Monday, August 16, 2010

July 2010 - Wedding Anniversary and 12 new piglets

Ron & I are finally taking a well- earned break from training & concentrating on our kids & the croft this month.

This is just as well as on the 1st of July which was our 10th wedding anniversary our big pig “Spotty” gave birth to 12 beautiful piglets and this weekend our other big pig “Pinky” has given birth to 9. So we are going to be very busy over the next 8 weeks.

This is the first summer we will actually spend July on the island, usually we are dashing off to Australia for work. This year I will be going at the end of July for 5 weeks leaving Ron in charge of the croft & kids.
So after celebrating our wedding anniversary with a fantastic party with friends & all of our kids we now have the Hebfest to look forward to this week.

It will be interesting to see over the next few months how the government proceeds with mental health policy. Apart from the fact that very little training is being funded at the moment, I wonder how the notion of recovery will fair. Richard Warner showed clearly in his book recovery from schizophrenia that in years of economic decline the rates of recovery tend to go down, possible related to lack of job opportunities. Will they still pursue a policy of encouraging people with mental health problems back to work when there are so few jobs, & companies can pick & choose who they employ.
If there was ever a time where a well being agenda is important though it is now, when so many young peoples self esteem is at an all time low, unable to get jobs trapped on low benefits in substandard accommodation. My own daughter at last got a job as a youth support worker on a 6 month contract- her first proper job, first thing to hit was that her partner would loose all benefits and that they will be worse off than if she stayed unemployed which seems ludicrous, then 2 weeks into the job she has been told the project is to close down in 3 months & she will be made redundant. The world must seem a very cruel place.



Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.

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