In many care settings I visit, primarily in the field of children, different systems are being used to reward good behaviour. The simplest ones are about getting a biscuit if you go for a walk, and the most complex ones are made up of smileys or coins you can get …
For some years I have been thinking about how we use certain diagnoses. One of the diagnoses used in very different ways is the diagnosis oppositional defiant disorder, ODD. Often when I ask colleagues why they’ve made the diagnosis I get the reply that the child met the criteria. That’s …
Sometimes I meet staff who’ve been involved in a situation that didn’t turn out very well. They may have used a restraint like straps or belts or another physical intervention, or perhaps just set a limit they felt wasn’t right afterwards. Perhaps they’ve taken a mobile from a service-user or …
Last year I was in northern Sweden and lectured. There I met a colleague, Daniel Påhlsson, who liked my car metaphors. So he gave me a wonderful car metaphor that even has its own sketch. It hardly gets any better! I thank and bow and write this blog post. All …
Sometimes I get a parking ticket. Sometimes because I’ve parked too long, sometimes because I’ve missed a sign (it is difficult with date zone parking right?) and sometimes because I’ve taken the risk. That’s how it is. But I have discovered that when you get a parking ticket people have …
Sometimes I meet staff who have entered into a heightened safety awareness. They describe the people they work with as being dangerous and are constantly on their guard. They might remove anything that you could hurt yourself with or that might be thrown. I do not deny that people with …
The American philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written a wonderful book with great relevance for psychiatric care, general care and school settings. It’s called Frontiers of Justice. In the book she says that all pedagogy and care is about removing autonomy. We do this when we decide that the person we …
There are many different ways to describe autism. Some of the ways we normally use are actually diagnostic criteria, which are not always pedagogically relevant. Therefore, I distinguish between defining symptoms (used in diagnostics) and descriptive symptoms (which provide more information and often are pedagogically relevant to a greater degree). …
Recently I was asked to comment on some architectural drawings of a school to be built in a municipality in Skåne. The school has students from preschool to sixth grade. The five youngest classes would have their classrooms on the ground floor and the sixth-graders a small, secluded area on …
The american philosopher Martha Nussbaum wrote a wonderful book of great relevance in psychiatry, care and education. It´s called Frontiers of Justice. In it she claims that all care concerning people with disabilities is centered around the limitation of people´s autonomy. We limit people´s autonomy when we decide they should brush …