Hope Haven in Whitehaven is one of six trial open-access, 24/7 schemes in England offering preventive care The night Tamara first walked through the doors of Hope Haven, a new community mental health hub in the heart of Whitehaven, she was afraid. “Terrified, actually,” she says. “Like, my life was falling apart. I didn’t know how to stop it from hurting.” The 22-year-old, who works in children’s transport, had been in and out of therapy and counselling since she was 14, after being abused by an acquaintance as a child. After a lengthy legal process her abuser was sentenced, but the “mental challenge” of dealing with what had happened to her was not over. Continue reading...
‘This is direct’: positive early feedback from pilot community mental health hub in Cumbria
Source: The Guardian
Original reporting
The Guardian: read the full reportRelated stories
BBC Politics
Mahmood refuses to detail cost of revised settlement plans
The home secretary says the full cost of dropping plans to extend the wait for settlement will be laid out in future.
The Guardian
Henry Nowak ‘would have hated’ riots after his murder, says family
Parents of teenager stabbed in Southampton last year hit out at political ‘game’ played with son’s murder Henry Nowak’s family said he “would have hated” the riots that followed his death as they accused some politicians of playing a “game” with their son’s murder. Nowak, who was fatally stabbed by Vickrum Digwa last year, was handcuffed by police as he lay dying when his attacker falsely accused him of racial abuse. Continue reading...
The Guardian
From the US midterms to the hard right in Britain, empathy has become a dirty word in politics | John Harris
Around the world, virtues such as compassion and kindness are gathering dust, like old hymn books in a long-deserted church Towards the end of the summer, the Tory-Reform defector Robert Jenrick authored an op-ed piece for the Daily Telegraph about the seemingly impossible economics of rising benefits bills because of mental ill-health. In his capacity as Reform’s Treasury spokesman, his task was to big up its plans to cut 25% of so-called welfare spending by 2030, and thereby tackle what he called the state’s “suicidal empathy”. Straight away, I wondered where this most opportunistic politician had borrowed that phrase from, and instantly found out: a book with the same title , published this year by the Canadian academic Gad Saad, whom the dust jacket describes as having particular expertise in “the use of evolutionary psychology in marketing and consumer behaviour”. It comes with an e
The Guardian
Law behind Bonfire Night among records sent from parliament to National Archives
Collection gems include 1605 Thanksgiving Act passed after Guy Fawkes’s failure and the longest act in the archives As Bonfire Night approaches and firework displays light up the UK, in a file on a shelf in the labyrinthine National Archives can be found a flat vellum page, inscribed in exquisite calligraphy, and the origin of this week’s explosive celebrations. The 1605 Thanksgiving Act was passed by James I after Guy Fawkes’s failure to assassinate the king, the Lords and the Commons, at the opening of parliament that year. Continue reading...
The Guardian
UK MPs could undergo criminal record checks to stop violence against women
Exclusive: Members may be vetted before getting security passes for parliament, and receive anti-harassment training MPs and others working in parliament could be required to take a criminal record check before being given a security pass, and receive anti-harassment training under a pioneering scheme to root out violence against women. The UK parliament will on Tuesday become the first legislature in the world to receive what is known as White Ribbon accreditation, a commitment to culture change which originated in Canada. Continue reading...
The Guardian
Widening inequality, stagnant pay – Britain urgently needs Labour’s hard-won workers’ rights | Polly Toynbee
The British Social Attitudes survey reveals record levels of dissatisfaction. But still Kemi Badenoch and the business lobby want to take us backwards Britain is unhappier at work than since records began. The British Social Attitudes survey , the nation’s long-running annual pulse-taker, finds growing job dissatisfaction in its report, published today. People complain of a lack of flexibility in working hours, a lack of career advancement – and, of course, a lack of pay rises. Who is surprised? Pay stagnation over the last decade is unprecedented since Napoleonic times, the economist Paul Johnson told me, but then corrected himself: “You might as well say ever.” Worse, over the last year pay inequality has jumped up for the first time in a decade, says the Resolution Foundation’s Mike Brewer. Pay for the top 10% rose by 7.3% but only by 1.1% for the bottom 10%. Why? The national living