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This is a question Filth!

Enzyme says: Tell us your tales of grot, grime, dirt, detritus and mess

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 13:04)
Pages: Popular, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

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I am the scud fairy.
My Mum's an Occupational Therapist.
Simply put, she goes into disabled peoples' houses and reccomends adaptations that will make it possible for them to lead relatively normal lives.

Now, this job puts her into regular contact with some utter scroungers: people whose only disability is morbid obesity, and who view social services as a kind of get-your-bathroom-done-up-for-free fund. For these people, she has very little time. But of course, there are also people who genuinely need the help and for them, she'll always go the extra mile.

In this case, there was a mentally disabled man who was utterly dependent on his mother to live a normal life. Sadly, his mother had passed away some months before, and since then, he'd been fending for himself. It was only when he showed up at the doctor's with some third-world ailment that someone thought to ask how he was doing, and when they sent my mum in she was appalled.

The place was a hellhole: There were microwave ready-meal packets mouldering in every corner (The only kind of food this bloke knew how to cook for himself), and towers of empty baked-bean tins as tall as a man. The toilet looked like someone had tried shitting through a tea-strainer at high pressure, and the mattresses had...stuff...growing on them that I don't want to think about.

Now when my mum saw this, she knew that she could call in a clean-up team and they'd sort the place out in two-to-three months, once their backlog was cleared.
Or, she reasoned, she could put her two feckless vacationing student sons to work, and get it sorted out that weekend.

I'd say she bribed, threatened and cajoled us into doing it, but she didn't:
she just threatened. She doesn't believe in wasting good money.

So along we went. We knew we were in for some horror when my mum passed round some dust masks and goggles.
We spent an entire Saturday cleaning out that house, while the man in question was staying with some people from my mum's church and getting himself cleaned up. The carpets had to be pulled up. For some of the stains and accumulated goop, we had to use a paint-scraper. And I had the unenviable task of taking out his green furry mattress to the skip, from whence it would hopefully be taken somewhere to be humanely euthanised.

And underneath the mattress, I found his porn stash.

It was a sad, sorry little collection; a couple of ripped out pages that the damp had got to; rendering the hot MILFs therein not so hot at all.

Now I'm not on my mum's level of saintliness, not by a longshot, but I suddenly found myself moved by this man's plight. He lived in this shitty maisonette surrounded by filth, his only refuge form a world that didn't give a shit whether he lived or died, eating nothing but ready meals and beans. And to top it all, his only entertainment was a tiny black-and-white television and this feeble pile of scud.

What, I asked myself, Would Jesus Do?

That was the morning. In the afternoon, we had to put in the new mattresses and prepare the new carpet for the fitters. But at lunchtime, I took a quick walk to the local newsagent's.

I took responsibility for the bloke's room, putting in the new mattress and laying the bed. And under the mattress, in plastic bags to cheat the damp, as many hot MILF jazz-mags as I could afford.

Was it What Jesus would have Done? Probably not. But I hope it brought him pleasure.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:11, 73 replies)
That fucking rocks.
On every level.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:15, closed)
Maybe the magazines belonged to his mum
and he was more a gaping tattered anuses type man?
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:15, closed)
Your mum has her own church?
only kidding - this is excellent stuff
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:22, closed)
The First Church of Do What I Tell You, And Don't Whinge About it!
Slightly more honest than most church names, I feel.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:24, closed)
Well done you.
You win a click.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:25, closed)
Fine work fellah!
You've become the jazz-mag fairy.
Just don't look under the pillows to see what they leave for you.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:26, closed)
You. Fucking. Hero!
*clicks*
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:46, closed)
This bought a tear to my eye.
Hooray for supplying mentally ill person with grot!! *clicks*
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:48, closed)
Should of
stuck some pages together, give the geezer a bit of a puzzle to work out.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 17:48, closed)
Should
of have
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:53, closed)
No man should be without his smut!
Well done, sir. *clicks*
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 18:13, closed)
Excellent work :)

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 18:24, closed)
Top work fella

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 18:36, closed)
So much win.
Click.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 19:00, closed)
Early winner imo
Click
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 19:27, closed)
This story makes me woo, yay, hoopla and even panowie all at once.
You are St Universalpsykopath, patron saint of porn.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 19:39, closed)

Your mother abused her position of trust over the most vulnerable people in society. Does this man now think he owes the church something? Does he maintain contact with your mother or any of the other people that helped him? Did she consult with the official clean-up crew to see if this case could be expedited, or he could be put into care temporarily? Hell, did she even own up to what she did?

The religious make me sick.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 19:54, closed)
Grow a cock fuck face.
It's the fact this guy could have waited weeks in a hell hole and instead someone who cared motivated her family and friends to assist.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 19:59, closed)
Cared enough to break the rules and put him in a potentially dangerous situation
No, sorry, if it was up to me she would have been fired and prosecuted. Again, does her employer know what she did? If it was a good deed then surely there's no problem relating this story?
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:15, closed)
Sometimes human nature needs to be taken account of instead of forms and regulations, this is the problem
with today's NHS.

Your problem with religion has no baring on something good that came out of something bad.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:17, closed)
Well, it does
One of the reasons religions are so successful is that they teach charity to those less fortunate, I'd be astonished if the man in this story wasn't very grateful to the church and its adherents, and consequently more likely to listen to their wackier stuff.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:30, closed)
Well it does not, because no matter your colour, faith or creed you can still be a nice person or do
a good deed, society does not care generally due to overload of the system and today unfotunately, it is all about quotas and making money to please the goverment.

Sometimes it takes a human being to make a choice when faced with a problem and to reflect and decide to do what is right. I do not disagree about religion but you have to takes things on an individual basis and in context.

In the same boat I would have done similar no matter if my friends were christian, muslim, hindu, pagan, zoroastanist, jew or satanist.

It would not have bothered me a jot what they were compared to my knowledge of their character.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:56, closed)

Most church-types tend more towards the 'Kindly Mrs Smith of the awesome coffee-morning nibbles" than "bastard lovechild of Jim Jones and David Koresh".

Are you honestly suggesting that neighbourly kindness should be abandoned, and entirely replaced with state intervention? Because that would make you a cunt. You cunt.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 0:21, closed)
No, not at all
I'm suggesting that the people administering the state intervention have no right to refuse to do their job and instead refer them to a church because it is their personal belief that the church would perform better.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 2:02, closed)
You really need to get out more.

(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 10:22, closed)
Don't feed the troll
please.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 13:12, closed)
Wow
You're a lovely warm loving human being, you cunt.
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 19:40, closed)
You'd have fired and prosecuted?
By Christ on a glowing flagpole and all his radioactive saints, you're a monumental twat of a human being.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 22:42, closed)
What moobs said.
With big bad bally bells on.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 22:52, closed)
And here, ladies and gents, we have the most self-centred and autistic post in this thread.

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:18, closed)
Thank you.
Where is AB when you need him.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 21:00, closed)
Mong

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 22:17, closed)

Let's see:

Breach of client confidentiality, check
Breach of client trust, check
Neglect of service responsibilities, check
Destruction of clinically significant evidence, check
No evidence of appropriate and truthful report of visit, check
No evidence of establishment of clinically indicated therapy program, check
No evidence of undertaking of referral to an appropriate service, check
Enabling local persons, with no evidence of appropriate checks or experience, to have intimate knowledge and prolonged access to a vulnerable persons home and possessions, check
No evidence of implied or explicit consent, check
Enabling public members with no apparent relation to the client to have partial knowledge of confidentially obtained information in regards to his state of health, homestate and hygiene, check

Total and utter breach of 'The Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct', the 'Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics', several confidentiality and information regulations, service level regulations and confidentialy agreements. Possibly also a breach of vulnerable person protections and reporting.

There's no evidence that she provided a true and proper report that could have been used as evidence to provide him with appropriate services (and continued help with ADLs to make sure he isn't merely in the same situation six months down the line), she destroyed the evidence of need and does not appear to have made a true and timely record of her visit, she does not appear to have signposted him on to appropriate services (and continued help), nor made a referral (which would have required an accurate home visit report as supporting evidence) to appropriate services, she's negated the volitional aspect of domestic ADLs by having someone else do it for him with him as a passive object, and she does not appear to have started an appropriate therapy program that would enable him (to do at least some of it himself).

Jaw droppingly bad professional reasoning, tantamount to wholesale professional misconduct and dereliction of duty of care. Did she even bother to see if there was any emergency care available? Expediated resolution? Anything?

I really hope that:

a, UPP's mum has retired, or
b, UPP's mum has moved away from the profession, or
c, UPP has left out significant chunks of the story, and that UPP's mum made all the right refferals, with proper evidence, or started an appropriate therapy program with the client.
d, she gets booted out of the profession and deregistered pronto.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:21, closed)
well done, you massive hero
for your next trick, I suppose you'll be telling some terminally ill kids that Santa doesn't exist.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:38, closed)

Why would I do that?

That's a silly and offensive suggestion that does not ethically or logically follow on from what I've just said.

If I'd said he shouldn't recieve any services or appropriate help at all, then it would be an appropriate response.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:46, closed)
You are Mr. Logic
AICMFP
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:51, closed)
^ And what she said^

(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 10:22, closed)
Thanks for that TheThinMan, we value your input.

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:55, closed)
Thanks
These all sound like plausible technical terms for my "she's naughty".
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 1:58, closed)
Your understanding of ethics is pitiful.
It seems to amount to no more than "Did x follow the rules?", quite aside from any qualities of the actor or action per se.

Also, it's "programme".
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 9:11, closed)
I indicated which particular professional ethical codes I was using.
If a person is in breach of the accepted code of ethics of both the national organisation representing thier chosen profession and the code of ethics of their regulatory body, then they are - if not by the very defintion of what 'professional ethics' are - commiting an unethical act.

That's a significantly different arguement to 'x didn't follow the rules, therefore x is unethical'. It's perfectly possible to not follow the rules and still be ethical. It's not possible to breach the ethical rules you signed up to and yet - somehow by some magical mystical method - be in complete abidance with them.

You could have argued that the COT and HPC codes are not representative of the general view of ethics and ethical behaviour amongst COT members or HPC registrants, but you didn't.

It disturbs me that people appear to find that:

providing true records that can be used as evidence of care needs; which could then be used as evidence to provide continued and appropriate therapy and support over the long term - provided by appropriately trained, qualified and regulated professional and paraprofessionals - and provding a true record of immediate housing and environmental distress,

is NOT preferred to:

apparently failing to make a true and accurate record of evidence of care needs, resulting in no-one else being aware of those care or housing needs, resulting in no long term improvement in the clients situation - whilst enabling two untrained, unregulated, ill equipped, inexperienced, unchecked members of the public prolonged and intimate access to a vulnerable persons home, in order for them to do a clean that should be done expertly.

I hope the story is missing the bit where the client received appropriate, continued and sufficient help. Otherwise, plenty of people here are agreeing it's better to help someone out once and then leave them to live in squalor again 3 months down the line, than it is to get them out of the house whilst it gets properly cleaned, whilst they get proper help so it doesn't (or shouldn't) happen again.

Again, I hope the story is missing bits and that UPP's mum did make properly evidenced referrals to appropriate services
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 17:15, closed)
Your first two paragraphs here demonstrate the problem.
You seem to be under the impression that "ethics" is reducible to "codes of ethics", or codes of professional ethics, or something like that, such that a departure from those codes is pro tanto an ethical failure.

What this account fails to accommodate is any way of asking whether those codes are themselves defensible, how they're to be interpreted, and whether there's scope for decent and admirable behaviour outside them. This last bit is particularly important.

Short version: if your idea of ethics goes no further than professional codes, you're a bit of a moral failure.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 10:28, closed)

"Your first two paragraphs here demonstrate the problem.
You seem to be under the impression that "ethics" is reducible to "codes of ethics", or codes of professional ethics, or something like that, such that a departure from those codes is pro tanto an ethical failure."

If you agree that you should consider your professions 'code of ethics' to at be at least a subset of your ethics in relation to all actions taken whilst acting under - or subsequent to - your professional role (and not just your job role), then you agree that you should abide by those ethics in order to practise ethically. That is, you agree that, such and such a code constitutes 'ethics' (or part of), therefor, a breach of the same is tantamount to a breach of your own accepted ethics.

"whether there's scope for decent and admirable behaviour outside them. This last bit is particularly important."

Indeed, it is. It's also important to note whether there's scope for decent and admirable behaviour whilst still acting within them. UPP's mum was not presented as having made any realistic effort to have seen whether this was the case, nor was she presented as having made a true and accurate record of evidence of need, nor was she presented as having taken appropriate action with a long term effect. In short, she was presented as having blindly taken the short term option, simply out of personal indignation.

None of the replies I've received thus far have contained any glimmer of recognition or concern for the missing story elements that would have indicated that fully ethical, long term effective, legal and professional behaviour was taking place.

It seems to be a case of cheering on a pron story and, inadvertantly, cheering on the violition of safegaurds and protections that are put in place precisely to protect the inherent vulnerabilites of all clients that come under professional care.

If all you've managed to glean from my posts is that I'm supposedly some sort of dogged rule botherer, rather than why I'm concerned those rules were broken in terms of the potential impact on the client and what it means for UPPs mums wider practise, then I doubt further correspondance with you will benefit either of us.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 19:03, closed)
correspondEnce
Also: HA HA VIRGIN
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 19:39, closed)
Thank you,
I'm aware of a number of OTs with dyslexia who would be very grateful if you were to extend your kind offer of free spelling police services to them.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 21:07, closed)
Do you live under a bridge or in supported housing?
I honestly can't decide.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 21:31, closed)
Well,
"If you agree..." But I don't agree. Codes of professional ethics are at most - not at least - a subset of ethics in abstracto. (The only time professional ethicist advert to codes of professional ethics is when they're pointing and laughing at the inadequacy of said codes.) And the idea that you're breaching your own accepted ethics is very puzzling indeed, given that it's hard to imagine anyone acting in any way except that they think it is right in its own terms, or good, or justified.

As for the other stuff, it looks like your complaint is at least as much about the OP's telling of the story - that he didn't include every single administrative detail - as about the actual content. For the record, the content was (as far as I can tell) that a person did something supererogatory for someone else. We don't know about the other stuff - but we don't need to, you utter dullard.

Having said all this, I'm tempted to agree with the final twelve words of your post.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 20:00, closed)

Judging by the quality of your reply, and the misrepresentation of my arguement made there-in, I would have to declare that my last 12 words were entirely correct.

See you.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 20:37, closed)
I lack the words
to truly express my love for this post.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 11:47, closed)
Gotta love these
armchair lawyers.

Your argument is rubbish, fuck off.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 13:16, closed)
But it's really well written (i.e. 400 words long)!!!

(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 22:27, closed)
I didn't even notice the church reference on first reading
And I had trouble spotting it when I went back to check. I think the verdict is that it is you that has the problem, not the OP or his mum.

I'm not saying religion can't sometimes be a bit silly, but the reality of Christians in Britain is that the vast majority are jolly nice people, whether or not you believe in their zombie messiah.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 9:05, closed)
This is either the finest piece of trolling ever seen, or the work of a massive autist.

(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 1:54, closed)
fair play

(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 20:19, closed)
Clicky!
You are truly a prince amongst men
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 22:35, closed)
Right, that's fucking it
^^^^^^^^

Rob, close it down, we've got the winner.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:03, closed)

I seriously hope your mum actually did her job properly (without any further breaches of conduct, ethics, or law) and got him some help that would actually be useful in the long term. i.e that she didn't just leave him to be just as bad a few months down the line, but with the hope that he could just become ill again and have someone else sort it all out again , and again, and again.....

It's absolutely astounding how irresponsible she was, otherwise. I really hope she didn't promote further dependance just to promote her own desire to 'do a good deed'.

Seriously, tell me she wasn't as bad as you make her out to be. Tell me you missed out huge chunks of the story.
(, Thu 2 Feb 2012, 23:41, closed)

I'd imagine she can get by without your approval, if need be.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 0:23, closed)
^^

(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 10:44, closed)
I bet you're the sort of person who sits in their front room
with a copy of the local byelaws in one hand, and a telephone in the other, looking for people to report.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 12:04, closed)
Bylaws in one hand and
cock in the other more like.
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 23:07, closed)
I dont know about the administrative stuff, I was just a dogsbody.
I do appreciate your concerns, and I understand they're well-meant.
I don't know much about social service protocol, but I can give you an anecdote:
I was waiting in the office where my mum works, waiting for her to finish, and I got chatting to one of her subordinates.

HER: You're [Mum's Name]'s son then?
Me: Yeah.
HER: I was just wondering...does she give you a checklist for tidying your room?
ME: Umm...yeah. how did you know?
HER: Just a lucky guess.

My mum does not mess about when it comes to her job. Her eye for detail is legendary. What needs to be done will have been done, and it will have been done with the best possible outcome for the client in mind. I say that with absolute certainty.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 12:32, closed)
I'm really glad that
you're sticking up for your mum, and I really hope you have left off all the stuff any decent OT would have done.

The idea that any OT would willingly fail to record, or pass on, severe evidence of care needs - much less willfully set about destroying it - is something that has me in conniptions.

I've seen more than a few users of LD services that have been clearly let down by other services for little other reason than lack of self-advocation or lack of evidence of care needs.

I really do hope your mum passed all the evidence on to the appropriate people, and that the help the client received wasn't merely short term. Short term help isn't really that much help if it's instead of better, longer term help.

I'm really trying to get my head around why people here can't grasp that idea.
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 17:27, closed)
I understand what you are saying there,
he clearly needed a long term solution to his situation. Cleaning him up and leaving him to get in the same situation again is only a short term fix.

However, no decent human being, faith aside, could knowingly leave a man to quite literally wallow in his own shit due to bureaucracy.
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 23:11, closed)
The problem is,
the exact same ethical argument 'No decent human being', could be made to justify any behaviour that is taken when placed under an extreme circumstance (although if you've ever worked in LD or MH, or older persons services, filthy homes are atypical yet are still common enough to hardly qualify as 'extreme'), even if that behaviour is neither the best available in term of short or long term outcome, or is detrimental or exposes the client to needlessly elevated risk.

The point of using professional reasoning is to evaluate which option is best long term, given the situation, and then implement it. The 'decent human being' option is the most tempting (and often the most emotionally rewarding), but it's not always the best. Thankfully, the 'decent human being' option and the 'professional' option often coincide.

I'm not sure why you said "However, no decent human being, faith aside, could knowingly leave a man to quite literally wallow in his own shit due to bureaucracy.". No one here is asserting that the options are either:

do what UPP's mum did, or,
leave him to live in the house whilst he gets a standard referral to environmental health.

The possibility of emergency housing, or an expediated referral was mentioned above.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 20:58, closed)
Haters gonna hate
I do home visits and have been in a couple of houses like this. I think you and your mom are awesome. I wish I'd had the balls to do something like that.

Edit: Also Happy Phantom's reply is a lol.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 2:23, closed)
Sometimes a man comes back to a post he's written for a QOTW to see how many replies it's got.
You know, to massage his ego and give him a feeling of personal worth.
But then he sees a reply count in the forties and thinks: Oh. A flame war.

I only know as much of the story as I knew when I was eighteen,
but perhaps a few clarifications might soothe the fire a bit.

1: The folks the chap in question stayed with while we were cleaning were not only members of my mother's church but also his next-door-neighbours. I suspect they were the people who got him to the doctor's. So he wasn't shipped off the conversion facility to be re-educated, if that's what you're worried about.

2: As this took place in her free time, I believe my mum was acting in her capacity as private citizen, performing an act of charity (with incidental filial slave-labour). All that's happened here is that the cleaning company social services would have hired didn't have as much to do, and the chap at the centre of this sorry tale didn't have to wait for them in squalor. Also, the state saved a few bob in overtime. I got yer big society right here, baby.

3: My mum could beat up your mum. FACT.

4: I don't know anything about proper social services decorum. But I do know my mum, and know that whatever needed to be done will have been done. In triplicate. And checked twice. She's that kind of woman.*

5: My mum could beat you up. Also FACT.

6: The porn is the point. Seriously, people. It's all about the pr0n.

*Needless to say, I'm a bit of a disappointment.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 10:35, closed)
(fx of waxing mustache)
There are are people in the world who are so afraid of life that they'd prefer a rigid straightjacket of unbreakable rules to govern every action. Harshly enforced with no reference to circumstance or compassion.

Then there are people in the world who's opinions matter.

The two are rarely in the same group.

Have a click.

I also know for 100% of fact that this _is_ what Jesus would have done. I asked.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 12:11, closed)
hehe
As to 1: fair enough, there were two references to religion that I read too much into. I think this is because I expect random charity from the religious more than the irreligious, but it seems that the majority of people here think this was a net positive thing. On balance, I think it's more about a problem with disability benefits in general, so I humbly withdraw my anti-religious sentiments from this post.

2, 3, and 5: Not going to budge on these, I disagree.

4: This makes me happy.

6: That bit was a nice, albeit maybe creepy, gesture!
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 12:36, closed)
Don't worry about it
Most of us get it, and it's a bloody good story.

Ignore the ranters, they're just doing what they do.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 13:37, closed)
Sod the haters, this has to be the winner.
Clicks HARD. Like a mongo's cock.
(, Fri 3 Feb 2012, 17:49, closed)
Top work. Well done.
Ignore the haters.
(, Sat 4 Feb 2012, 8:49, closed)
Best one
I've read so far *click* and a bonus click for updating his porn stash.
(, Mon 6 Feb 2012, 13:12, closed)

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