Serenity Integrated Mentoring and Mental Health

Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM) is an innovative mental health workforce transformation model that brings together the police and community mental health services, in order to better support “high intensity users” of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act (MHA) and public services.

Serenity Integrated Mentoring (SIM)

SIM Programme Content 

The SIM programme consists of: 

• A model of care using specialist police officers within community mental health services to help support service users struggling with complex, behavioural disorders 
• SIM supports the small number of service users in every community struggling with complex mental health disorders who often request emergency services whilst making limited clinical progress 

Can you imagine… the police having a quiet word?
They are surely, going off actual results, the very last people who should engage with mental health issues.
And, yes, this is the same police force that suffered and still suffers many austerity cut-backs in officers and money available.

And here we come to the nitty-gritty:
           

  Reduced cost to the police and NHS/ambulance services due to reduced crisis/999   calls, attendances and mental health bed days. 

Reduced pressure on the police/ambulance/ED services, releasing them to deal with other demands. 

Improved patient experience as service users receive earlier intervention leading to higher recovery rates. 

Service users receive mentoring to help them to avoid reaching crisis point and improve their quality of life. 

Cost-cutting.
How much is one’s mental health worth?

Who does not get an undercurrent of ‘bed-blocking; drain on the services; pull-yourself-together’ mentality from this?

Obviously someone does, because:

Through our engagement we have heard significant concerns that reinforce our view that there is a lack of evidence that the SIM model meets three core principles …

• That no one is ever denied access to life-saving treatment. 
• That people need access to the appropriate personalised and trauma-informed care for their needs, delivered by appropriate health and social care professionals. 
• That all models of care are genuinely co-produced with people with lived experience.

https://www.rethink.org/news-and-stories/news/2021/05/rethink-mental-illness-welcomes-nhse-commissioned-review-of-serenity-integrated-mentoring-sim-by-relevant-mental-health-trusts/

And, more to the point:

StopSIM: Mental Illness Is Not A Crime

SIM is a model of care for mental health services that has been developed by an ex Hampshire police Sgt. Paul Jennings. It is already being used in 23 out of 52 NHS Trusts in England, and there are plans to continue expanding it rapidly. SIM is owned and run by the High Intensity Network (HIN): a private limited company….

The SIM model is designed for people who are very unwell, and who most often come into contact with emergency services. Despite being at very high risk of self-harm and suicide, the SIM model instructs services that usually provide care in an emergency not to treat these people. This includes A&E, ambulance services, mental health services and the police. This also affects people under the SIM model if they want to access a diagnosis or treatment for physical health conditions. For example, they can be denied care for a chest X-ray, even if people with the same physical symptoms would usually be offered one…..

A key part of SIM is the police being a part of community mental health teams. These police officers are called “High Intensity Officers” (HIOs) and they are given NHS contracts. SIM documents state that HIOs receive 3 days of initial classroom training, which is “facilitated and led by Paul Jennings” (who is not a mental health professional), and ‘understanding of mental health provision and services’ is not an essential job requirement. HIOs have full access to service users’ medical records, and are also able to share police records with medical staff……….. 

   We believe that SIM breaches the Human Rights Act 1998. SIM’s policy on withholding potentially life-saving care from patients breaches Article 2, relating to the Right to Life.

We believe that SIM breaches the Equality Act 2010. SIM discriminates against people on the grounds of disability, gender, race, gender reassignment and sexuality.

We believe that SIM breaches UK GDPR regulations. SIM allows ‘sensitive data’ (information like medical records, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, gender reassignment and financial information) to be shared between services without the subject’s consent (the subject is the person who the information is about).

We believe that service users under the SIM model are suffering institutional abuse. Institutional abuse is where the individuals are treated badly, cruelly, or roughly, because of the way an organisation is set up. This can include neglect (when a person isn’t listened to or helped.) and preventing someone from doing what they want to do, as well as lack of respect for a person’s privacy and dignity. We believe the way SIM operates could be classed ans institutional abuse.

We believe that SIM will disproportionately impact people from minoritized and recialised communities. It is likely to act as an additional barrier to asking for help, especially because police are involved in mental health care, given the fear of police brutality and discrimination.

There is no reliable evidence that SIM helps people. SIM’s outcome measures (how they measure success) focus on ‘’service demand’’, meaning how often people use services. There are no outcome measures used to assess the patient’s wellbeing or experience.

There is more to the statement by StopSIM.co.uk.
It can be found here:

https://stopsim.co.uk

Book: Occupied City, by Paul van Ostaijen

Occupied City, by Paul Van Ostaijen is a Belgian Dada masterpiece.

Republished and translated by David Colmer, in 2016, by Smokestack Books, it retains all the typographic experiments of the original.
And these have to be seen to be appreciated.
https://smokestack-books.co.uk/book.php?book=123

Originally published in 1921 as ‘a work of rhythmical typography’, (book jacket) it must have been a typesetter’s nightmare. Ably aided and abetted, though, by Flemish artist Oscar Jespers it works wonderfully.

Ok, but is it just a gem of cultural history?
I find it very relevant to our immediate present.

The artifact – it is more than a book – gives the expression of a city overtaken by foreign troops.
Set in the outbreak and throughout the First World War, and centred on the writer’s home city of Antwerp, it captures the German army sweeping through the region; the occupation; and how the inhabitants struggle with this. It also captures the hollow euphoria of the withdrawal on the Armistice.
The text centres on the inhabitant’s breaking and broken sensibilities, their lives, capturing in fractured typesetting their cultural materials.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_van_Ostaijen

The text is divided into thirteen sections, headings: Dedication, Threatened City, Hollow Harbour, Brothel, Zeppelin, Sous Les Ponts de Paris, City of Grief, Good News, Music Hall, Asta Nielsen, Mobile, Folies Bar, The Withdrawal.

The effect is cumulative; you also have to read cumulatively to savour the layout.
In Threatened City we get a very strong impression of the approaching big guns, the increasing threat, the breaking spirit of the people under occupation, the desolation .

The     ciTy     STands       STill
as if the city’s                                         strings have been cut    

………………………………………………………………
are we or are we performing a macabre play

There is a description of an oil spill, its black lake spreading out further and further, ruining all. Like an aerial view of Flanders, under German uniforms 
And throughout the book we hear the constant beat of 

ein zeit ein zeit ein zeit                                 of marching columns of soldiers

………………………………………………………………………….

conquering houses city country
smashed anthill
people flee
Into backrooms
blind blinds

And then that stomach churning

All citizens are required to  

Later  

You moved amongst the press-ganged unemployed
long trains to Germany full of ragged men and half-grown boys

2
I cannot help but see reflections of present-day Kandahar, Kabul here, undergoing these same or similar experiences. 

This is what most people in England, North America, have not experienced, the forced occupation of one’s city, country, by another.

Then there follows the prohibitions, the demands on resources, the shortages because all basics go to the occupier; the forced work – usually making munitions to flatten your own country further, and to inflict the same on neighbouring cities, countries.
The breaking of the spirit. The desolation.

Paul Van Ostaijen did not prettify the experience, he noted the unburied corpses, the ruined people, buildings, and also how the end of the war did not end the war-experience.

Not just a book: in the original language it added all the phonetics and sonority of the language in local popular songs of the time, snatches of lyrics. Visually it is amazing, textually daring.
So it is an audial, visual, textual, semantic, let’s go with this some more: historical, cultural, political, urban, metropolitan, aesthetic, but also down-to-earth and satirical, nihilistic, modernist, Dadaist. 

It was written in Dutch, plus with Flemish variants, French, German, Latin, even English. It is indeed, multi-vocal.

The publishers have added very welcome notes to the text at the end. We get the references, and the translations. 

Astra Nielsen, for instance, on whom the writer devotes a whole section. She was a Danish film actress of the silent era. And obviously a source of great comfort at the time.

3

Paul Van Ostaijen died horribly early, aged 32, of TB
In that brief time – shall we say ten years – he produced this work, but also collected his other writings, poems, into several collections. Of which, in 1982 was published, The first book of Schmoll: selected poems 1920-1928 (English), Bridges Books, Amsterdam.

There is thankfully a generous selection of translations available on the Poetry International site: 

https://www.poetryinternational.org/pi/poet/6636/Paul-van-Ostaijen/en/tile

The PI page tells us The poet aimed to endow his poems with the lyrical naturalness of children’s songs, counterbalanced by an unfamiliar inner resonance and depth. That was at any rate what poetry was to him: “word play that is anchored in metaphysics.”

I find them hilarious, and for myself find I am in a better place because of the man and his work.
The man?
Wiki tells us: His nickname was Mister 1830, derived from his habit of walking along the streets of Antwerp clothed as a dandy from that year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_van_Ostaijen

Mention must be made of Katy Mawhood, fonts specialist at Oxford University Press.
And without whom this book would lack its great innovations.

I treasure this book.

The Song of Roland

The Song of Roland is reputedly one of, if not the actual, oldest of the medieval French chansons de geste, or songs of deeds.

The Song first made its appearance in this form in the twelfth century, shortly after the First Crusade. This is important because, although it is based on an actual incident in 778AD, the twist in the chanson de geste version is very important.

The actual incident concerned King Charlemagne, and his being approached by Saracen rulers in Spain for help in dealing with a mutual Saracen enemy. He agreed and entered Spain with them, conquered two major cities, and was besieging Saragossa, when he was called away. He left Spain via the Pyrenees pass of Roncevaux. Here his rearguard was attacked by Basques, who slaughtered them to a man, and left with their goods. It was Basque territory.

The version in the geste has the Saracens the enemy throughout, and the attack on the rearguard an agreement between a renegade Frenchman and the Saracens. The composer of the piece, like his audience, knew next to nothing of Islam, and so we come across some absurdities, some crazy assumptions.

It is very important for the story-line to remember that Count Roland of Brittany was the nephew of Charlemagne, and that it was rivalry with his step-father  – as in the old folk tales, and modern life – Ganelon, that caused his death.

The Song of Roland consists of 291 ‘laisses’, that is, stanzas, of varying length. They all follow the same strict metrical pattern, however: this is syllabic verse, and each line is strictly ten syllables in length.

Each line consists of ten syllables, divided roughly down the middle by a pause or rest. The rhythm of the line is formed by strong stresses falling on the fourth and tenth syllables. Within a single laisse, the separate lines are linked by assonance—a partial rhyme in which the accented vowel sounds are the same but the consonants differ, as in “brave” and “vain,” for instance. The vowel sound repeated through one laisse never carries on to the next. Since the poet has divided his song into laisses according to the sense and not any standard length—for instance, a new laisse will begin when one combat or speech ends and the next begins—this use of assonance reinforces the divisions of plot, of action.

The death of Roland occurs in the middle of the piece. The second half is then taken up with Charlemagne’s revenge. The first half shows the treason of Ganelon, the build-up to the central fight scene.

The ending is really quite poignant. We see Charlemagne wearied with fighting, having dealt with Ganelon, sitting down at long last. Only to be met with new calls of his warrior ship: ‘How weary is this life.’ he says.

The first appearance of the chanson was as one of many legends and tales that circulated on pilgrim trails, and in local courts and gatherings.

At just about 4000 lines it required quite a feat of memory. And so the tale is structured in such a way, with parallels, repetitions of motifs, events etc, that once the main structure was grasped the reciter could riff with rather detailed subject matter fully, and with skill.

It is structured so as to be symmetrical through and through. The poem is centered around four great scenes which balance each other perfectly.
At the very beginning we have Ganelon’s (stepfather) crime; at the very end we have his punishment.
Around the center of the tale, Roland’s martyrdom and Charlemagne’s vengeance face and mirror each other, both taking the shape of great battles, presented in a parallel order, at Roncesvals.
Ganelon’s successful treachery and Roland’s early death temporarily set the scales of good and evil askew; the events of the rest of the poem then set them right.

The many repetitions and parallel passages of the poem contribute to the total sense of purpose and symmetry.
For instance, the similarities between how the battle between Roland’s rear guard and Marsilla’s army, and the battle between Charlemagne’s and Baligant’s men, reinforce the poet’s point that one battle is the mirror-image of the other, that Charlemagne’s triumph over Baligant is perfect revenge for the Saracen ambush.

The order in which the two battles are presented is the same; first there is the inventory of the two opposing forces as they assemble themselves, then, when they meet on the field, the threats and boasts and first blows. Each one-on-one combat, besides the most remarkable and important ones such as that between Charlemagne and Baligant, takes up one laisse, and all are described in the same language.
Comparing the various rather gory ways in which the warriors kill each other, one sees immediately that each description is a slight variation on all the others. Ideally, the effect of such repetition is a sense of ceremonious consistency and rhythm.

Rather than running along at a consistent pace, the narrative consists of certain scenes where time is slowed down so much that it almost stands still, suspending the noble and the wicked gestures of the characters mid-air, with bits of quick summary providing the connection from one tableau to the next.

This rhythm is particularly clear and easy to pick out toward the beginning of the poem, in the first fifty or so laisses. After some quick exposition in the first laisse, we get the council of Marsilla presented as if it were a drama. The poet summarizes nothing; he describes the stage of the action, the “terrace of blue marble” (2.12) and then gives us the speeches of Marsilla’s advisors in full.
The story is conveyed in this section by dialogue, not by running commentary. Then, after another quick laisse of summary, telling how Marsilla’s messengers rode out to Charles’s camp, we go back to the same slow, dramatic mode of presentation that was used for Marsilla’s council for the conversation between Marsilla’s envoys and Charlemagne. This alternating, fast-slow-fast-slow rhythm, interspersing quick pieces of narrative between long dramatic scenes at regular intervals, is characteristic.

Within each laisse, each sentence and phrase stands separate, on its own. Similarly, no grammatical connection is drawn between one laisse and the next. The reader must draw the connection between one element to the next on his own, for the author does not make the relation between the separate elements clear, but instead simply sets them side by side, without conjunctions.
This technique is known as parataxis, which means “a placing side by side” in Greek. To see more clearly what this is, one might take a quick look at laisse 177, for instance, a particularly striking example. There is no connective tissue: “Roland is dead, his soul with God in Heaven. / The emperor arrives at Roncesvals” (177.2397-2398). The corollaries of this lack of relation between phrases include a propensity towards long lists and a lack of simile, aside from certain highly stylized and conventionalised comparisons which are repeated often—beards, for instance, are very frequently “white as April flowers.” The elements are strung together like beads, one after another.

Narration

It is thought the The Song of Roland, like other medieval chansons de geste, was passed on orally, sung by wandering performers known as jongleurs at feasts and festivals, before it was ever written down.
The written epic that we now have, based on a manuscript version set down by a medieval scribe, bears the marks of its origin in the performances of the jongleurs in its narration. The voice that tells the story is the voice of the jongleur. He does not take on the character of one who was there, nor does he take on any kind of neutral, third-person-omniscience of observation. He tells the story as a story-teller.

While the events recounted in The Song of Roland are almost all myths and inventions, the jongleurs’ medieval audiences accepted them as historical truth. Because of this, and because the heroic deeds described took place in what was the distant past for even those long-ago listeners (the centuries that separated the audience from the figures they heard about made those figures seem all the more grand and glorious), the jongleur could not take on the point of view of an eye-witness of the events he sings about. If he did, the whole story told would lose credibility in the face of the obvious impossibility of the jongleur having seen himself anything that he was describing. Thus, the effect that the narration aims for and achieves is a vividness without immediacy. The characters and events are brightly painted, to be sure, but there is none of the you-are-there feeling that one usually expects nowadays from a well-told story. Different eras want different effects from their literature.

The narrator does not pretend that he was there; he instead implies that he has his knowledge from chronicles and tales, which he alludes to in order to gain the best effect of credibility for the story he tells: for instance, he says of Olivier, Roland, and Turpin fighting at Roncesvals that “The number that they killed can be determined; / it is written in the documents and notes: / the Chronicle says better than four thousand” (127.1683-1685). It is probable that many of the historical chronicles he speaks of are as much his own inventions as many of the events he recounts, but this does not hinder his allusions to them from creating the desired effect of a past both mythic and historical.

That the telling of The Song of Roland does not aim for surprise or suspense is a result of the way in which it, like other chansons de geste, was passed about orally, told again and again, varied but still recognizable in each new performance. The narrator assumes that his audience is already thoroughly familiar with the story he is telling them; he knows they have already heard it plenty of times, but that they enjoy hearing it again. The interest of the audience is not bound up in the question of what’s going to happen next; the listeners already know that Ganelon will betray Roland but that Charlemagne will avenge him in the end. Familiarity was part of the story’s charm for medieval listeners. And so the element of surprise is absent, and suspense is not cultivated; in the very first laisse, we are told that Marsilla will be clobbered by Charlemagne’s men, and Ganelon is called a traitor before he makes a single treacherous move.

Sundiata, Mali epic

‘SUNDIATA, AN EPIC OF OLD MALI’ by D T Niane. Translation by G D Pickett

1
This Mali epic as we have it now is the summation of a collection of oral legends. The legends are based around King Sundiata Keita, who consolidated and expanded the Mali Empire. His period of governance was 1217 to 1255.

The role of the griot is central to the story. The Preface describes the functions. Furthermore the opening commentary to the tale is entitled Words of the Griot Mamadou Kouyate, and he explains his functions and status. The griot is the King’s counsellor; he keeps the tribal customs, histories, and musical and oral traditions. His role may be similar to what we at the present time understand by the role of what we take to be the traditional Welsh bard. To be granted a griot is to be accorded great status. Sundiata was given Balla Fassekeas as his griot. Balla was later captured by the sorcerer King Soumaoro Kante’, however, before Sundiata came into his power.

On one level it is a straight forward story of a king growing to greatness, overcoming a formidable enemy, and consolidating a mighty empire. The telling of the story, however, reveals many levels and complexities. To give an example of the complexity of storytelling let me show you the finding of Sogolon, Sundiata’s mother: 

                          ‘(…) a soothsayer turned up at the village of Niani and prophesied to King Nare`that the would father a great warrior king. Some time later two hunters and a young woman came across King Nare’ and company as they were out hunting. They approached the king and told him this tale: as they were hunting they came across an old woman weeping, she begged them for food, which they shared with her. For their kindness she informed them that she was the spirit of the Buffalo of Do, no warrior could kill her; and she had already killed seventy-seven warriors. There was only one way to kill her, which she told to the hunters, and gave them the requisite tools. They were to take the body to the local king who would be overjoyed and grant the one who killed the buffalo a choice of a wife amongst the women-folk of his town. But, the old woman said, they must only choose the ugly one with the hunchback; she also was an aspect of the buffalo woman. This woman would give birth to a warrior king. After telling the King this they presented him with the woman, Sogolon Conde. She was the one the old woman said; the king married her.’

As you can see from this we have a story within a story within a story: three levels of story. Add onto this the symbolic level: the Lion king who marries the Buffalo woman. This also has its own chiasmus, a sequence based on the all-important binding of Sogolon to King Nare’.

2

Sundiata grew up unable to walk; the King desperate for a healthy heir married another wife. This set up all sorts of jealousy and supremacy problems between the wives. Sundiata was seven before he could stand and walk. This is a variation on the standard hero presentation.
Just before this time the King had died, and Sundiata, who was supposed to be his choice successor due to prophecy, was judged physically incapable, and he and his family relegated, ridiculed, and subjected to mockery and increasing hostility.

As soon as Sundiata could walk he quickly learned hunting skills, warrior skills. All along his mental acuity had been high, his kindness supreme. The old kings’ new wife plotted against him: she hired nine witches to catch him out and curse him; his kindness towards them, not knowing who they were, won them over. He was warned of the plot.

His mother Sogolon took her family away for safety. She found however that many tribal kings had been bribed to turn them away. They were forced therefore to travel out of Mali and into Ghana. There they met kindness. It was when they travelled to Mema that the old King, Mansa Tounkara, took them in. He had no children himself, and warmed greatly to Sundiata. In all they spent six years with him. Sundiata grew into a strong and tactical warrior.

While in exile, however, the sorcerer King Soumaoro Kante had grown strong, attracted many followers, and moved in on the Mali tribes, and capital Niani. 

Representatives from old Niani travelled around in search of Sundiata. When they found him at Mema they told of what had befallen Mali. Sundiata vowed to return and destroy Soumaoro. The old king however refused to let him go.
It is at this time that Sundiata’s mother, Sogolon; died. The old king accused Sundiata of being ungrateful, and a turncoat. Sundiata, a very powerful warrior by this time was able to command most of the old king’s men. He had to let him go back. He took half the king’s men with him.

As he returned many tribal people who resisted Soumaoro joined with Sundiata. There were three main battles (and one night sortie), each time Sundiata was victorious, but Soumaoro escaped using sorcery. The pursuit of Soumaoro was long and bloody. It is only when Nana Triban, Sundiata’s half sister by his father’s new queen, along with his own griot, joined him, that he learned the way to defeat Soumaoro’s sorcery.

Soumaoro was defeated, but not captured.
Sundiata levelled Soumaoro’s city of Sosso; he re-entered Mali a victor; he granted land and livings to all loyal tribes, showed mercy to the defeated, and rebuilt Niani on a greater, grander scale.

3

The whole movement of the epic is based on two arcs superimposed and conflicting with each other, one where we see the build up to Sundiata’s eminence, is contrasted with his unfortunate beginnings: we have the auspiciousness of his prophecy and the inauspiciousness of his childhood.
There are three interpolations by the writer into the narrative; these are
Chapter 1, The First Kings of Mali;
Chapter 8, History; and
18, Eternal Mali

: that is the first, middle, and last.

Each of these chapters has the same structure of author’s assessment of the story, followed by a précis of the following events. These three chapters differ from all others, in that the others consist of direct and engaged narrative of the story. The first and last chapters also are connected in the ways they begin and end the tale.
The First Kings gives a brief history of the Mandingo people and of Sundiata’s genealogy, before introducing us to the story.
The last chapter Eternal Mali, sums up the ending of the tale, and in the latter half gives a brief history of Mali after the time of Sundiata.
The central chapter, History, begins by reverting to the same objective tone of the first and last authorial interpolations; it tells how the story of Sundiata has reached its central point, and how all the auspicious signs of his childhood will now come to fruition. This is followed by a brief précis of the preceding chapter, and introduces us to the proceeding events of the story.M