Additional Note: Please visit www.adhs.gov. This is the main web page of Arizona's Department of Health Services, which is parent agency responsible for the state's immense behavioral health care system, including The Arizona State Hospital, as well as the Level I juvenile care facilities featured over this past week by the AZ Republic newspaper. Click on the main page for ADHS, and look for the prompt to the DIRECTOR'S BLOG, WHICH IS WHERE ADHS DIRECTOR WILL HUMBLE DOLES OUT HIS NEWSPEAK ABOUT THE GENERAL STATE OF AFFAIRS SPECIFIC TO HIS DIRECT RESPONSIBILITIES TO THE CITIZENS OF ARIZONA AS A WHOLE.
The rest of this article will give you an idea of why I am asking you to peruse the materials included in ADHS director Will Humble's official blog. Thanks.
It is late, and I am tired after an unusually long day. So I will put off stripping the following information down to its core until a later time. For the moment, suffice it say that no one thing better establishes the arrogance and audacity of our state's out of control public behavioral health care system than does the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, Will Humble's, below the belt attempt(s) to discredit one of the most critically vital news reports in 2013. Who in holy hell does this man think he is? Are we, the public, who have reviewed this moderately extensive body of information and found it's underlying research methods and related data to be far more than convincing, ill qualified by his standards to form our own opinions in situations like this? Why must this bastard defend his station so mercilessly, when the very lives of Arizona's most disenfranchised and underrepresented citizens are at stake?
I will give you the short answer. Will Humble is a die-hard bureaucrat. And like any tech-savvy die hard bureaucrat of the modern era, Will Humble has a blog. It is on the ADHS website (www.adhs.gov), and very easy to locate once you are there. Take a look at it as soon as you can, and you will find the article that I have included below, which he wrote and posted to his blog on Tuesday, February 19, 2013. It is his first reaction to the Arizona Republic's featured reporting specific to this investigation, written and posted on day two of the full five days of articles published in the Republic between Monday and Friday of last week (Feb. 18-Feb. 22, 2013), and one has to wonder if he even knew at the time he wrote it that were still three or four more days of data to hit the newsstand. So do, read the thing, and if you are inclined, no pressure from my end, go ahead and offer your comment(s) where indicated at the bottom of the article itself. (You will have to go the website to do this, it cannot be done here, from this publication). Offer your comments- again, if you so choose- and I will guarantee you one thing:
If you find yourself feeling the need to question his position, or criticize it in any way, even if in the most civil and circumspect of ways, and constructively to the ends of the earth, your comments will not appear.
I know this, because I have experienced this on at least 7 occasions in the last 10 months, or so. Patent censorship. Not one of my comments, at least some of which were tame in all senses, and politely submitted to the best of my ability (I know how to be polite), garnered so much as a thank you, and much less an actual response of substance. Humble's blog page claims to function as a tool for communication between us, the public, and he, the author of the blog, and the director of Arizona's immense public health care system. As such, it reflects a character of openness and free dialogue. But it is anything but that. Look at this way: I am a well spoken, recently discharged client of Arizona's sole long term mental health care facility, and if he is not willing and able to include my experiences and related contributions to a discussion about issues relating to my very real experiences in his system of responsibility, than who might we expect him to deem as beneficial to this conversation?
In researching the comments to Humble's blog over the past couple of months, I have found that the few comments that ever appear are always very short, and they never contain anything outside of flat footed praise ( as in, sterile and unpretentious in any way, while questionable in every way). I can't easily surmise how much input Humble refuses to bring to the table, besides my own, but it is my theory, too, that not many people even visit this man's blog. I mean, he works for the department of health (not a exactly a hot-bed for stimulating intellectualism), so it's not as though it's sexy, or controversial, or cutting edge, or mind expanding, or educational, or any of the other things that my blog is. But what it is in my learned opinion at this stage of the process, is a hoax, and little more. It is face time, and false advertising, and just one more tool of the trade when you are a sold down the river bureaucrat. But I greatly encourage all of you to take a look for yourselves, for I am nothing if not desperate to include all of you in this process. Only through a dedicated sense of community will we ever identify our own best salvation in the context of these matters. Patient abuse is inhumane, criminal, and yet at ASH, and in the juvenile facilities we recently heard about, patient abuse is occurring, and they are all getting way with it…. For the moment.
TO READ THE FULL ARIZONA REPUBLIC ARTICLE(S), VISIT AZCENTRAL.COM. THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC NEWSPAPER HAD A FULL UDPATE EACH DAY OF LAST WEEK ABOUT ADHS/BHS's HORRID PERFORMANCE SPECIFIC TO OUR STATE'S MOST TROUBLED JUVENILES, AND THEY ARE TITLED AS FOLLOWS HERE:
Troubled Teens:At Risk and Overlooked
THAT SAID, BELOW AND IN RED IS WILL HUMBLE'S OFFICIAL REACTION TO FIVE DAYS OF BULLET PROOF INVESTIGATION INTO THE ABUSE OF ARIZONA'S MENTALLY ILL CHILDREN…. INGENIOUS TITLE, DONT YOU AGREE? HE'S SHARP AS TACK, ALRIGHT, RIGHT OFF THE FLOOR OF THE PROVERBIAL TACK ROOM (OR, CONVERSELY, THE FLOOR OF THE LITTLE BAR OF THE SAME NAME IN THE CONGRESS HOTEL, TUCSON, AZ.)
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Troubled Teens: At Risk and Not Overlooked
February 19th, 2013 by Will HumbleNo comments »
Our Vision at the Arizona Department of Health Services is ”Health and Wellness for all Arizonans”. Part of that Vision for folks living with behavioral health issues or a mental illness means achieving and maintaining self-reliance and independence. To get there, some individuals simply need outpatient services occasionally. Some need wrap-around community or home-based services. Others need more intensive treatment in a licensed residential setting. Our goal is always to provide the most effective kind of evidence-based treatment for that person.
For example, our home and community-based wrap-around services have been so effective that we’ve reduced care in licensed high-level Residential facilities by 75% in the last couple of years in Maricopa County. We did this by building up home- and community-based wrap-around services like in-home counseling, high needs case management, home care training, peer support, respite, family support, and skills training. However, outpatient treatment and home and community based services can’t always provide the level of treatment folks need, and some people need the more intensive treatment that only a licensed and regulated residential facility can provide.
A series of reports in the Republic this week suggests that some residential treatment facilities in our state are substandard. While no regulated facility is perfect, our teams of inspectors are well-trained and highly-motivated to ensure each of our licensed residential treatment facilities meets our standards. Those that don’t must implement an immediate corrective action plan. Additionally, the DHS team has been overhauling many of its regulations to make sure our standards focus on the most important components of care.
We inspect residential treatment facilities once a year, and more often than that when there are complaints. When we’re inspecting facilities, our teams make decisions based on evidence. We talk to the residents and the staff; we look at patient and personnel records (including videotape); we observe facility practices and examine physical evidence. We require two forms of evidence to substantiate an issue. This practice helps us separate legitimate complaints and concerns from those that are baseless or intentionally fabricated.
We also receive dozens of reports every day as part of our regulatory oversight of all of our licensed facilities. We carefully and promptly evaluate each report and respond accordingly. Many of the reports that we receive are routine and pose no health or safety problem. When we receive a report that could pose an immediate safety concern, we send staff to the facility immediatelylike we did with an assisted living facility over the weekend.
Successful residential treatment facilities are pro-active, follow their policies and procedures without fail, are meticulous in reporting and documentation, and seek ongoing education. They’re not afraid to admit a mistake. Our job is not just to ensure that facilities comply with our standards, but also to maximize their effectiveness. That’s why our licensing teams also focus on ways to improve our licensed facilities.
Unlike newspaper reporting, our actions as an agency must be based in fact and rooted in the evidence demonstrated by a comprehensive review of the facility. Folks can view factual information about the more than 7,400 facilities licensed by the Arizona Department of Health Services by visiting www.azcarecheck.com.
Troubled Teens: At Risk, and Not Overlooked.
I MEAN, HONESTLY, DOESN'T IT SEEM TO YOU THAT THIS GUY COULD COME UP WITH SOMETHING OTHER THAN A DUST HOLE CHEAP SPIN OFF OF THE ALREADY PUBLISHED TITLE SPECIFIC TO THESE MATTERS? IS HE REALLY THIS BIG OF A BOZO? OH, WAIT, WHO AM I KIDDING- OF COURSE HE IS! I SOMETIMES FORGET EVER SO SLIGHTLY HOW RADICALLY OUT OF WHACK THE CONDITIONS AT THE ARIZONA STATE HOSPITAL ARE, AND IF I AM NOT CAREFUL, I RISK LOSING SIGHT OF THE UNDENIABLE TRAIL OF CRUMBS THAT DENOTES PRECISELY HOW AND WHY SUCH A STATE OF SUBSTANDARD HEALTH CARE COULD POSSIBLY EXIST AT THIS DAY IN AGE.ONLY A BOZO COULD SIT AT THE TOP OF SUCH A DISASTER SCENE.
IN CLOSING: The Arizona Child Protection Services (CPS) agency, which operates under the authority of the state's department of economic security, took a barrage of serious hits following the tragic deaths of a number of at risk children whom that agency had failed to, well, failed to protect. Pretty ugly stuff at the time, and the final details on that whole comedy of tragedies have yet to come in. Well, sometime last summer, I wrote a letter to Mr. Humble specific to an intuitive sense of anticipation that I felt when reading about the problems in CPS, as well as posted comments on his blog in the same regard, as follows: I humbly warned Mr. Humble that if he did not want to find himself immersed in the same ocean of hot water that CPS's director (Clarence Carter) is in, then he (Humble) might want to rethink his unwillingness to meaningfully respond to the numerous reports flowing his way from people like myself (a former ASH patient), ASH staff (current and former, many of whom have been vocal in providing Humble with feel detailed concerns about their own safety), state level advocates such as John Gallagher (formerly with the ADHS Office of Human Rights), and so on. But did he so much as flinch at the time? Of course he didn't! It is not in his nature. It is not in the nature of any of these people, and this is precisely why they can no longer be trusted. Will Humble and every other administrative employee of ADHS/BHS/ASH who I have to date identified by name are in compete violation of the public trust at this very time! There is no room anymore for their denials, no allowance on the table for continued bullshit thrown in the faces of Arizona's tax paying citizens, for they have disqualified themselves from being trusted. It is, simply stated, too late, and no degree of backpedaling or trail covering is gong to get these bastards out of it this time.
paoloreed@gmail.com
