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Public Petitions Committee 26 January 2016

26 Jan 2016 · S4 · Public Petitions Committee

Item of business

New Petitions

In Care Survivors Service Scotland (PE1596)

Paul Anderson Watch on SPTV

Thank you, convener, and I thank everyone else for giving me the chance to speak. I am a survivor of child abuse. I have with me a dossier containing 19 letters from people in different professions from all over Scotland, supporting the funding of In Care Survivors Service Scotland. One of the letters is from Police Scotland; I asked Police Scotland to meet our group, and its letter outlines clearly the importance of continued funding for survivors. With regard to how I feel about the situation, I note that the 19 letters include ones from the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the Rt Hon Donald Wilson; the chair of the Scottish Human Rights Commission, Professor Alan Miller; head of social services in Stirling and Clackmannanshire, Val de Souza; and Vox Scotland. The Vox Scotland letter, for example, talks about bringing in your own experiences to ensure that the emotional aspect remains at the forefront of decision making. In Care Survivors Service Scotland treats survivors, including me, as human beings, and no one can put a price on what that means to us as survivors. In Kirkintilloch, where I live, there are no services for me. I have knocked on many doors and been refused help; indeed, I have a letter in the dossier from my councillor in East Dunbartonshire Council confirming that there are no services for me there. I know of a survivor in the Borders who is in the same position as me and cannot access any services either. The national health service has informed me that I will not be given cognitive behavioural therapy, because it will not work; I was also informed that I would not get any psychotherapy, because I had it before, and it failed. I was told that after another suicide attempt. I have basically been told by the NHS that if I have another episode, I will get an hour’s help and nothing more. While I have been with In Care Survivors Service Scotland, however, all I have had to do during a crisis is pick up the phone, and someone is there. I have not had to wait for an appointment with a general practitioner or wait on a list to see a counsellor or a psychiatrist. The broker model would give what survivors want. That is fine. Unfortunately, counselling would be given for only a limited time—perhaps up to 12 weeks—and if that is to be the case, it would be wrong to expect survivors to trust that broker model. In how short a time can you expect survivors to come to trust a new counsellor to talk about, of all things, child abuse? Would anyone in this audience or anyone you know who was being abused trust a new counsellor that quickly? 11:00 I have borderline personality disorder that I have been told is untreatable, and I also have, among other things, post-traumatic stress disorder. The group therapy provided by In Care Survivors Service Scotland has given me friends, allowed me to empathise with other survivors and their trauma and has helped us all to value each other’s experiences. The survivors in ICSSS trust their counsellors and therapists, but that has taken a long time to happen. Given that ICSSS counsellors already have long-term experience of listening to survivors, would it not make sense to give them jobs under the broker model that was originally agreed? Doing so would save time and expenditure. The loss of ICSSS would be devastating for me and others. I have lost count of the number of times I have cried about it and the amount of sleep I have lost, and I am on more medication now, because my heart is in trouble. The Scottish Government has a duty of care to provide the best possible care for the most vulnerable people in our country, some of whom might even be just outside this building. I therefore make this appeal for help: the Scottish Government knows as well as Survivors Scotland that survivors who use ICSSS love the service. It works—just look at all the evidence from professionals who support the service. It is not broken, and it does not need to be fixed. People say that one size does not fit all, and that is right. ICSSS is good for some people, and the broker model is good for others. I put this to all of you, including those who might be watching this broadcast: I believe that the broker model can provide a good service. It can provide help in ways that ICSSS cannot. However, ICSSS can provide services that the broker model cannot. Please allow the broker model and ICSSS to work together, because they can enhance each other. The potential to save lives is likely to be the greatest that Scotland will ever see in its history of helping survivors of child abuse.

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Public Petitions Committee 26 January 2016

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