Maze.
Patient Passport: Similar to the One Page Profile but something that lets the medical profession know that you’re not quite human.
Personalisation: Putting you at the periphery of your life.
Person Centred Plan: A chance to exercise our power by saying “No” to everything you want to do with your life.
Personal Budget: How to become a director of your own company overnight when all you wanted was some support to go swimming.
Placement: A place where not quite humans are caged. Not to be confused with a home.
Pooled Budget: Spending your money on things that another resident at your placement wants to do but that you have no interest in.
Positive Behaviour Support: An opportunity for a whole army of professionals from Kent to tell you that you are being inappropriate.
Prone Restraint: A popular Positive Behaviour Support strategy that involves being pinned face down on the floor at a time when you are most distressed.
Provider: Someone who sends a person to your placement for £4.65 per hour and enjoys great holidays in Barbados.
Putting People First: That doesn’t mean you. I said “People” – you’re not “People”.
Q:
Q: An NHS scheme that was all the rage in August 2015 but had died a death by September 2015.
R:
Radical Change Agent: A self appointed title by people whose most radical thing they’ve ever done is to eat humus.
Re-ablement Not sure. It implies that you had ablement, lost it, and are being given it back again.
Resource Allocation System: A clunky machine full of algorithms that reduces your non human status to a monetary value.
Risk Assessment: A cunning tool used to disguise the failure to spend money on adequate support. (I.E. “You can’t go bowling. You might drop the ball on your toe”).
Risk Management: (See Risk Assessment above). A means by which we can stop you doing practically anything.
S:
Safeguarding: Looking after the organisation’s reputation.
Self Funder: A successful West End Farce, subtitled “Whoops. There Goes My Inheritance”.
Service User: Someone who can’t use non existant services.
Signposting: A social care sat-nav to nowhere.
Spit Hood: Another favourite of the Positive Behaviour Crowd. It covers your head completely when you are at your most distressed.
Stakeholder: Anyone who can make a bit of money out of you.
Starprism: A title given to those who have been showing some leader love and doing some top notch brown nosing.
T:
Therapeutic Intervention: A wide range of tools that includes incarceration in an assessment and treatment unit (see A), an anti psychotic drug habit, prone restraint (See P) or use of a Spit Hood (See S).
Toxic: A term of endearment bestowed usually by psychiatrists on grieving family members.
Transforming Care: A Civil Servant, locked in an office and desperately going through a therasorus to find new names for discredited ideas.
Transition: That moment when your world is turned upside down.
Transparency: Another thing that the Minister for Health calls for every seven months. When achieved, it produces more mist than a Meat Loaf video.
U:
Ulysses: A thoroughly modern computer system where you can lose all sorts of deaths you’ve classified as “natural causes”.
Underpants: A garment favoured by NHS types for writing inspirational quotes on.
V:
Val Murphy (Dr): A modern euphemism (“Doing a Val Murphy”) to describe getting the hell out of the heat and fleeing to Ireland.
Vanguard: Not sure. Possible one up the ladder from a Change Champion (See C). Often located in Concordats.
Vindictive Cow: A good example of the type of feedback you might receive from a professional when you encounter family engagement.
Viral Quality: An award winning project that looks like it was dreamt up in primary school but costs £974k to produce.
W:
Well Being: I’m alright Jack.
Whistle Blower: A mechanism to get yourself kicked out of the door faster than you can say Jack Robinson.
Woman on All Fours: Someone who can seriously fuck up your Viral Quality presentation by desperately needing a pee at the wrong moment.
Love, Belief and Balls 