The PLG for C&P has been thinking about names that describe or label a practise, and I've been wondering about names that designate a person. I have been quite alarmed by the HPC habit of naming people as potentially unfit for practise before their case is heard. In effect this means that someone has their name exposed in some way for more than a year, and this is obviously a harm. I have wondered whether the HPC should apologise when the FTP panel decides there is no case to answer. When writing about these cases I have deliberately not used the registrant's name. The more cases I went to, tho, the more I began to wonder about the anonymity of the other people engaged in the process. To begin with it never occurred to me to include these people's names. But the more I observed, the more I thought about the meaning of a person's name and how that related to the professional nature of their work.
Being a professional, if you take it etymologically, can mean standing by what you say in public. There are other things to say here, but for now this is what I want to think about. The Fitness to Practise hearings are public spectacles. Board meetings are held in public. The PLG is held in public. The Fitness to Practise hearings are written down by a court stenographer who types up the notes and they become a testament to the process. People's names are used in these documents, and the HPC will send them to you if you request them. They are in the public domain. The people are named, and take responsibility for what they say. They are professionals. The lay members are professional in this respect too. Everyone is willing to act in their own name. No-one is 'just following orders'.
The professional liaison group is populated by people who are willing to speak, but some of these are speaking in their own name, others are speaking on behalf of organisations or associations of others. Should they be named in the notes? How should they be named in the notes? How should their contributions be attributed, and what is the responsibility of a blogger in this respect?
Well, I take responsibility for what I write, and I remind you that you can comment on it - this is the nature of a blog. You can also email me easily enough, and I can change what is written if necessary. The new technologies that have sprung up over the last few years give us new pause for thought. Join me in figuring out how to make this work in the spirit of long term public good. You are welcome.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
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2 comments:
Hello Janet
I've been following very closely your blog and eIpnosis' reports on what is happening about the regulation of psychopractice by the HPC, whom I know from personal experience as being unfit for purpose. I am a mother whose son was multiply abused by an HPC-registered music therapist. This was in addition to her quite irrational determination to
prove that - as a woman with musculo-skeletal conditions - I MUST be unintelligent, uneducated, unreflective, irresponsible etc. (for further details of our experience, see www.bringbackourjoy.com). What prompted me to comment on your post is your mention of "apologies" to a registrant whose FTP hearing has returned a "no case to answer" decision. My child and I were left with severe trauma of a sexual nature by this HPC-registered music therapist, as well as a lifetime's worth of additional and unnecessary psychological, social and educational difficulties. When I complained, the HPC - extraordinarily - found a "no case to answer", and this registrant was somehow able to shirk her responsibilities to members of the public, and accountability to her regulator. Despite her practices having been challenged by senior child psychology consultants who knew us and admired my impeccable (under the circumstances) parenting style and my parenting record, to this day this music therapist has managed to escape accountability for destroying the lives of two of the public's most vulnerable members. Intuitively, and confirmed by specialist PTSD literature, apologies (ideally genuine) can go a long way towards
allowing a traumatised individual to come to terms with their trauma and start to believe that the world and its people are not a threatening, malevolent, sadistic, unpredictable entity, as was my experience following our dealings with the HPC-registered music therapist. The problem is that the HPC's fitness to practice procedures do not allow for these
psychologically healthy (and, I would have thought, ESSENTIAL)explanations and apologies to play their rightful part in disputes. Whilst my heart goes out (and has been going out throughout my close reading of your blog) to the registrants whose cases you have reported on, and who come across to me as decent people, who perhaps lacked the academic and professional network support that was available to our abuser, and whilst I understand from eIpnosis that there have been hardly any complaints from members of the public, I write to remind everybody that in fact there have been members of the public (a child and his mother) who have been seriously harmed by HPC-registered music therapist in a case where the HPC found a "no case to answer". I believe that my recovery would have been made possible by a genuine apology. I have sought it in every avenue currently open (or closed, as seems to be what is on offer by the HPC) to me, and I am still waiting for this all-important apology.
Hello Paola, thanks for your comment and for keeping up with the blog since your comment on 20 November. It is very useful to have your experience as an example of the real difficulties that continue to go un-dealt with because of the peculiar nature of this set up. I shall keep thinking about this as I write. Thanks again. Janet
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