Lacking Insight - Community Law

Lacking Insightthe way the hearing is conducted to make it aspositive a therapeutic experience as possible, tobe particularly conscious about language, to beconscious of the questioning, to try and have asfar as possible open-ended questions so thatthere is an opportunity for somebody to ventilateand to tell you what they thought was important.But then there is the whole issue of training,stating the obvious, you need training about thelegislation and what the impact of taking awaysomebody’s liberty is, there is training about themedical issues . . . I mean for me it would be a lotof input and stuff about training because it is abouthow to behave, how to communicate and how torecognise your own behaviour.Former Board President andFormer Public AdvocateI think there also should be some [information]about aggressive behaviour and violentbehaviour and how they can cope with that.Also, [information] about foul language, violentlanguage and how they should be able to copewith that. People need to know they may upsetpeople and they have to accept that. Also anintroduction on how to cope with the mostbizarre cases which some people cannot copewith. Anything can happen. I think also sometraining about how to communicate with respectto violent people, so they understand what yousay and you allow for them to grasp that you arethere to help. And people should be treated asnormal people, like anyone else, with respect anddignity and with support . . .Senior Psychiatrist“I think they also needtraining in relation to therole of advocates, both legaland non-legal advocates andsupport persons. Perhapssome training on some basichuman civil rights and theimportance of conceptslike natural justice, thosesorts of things.”Legal RepresentativeOther stakeholders emphasise the importance ofpositive affirmation, so that when the circumstanceswarrant it, the person attending the hearing ispresented with a favourable view of the situation.One case that I had that, I mean it wasan afterthought, but I think my client reallyappreciated it and it came from the communitymember. He was not discharged but this clienthad had a longstanding addiction to marijuanaand . . . he had given up marijuana after longterm use and had stopped it for about a year,and the community member, you know, sort ofcongratulated [him]. [It] wasn’t congratulations ina patronising way, you know, [the member] saidwhat progress he made and how difficult it musthave been for him to give up the marijuana. Soeven though the decision was against him, hewalked out of there sort of looking pretty proud of82