For those of you who don’t know me, I was a registered nurse turned specialist mental health social worker
, latterly working as an independent trainer of the law that supports and protects adults in Scotland.
2020 saw unprecedented blanket approaches applied to risk management such as lockdowns which have been shown to cause more harm than the presenting risk of developing covid-19 as a result of infection from SARS-CoV-2. The majority of the population were terrified into believing we were all at equal risk of severe illness or death, including children who were at virtually no risk at all. I argued vocifericly that lockdowns and other non pharmaceutical interventions such as masks, isolation polices and social distancing had no sound evidence base and would impact on the physical, mental, social and economic health of the nation.
Along with the thousands of others who urged colleagues and heads of organisations to challenge these illogical government policies, my voice has mainly fallen on deaf ears. I was however in good company with the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration who offered an alternative to lockdowns but were dismissed and now proved right.
Risk management is the bread and butter of social work practice, yet social workers were silenced into submission with public health policies which usurped evidence based practice. Public health is about all health matters and not just a single disease such as covid-19. Public health policies can be harmful in themselves as has proved to be true.
Life has returned to relative normality for most but residual risk averse polices with no evidence base pervade in health and social care settings; testing, isolations and mask wearing, all of which have the potential to cause harm if left unchallenged.
I’ll post here my emails to health and social care organisations that have fallen on deaf ears and published articles, some of which have possibly made a difference for the people who need support and protection from harm. I’ll include links to the work of the brave professionals who’ve challenge the official narrative but faced censorship on mainstream and social media.
Mostly however, I’d like this to be a resource for practitioners to access evidence based information to inform their practice and to encourage the balanced debates that have been prevented since Spring 2020.