Welcome to Mondays

Everything goes forward

Corner of the living room.  We don't
have a clock in the house, but if we
did we would probably put it here
and we would probably remembered
to put it an hour forward

I have decided to move the blog posts forward to Monday.  The clocks have gone forward, so logically so must the blog.

I think there is a way of subscribing to the blog so that you know when a new one comes out.  Otherwise, just assume it is Monday evening.

Check out previous Romania blogs on http://www.vfmh.org.uk/ where you can also read more about the charity including how to donate money etc.

Club Activities

I love the pictures this female patient
does.  When she first came down she
was always quite agitated and grabbed
and 'stole' anything she could find. She
now always greets us with a hug and
loves to do artwork.  She is so fluid,
quick and colour perfect.

It is very frustrating, but understandable, that I can't post pictures of activities in the club that make it possible to identify patients. However, I have just figured out how to crop pictures, so have included a load in this blog to give some small indication of the sort of things we get up to.

There is an amount of 'paranoia' regarding the absconding risk of patients. - I use the 'p' word deliberately as almost everyone seems to have a diagnosis of 'paranoid schitzophrenia'.  We are always being told how important it is to sign patients in and out of the wards and to ensure they don't 'escape' etc.  This morning, before the first session, there was a polite knock at the door and one of the male patients from the closed ward walked in, sat at one of the tables and politely asked for a cup of coffee and a cigarette (in Romanian).  We walked him back up to the ward where staff did not seem at all concerned an simply said, "Oh, he just went for a little walk".  This patient is quite new and was very agitated when he first came down to the VfMH clubroom.  He always wanted to go almost immediately.  It is really nice that when he dicided to 'abscond' he came straight to the club and treated it like a friendly cafe.  Unfortunately he only gets one hour per week at a scheduled time.

Remmy

A game of Remmy
see if you can work out who is
winning

No idea how you spell that word, and I can't be bothered to look it up.  You probably knwo a card game called 'rhummy' (not even sure if I've spelt that correctly) or '4 of one and 3 of another'.   Remmy is similar but with 14 pieces, rather than 7 cards.  The pieces are about domino sized.  It gets played a lot in the club. It is a great assessment tool and also good fun. The idea is to collect groups of three of more (you need at least one four) sets of either the same number with different colours, or a sequence of numbers of the same colour.  To make a move you either pick up the piece the previous player has left (face up) or a 'mystery' piece off the pile.  You then put a piece down for the next player etc.  Great for helping with social skills of turn taking. Also a good combination of luck and strategy to keep people with a wide variety of ability interested.  At first we only used it when patients expressed an interest. We now try and give everybody at last one or two goes - some people never pick it up, but even those games can be great fun.

Pictures

Jenga - also an excellent turn
taking game which can be great
for honing motor skills
That's Corina in the back with
a football doing some 1-2-1
work.

Table Tennis Doubles.  This is a
real action shot as I have managed
to actually hit the ball.  We have some
truly excellent players and one or two
who enjoy the game enormously in
their own delightful way

Pre-Valentines day
decorations going up
The clubroom never looks
dull!

Lots of mess - lots of glue and
glitter.  Some of the female patients
don't like getting messy at first -
but soon get into it.

You saw the finished products in an
earlier blog.  Here is some of the
process

Fantastic concentration

Anyway - that is enough for now.  You will see that most of the shots are of table work.  The weather is improving and we have made a few excursions outside with patients.

More next week.

Monday Remember!

Paul