00:27 - 16.07.05
Howling at the Moon
There is a group of four women who ride the earliest bus together. They are always upbeat and obviously enjoy each others' company a great deal. Much laughter comes from their corner, with an honest affection shown between them. They have looked familiar since the first time I saw them, but I couldn't really make the connection. This morning, just before reaching the train station, I was standing hanging onto a commuter strap for balance in front of one of that group who was still sitting. She always travels on that bus to another complex. She looked up at me and said "you're **** aren't you? I've been meaning to say hello for the past few days. Bet you don't remember my name." Truth was I knew I knew her, but couldn't remember her name. I allowed I had trouble remembering my own name before that first cup of caffeine hit my veins. She laughed and mentioned her daughters' names as well as her own. Then she spoke of some of the challenges we had dealt with together. We had worked together on our local volunteer parent council over 20 years ago. At that point in time we were trying to secure more than one textbook for each classroom and subject, by lobbying the provincial government for the funds, as well as raising as much as we could in the interim through things like bake and book sales. Bless Scholastic Books for the one fund raising program. I recalled talking with her last about a decade ago. She has matured in appearance quite a bit, so I truly couldn't have placed her face. It had always been her voice and her laugh that tugged at my memory. Nice to reconnect, it was. We talked about the most important things - our children - first, just catching up on their progress. I'm certain that there will be a lot of other conversations from here on in. Hope so anyway. She was one of the parents I always really enjoyed working with.
Napped on the train 'til we hit downtown. Prepared and printed my timesheet, then dropped it on my supervisor's desk being that she hadn't arrived yet. An hour or two later I came up for air when the batteries in my diskman ran dry. As I was switchng them, I heard my name mentioned on the other side of the work area partition. It was the perfumed co-worker. She was asking the woman who took my place in that work cluster if she knew how I was paid. I couldn't hear the response, but then followed the questions "who pays her", "when do they pay her" and the last one being asked very low was likely "how much". Their conversation - her questioning - lasted about 15 minutes and was interspersed with speculation on how my time was measured. Maybe not being in the company's contractor's pool is not such a bad thing after all, since the perfumed woman seems to have several relatives working in other departments. Sounds as though she might have been digging around trying to get that information elsewhere. I think it was the perfumed worker who also said it was her doing that my supervisor was doing a check of my security access records to verify if I had really been at the workplace at the times I've coded on my worksheet. Uh huh. Truth is that I usually start billing for time the next quarter hour after I arrive, because I don't count the time I spend setting up for the day as part of my work hours. So if I arrive at 7:05 am I don't start my invoicing until 7:15 am. That way if something happens to delay me a few minutes - say a train breakdown or missed bus - I have some banked time to draw down in reserve. That explained why my supervisor hadn't arrived with a signed copy and it seemed to confirm my suspicion about her early check on my presence the other morning. She usually signs off on my timesheet as soon as she arrives and has it back to me before 8 am. I think it was after 9 this morning when she finally got it to me today and she seemed a little uncomfortable. No doubt. Shortly after, I went to take a bio break and found her and the perfumed coworker in discussion in the washroom. For the rest of the day each time I took a bio break the perfumed worker followed me in to the washroom. She never said anything, just hung around. In fact if I tried to acknowledge her presence she would just grunt and pretend she didn't see or hear me. One time she was carrying her fruit knife with her. She just creeps me out some days.
Her behaviour today had me thinking about the issue of what our society deems mental illness, as well as how it is dealt with on an official basis. Canada has followed the same approach as Australia with respect to people who have biologically based illnesses such as schizophrenia, by just dumping them out of secure or supervised care facilities and placing them under the money managers who are employed by the public trustee's office. The theory being that the disability allowance they are given by the government should allow them to live an integrated life in the broader community. That might have worked if the allowance had been enough to actually allow them to meet basic needs - under $900 per month in Calgary will not come close to doing that - and if they have supervised medical care to ensure that their medications and other health requirements are attended to as well. That has never happened either. I don't know why our legislators and bureaucrats would expect people with severely disabling mental illnesses or handicaps to function with such challenging barriers to survival when even a "normal" person would have great difficulty living on that income without also having to deal with bouts of psychosis or other symptoms of the biogenetic dysfunctions the patients must.
At the other side of the scale are all the people who are deemed mentally ill, because they don't fit the very narrow definition of normal that seems to be embedded in our society right now. You know the attitude "everyone is encouraged to be an individual - as long as they look and act like the rest of us". This is especially apparent in schools right now where what was considered normal ranges of behaviour when we were growing up are now deemed "pathological" or "criminal". Throwing snowballs, for example, is now a cause for being suspended or expelled from school. Good bye Charlie Brown.
In the adult population, politically incorrect behaviour can get one declared "mentally incompetent" and placed under the iron thumb of the local govenment agency - if one has enough money in their own personal estate to "make it worth their while" - even against the wishes of the inidvidual and their families. The following article from the Sun media confirms what I have heard from a person I know who works in the provincial office here. The last time we spoke, they were telling me about one client in her 50's they had who had done something her "worker" didn't like. That worker sold off the 50 year old's car without telling her as punishment. Now the client obviously had been deemed mentally competent enough to operate a vehicle, because they did not rescind her driver's licence. It may have been that she didn't meet the worker's standards for personal conduct, because she wasn't investing her funds but was spending in ways deemed "frivolous". I can't speak to whether that was too outside average behaviour or not, but the worker's comment was "with the huge bank account she's got we aren't letting her out of our system". The person who was telling this story then went on to describe how all the staff gathered around the closed circuit television that feeds in to the work area from the reception area to enjoy this woman's (clients) obvious distress when she came to challenge the worker's decision to take her car away. The worker said all her coworkers were laughing and joking about it - "nearly good enough performance to break out the popcorn". Now this worker and her coworkers have enormous power and, as the article points out, hid behind disclosure regulations to avoid accountability for that and many other decisions. They can make unchallenged allegations about anyone who is assigned to their office for assessment or files by using terms from the social work funding bible, DSM IV. The fact that many of those same workers couldn't live up to the same standards for behaviour or choice that they use as excuses to inflict punitive responses on those same clients is what really upsets me. The worker I talk with has one adult child who was charged with identity theft - they stole charge card carbon copies of transactions from the garbage of the retailer they worked for, then passed them on to a buddy who then used those to steal from the customers accounts. That worker used their connections in the government to have their child excused in court on the basis of "they didn't know what they were doing". That worker also introduced one of her very wealthy clients who had no family left, and so was under care, to a sister in law who then proceeded to befriend that client. When that client died they left "a couple hundred thousand or so" to that sister in law. Funny thing the spending spree that worker went on after that. The child who stole the credit card information and was in tens of thousands debt, now suddenly owns a newly furnished house and car. That car is one that that worker had tried to get me to put in a bid for at an auction, after they had placed it there for sale from a deceased clients possessions so that the money raised could be divvied up among the inheritors of that estate. Their comment was that they didn't think it was fair that they couldn't have first option on such items, since it was deemed a conflict of interest under the legislation. The fact that it might be viewed as looting their client's estate, before disbursing it to the rightful heirs, never even seemed to cross their mind. I think it was obvious to them that I was not comfortable with their request, so they got one of their other "friends" to put in the bid for them. I really don't think someone asking me to be an accomplice to what could be deemed criminal behaviour is truly someone I want as a friend. Anyway this was the article that triggered this rant:
Winnipeg Sun @ canoe.ca
Sat, June 25, 2005
Stripped of rights
Public trustee takes control of man's life without consent
By TOM BRODBECK
Thomas Hanaway, 80, never asked the government to take over his life. But that's exactly what they've done to the Second World War veteran, cleaning out his bank account, seizing his pension cheques and assuming complete control over his life -- without even asking him or his family. Hanaway was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease last year but lives with his wife Grace Hanaway, 79, and their son Thomas Hanaway Jr., 47, who care for him in their two-storey North End home. Hanaway, a bit of a surly old guy with a good sense of humour, can walk and carry on a conversation. He eats on his own. He receives daily visits from home care workers, who bath and care for him. He appears clean and well taken care of and he likes to watch TV in his living room. For an 80-year-old man, he seems relatively lucid. Despite that, the province's chief provincial psychiatrist has deemed him unfit and has appointed the Office of the Public Trustee to take over all of his affairs.
His family can no longer make medical decisions on his behalf. And if he wants to spend his money, he has to get permission from the Public Trustee, which has stripped him of some of his most basic rights. "I never asked for this," he told me, after I spent a couple of days with the family this week. "I don't want to be under their wing."
Should scare families
This is a story that should scare the living hell out of anyone approaching old age. And it should scare their families, too.
This isn't just a story about our nanny state overstepping its bounds a little.
This is about state control of our lives. It's about the arbitrary loss of your freedom.
"It's not like he's living alone and not being taken care of," said Tom Hanaway, Jr., who says he's in disbelief over what's happened the past two months. "We look after him."
Hanaway attends a day program for geriatric people. Staff recommended he undergo a psychiatric assessment, which took place in April. The assessment concluded Hanaway was not capable of managing his affairs due to "health problems."
The assessment was forwarded to the chief provincial psychiatrist, according to documents obtained by The Sun.
And on May 24, the director of psychiatric services, Dr. Donald Rodgers, wrote Hanaway stating he planned to issue an "order of committeeship" that would allow the Public Trustee to take over his affairs.
Amazingly, this is all legal.
The order was made June 6 and the Public Trustee immediately seized Hanaway's bank account -- without the consent of him or his family -- and began taking over all of his financial affairs. They took $900 out of a joint account shared by him and his wife Grace, even though some of the money came from Grace's pension cheques.
"I can't believe something like this is possible," said Louise Lamaga, 57, Hanaway's daughter, an elementary school teacher living in Hadashville, about 100 km east of Winnipeg. "This is too ridiculous to even be believable."
Lamaga is in close contact with her father and visits the family home regularly. She says he's cared for, he's fed and his affairs are all taken care of by family.
The decision to take over Hanaway's life appears to revolve entirely around the psychiatric assessment. It's unknown what Hanaway did or said that triggered the Public Trustee order.
Lamaga said she has asked the chief provincial psychiatrist for her father's file but they refused, saying it was "confidential medical information."
Lamaga says if her father is incompetent, then why would the chief provincial psychiatrist base his decision to take over her father's affairs solely on what he said without investigating further?
No home visit or face-to-face interviews were conducted with Hanaway's family before the order was made, the family says.
Dr. Rogers was unavailable for comment yesterday.
To add insult to injury, the Public Trustee is now charging Hanaway to take care of him.
They charge $60 an hour for inspection visits and $40 an hour for travel time. They take a 3% cut of his income -- in his case, Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security cheques -- and if there are any legal fees, Hanaway has to pay those, too.
They even charge him GST on the fees.
I sat in on the first face-to-face meeting between the family and the Public Trustee this week at Hanaway's home, unbeknownst to the bureaucrats in the room. It was shocking to say the least. "
My guess is that the psychiatric assessment was triggered when the vet somehow relayed his perception of events during the war to a listener or had a flashback to that time. That doesn't make one incompetent - memories that is or having an emotional reaction about something that happened some time ago. Nor does it mean someone is mentaly ill. So is there anyone who couldn't be deemed "incompetent" if they found themselves in similar circumstances. Under our democratic system one has the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and to have disclosure of charges and evidence in a court of law. Apparently that applies only to criminal matters, while those who are deemed "crazy" by someone in authority, because of a difference of faith, culture, values or astrological sign, has no recourse. The real measure of the person's craziness seems to be the size of their bank account - the more they have, the more likely the trustees office will take on the case. As the one worker stated to me several times - "no point taking that file on - there's no money in it." Chew on that one for a while I think dear diary. Guess there's some benefit to being poor as a church mouse after all. As an Aquarian Sun, Saggitarius Rising, Pisces Moon, buddhist with quantum physical tendencies I think I likely fall in that "too eccentric" category. Just like Einstein eh?
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