Virginia Human Services Training

I did two weeks in Virginia Human Services Training at Piedmont
Virginia Community College before withdrawing from classes. After the
first week, Cynthia Harrison, the director of the program, pulled me
aside and lectured me on how she would not be able to recommend me for
employment unless I changed my outlook. I had spoken my mind before the
board of directors of the local community services board, and of this
she did not approve. I had also given my thoughts to a consumer of mental
health services in her employ on taking psych drugs, and this worried
her. Going into the second week of classes I was talking attitude
readjustment in an effort to placate her and get on her good side.
Ultimately I decided the course was not for me. I was not going to be a
cheerleader, lifting and shaking pompoms, for the local community services
board and the state agency.

Merely teaching “consumers” to be “providers” or mental health care
staff is not of necessity developing a recovery approach to mental
health treatment. Some of the teachers in this course in fact were openly
hostile to concepts put forward by the recovery movement. If the
transformation in mental health care services mandated by the federal
government is to be anything more than farce, the role of staff will
also have to change in a more fundamental way. Believe in empowerment?
Not in this program. You are staff until you clock out, and then you
can start “consuming”. Do you want a solidly middleclass existence?
Dream on! After completing this six month course a person will be earning
no more than a “peer support specialist” does after finishing a two week
training session. Apparently you won’t be considered in the same league or
even live in the same neighborhood as administrative and management
personnel.

I was told that if I was employed by the community services board it
would probably be on a Program for Assertive Community Treatment or
PACT team, a program that I am not particularly partial to, and part of
this job might entail delivering psych drugs to the “consumers” for
whom they had been prescribed. I could say nothing to the “consumer”
about the potential dangers involved in taking these drugs without
jeopardizing my position. I was to be at the mercy of the will of the
psychiatrist in this endeavor. As I am not interested in teaching
helplessness and in this manner encouraging dependency; and as I am not
interested in physically harming those people I would have been working
with, I did not think I could in all honesty continue with this
training.

I had known a couple of people who had taken VHST and had gone on to
get good positions elsewhere. One was high up in the statewide consumer
organization, Virginia Organization of Consumers Asserting Leadership,
and the other was a consumer advocate for the local community services
board. I don’t think of this program as a good way of climbing up the
ladder to success, and I think it should be discontinued. I hate to
think of the number of people who could have been damaged, and the
extent to which that damage may have occurred, while these people were
making their career moves. As long as ethical concerns are suppressed
in the curriculum, VHST is not the kind of training program we, or
anybody else for that matter, need. When you come up with a training
program that is good for people, call me and I will listen to what you
have to say. Let me conclude this piece by reiterating, VHST is not that
program.

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