Latest news with #O'Kane
Sunday Post
11-05-2025
- Health
- Sunday Post
Health boards failing to do vital checks for adults with learning disabilities
Get a weekly round-up of stories from The Sunday Post: Thank you for signing up to our Sunday Post newsletter. Something went wrong - please try again later. Sign Up Three years after the Scottish Government promised health checks for every adult with learning disabilities to save lives and prevent a repeat of the Margaret Fleming scandal, some health boards have failed to deliver any. Others have not even identified half of the 40,000 people who are eligible, with just 2,573 checks completed according to the latest figures. MSP Paul O'Kane and campaigners are warning that people are now dying from treatable illnesses because of the shambolic failed roll-out of the service bankrolled by an extra £6 million in public funding. Margaret Fleming, 19, was murdered in Inverkip, Inverclyde, in 1999 after she was placed in the care of Eddie Cairns and Avril Jones, who collected £200,000 in benefits while health and care officials failed to check on the teen for almost 20 years. Labour MSP O'Kane said: 'What happened to Margaret is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of some people with learning disabilities. 'The Scottish Government have broken every promise to this community who've had to fight for the support and care they are entitled to. 'The rollout of these health checks has been shambolic. Hardly any have been completed, and almost half those who should be entitled to the service have not been identified. 'Some health boards say they haven't been given enough funding.' Up to 17,000 of the most vulnerable remain 'invisible' like Margaret Fleming, at risk of falling through the cracks because health boards do not have them on their lists. O'Kane said: 'If health boards have no idea just who these people are, how on Earth are some of our most vulnerable people ever going to get the health checks they need?' Research shows people with learning disabilities have a life expectancy of 20 years less than the general population and are nine times more likely to die of a treatable illness. O'Kane said: 'Some health boards haven't even started carrying out checks, and we suspect others are so hard-pressed, they've been using their share of annual £2m extra funding to shore up other services.' In a letter to health chiefs in January, Mental Wellbeing Minister Maree Todd said: 'My expectation is that all health boards in Scotland will be delivering annual health checks by March 31, 2025, and implementation is completed during 2025-26.' But figures from the end of last year revealed several health boards including NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Shetland have not even started. Greater Glasgow & Clyde, which has around 13,000 adults with learning disabilities, completed 939 health checks, while NHS Lothian, with 7,000 eligible adults, completed 231. Dumfries and Galloway, with 1,300, completed four. With 2,000 eligible adults, NHS Fife has offered 580. Caroline Cameron, health and social care director of NHS Ayrshire & Arran, said while they completed 760 checks, reductions in funding have forced the health board to 'pause' the scheme. She said: 'Further work will be undertaken to explore alternative models to deliver on the ambition of an annual health check alongside the delivery of core services.' NHS Forth Valley said it piloted the health check scheme but would not confirm how many checks have been completed. NHS Highland, with 1,200 people eligible, completed 139. Jenny Miller, of disability charity PAMIS, said: 'People are dying today because they haven't been treated for serious conditions which are overlooked because of their learning disabilities. 'Many in our community have conditions like cerebral palsy or neurological disorders which make it difficult for them to communicate, so there is a very real danger that serious conditions are not being caught.' Eddie McConnell, chief executive of Down's Syndrome Scotland, said: 'We were delighted when the government announced annual health checks, describing it as a game- changer which could save many lives. 'The fact that so many of our community have still not received their health check three years on means we, as a society, are accepting that people with learning disabilities will continue to die prematurely from complications that are largely avoidable and preventable.' Todd said: 'The Scottish Government is providing funding to NHS boards to deliver this vital policy. Health checks are now being delivered to thousands across Scotland, bringing positive results. 'However, whilst there is good progress in some areas, progress in other areas needs to improve and this requires leadership and commitment at a local level. We will continue to work closely with NHS boards to support the change we expect to see.' What happened to Margaret Fleming shocked Scotland, sparking a major review which warned that vulnerable others could be easily harmed and targeted after she 'disappeared' and nobody noticed. Bafta-winning filmmaker Lorraine McKechnie, whose film on the teen's disappearance highlighted major inadequacies in the system, said: 'It was unbearably shocking that the system which was supposed to protect her actually allowed her to become invisible for almost 20 years. 'This dreadful episode showed exactly why it is vital that we as a society look out for each other, and all adults who are seen as vulnerable receive annual health checks and proper support if we are we ever to prevent a repeat of such a case.' Predators Cairney and Jones murdered Margaret, 19, in 1999 at their Inverkip home. The teenager had been placed in their care, but no officials checked on her as the evil pair collected her benefits of almost £200,000. Cairney, 82, died in prison in 2023 without ever revealing where Margaret's body had been taken.
Glasgow Times
11-05-2025
- Business
- Glasgow Times
Campaigner hits out at politicians over bank closure near Glasgow
The Main Street branch of Bank of Scotland (BoS) in Barrhead is set to shut on May 21 with its cash machine also to disappear. As the clock runs down towards this date, Sean Clerkin, the founder of the Save the Last Bank Campaign, has urged politicians to 'pull their finger out' and do something about the impending closure. He said: 'I met with Renfrewshire South MSP Tom Arthur weeks ago and he said he would get back in a week with an update but weeks later we have not had a single update from him. 'We have had meetings with councillor Danny Devlin and West Scotland MSP Paul O'Kane but (fellow Labour politician) Blair McDougall, East Renfrewshire's MP, never came to the meetings or tried to make contact with our group. 'The bottom line is time is running out and as a community we are very disappointed in the politicians so far. 'They have not done anything that has resulted in anything. 'They should be ashamed in themselves.' READ NEXT: Politicians to meet with bank officials to express community anger Responding to Sean's comments, Mr McDougall and Mr O'Kane outlined the action they have taken since the closure was announced, including a petition which attracted 5,000 signatures and writing letters to Lloyd's banking group opposing the closure. Mr O'Kane also said he had written to LINK, the UK's cash machine network, to seek clarity on their rationale for recommending the closure and to urge the body to review the impact assessment it made. Furthermore, he said the pair have also held a meeting with Lloyds officials to highlight their dissatisfaction with LINK's impact assessment of the branch closure and have called on the bank to prevent compulsory redundancies. READ NEXT: 'Utterly unacceptable': Residents urged to sign petition to save town's last bank Mr O'Kane said: 'From the first day of the closure being announced I opposed it to Bank of Scotland. 'When it became clear that they would not change course, I vowed to do everything that I can to ensure access to services in Barrhead. 'I will continue to pursue every solution working with Cllr Devlin on a credit union and pressing for access to more post office banking services which I believe could be a welcome alternative for local people. 'Blair McDougall, Cllr Devlin and I have been very clear that we would welcome all partners to work with us to secure a credit union and more post office banking services.' Blair McDougall MP, Councillor Danny Devlin and Paul O'Kane MSP outside the bank (Image: Sourced) Mr McDougall added: "I have organised a petition with hundreds of local people from Barrhead which has been presented to the bank, I have met with the bank, I have met with government ministers, and I have written to LINK multiple times regarding the need to a community banking hub in Barrhead. "I will continue to work tirelessly to make sure that Barrhead does not become a banking desert. "Mr Clerkin's time would be better spent putting pressure on the bank rather than attacking a local representative who is leading efforts to save it.' Cllr Devlin and Mr Arthur have been contacted for comment.
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
City of Danville Public Works Committee votes to recommend changing voting rules
Danville's City Council is made up of 14 alderpersons, two from each ward. But according to Alderwoman Sherry Pickering, only five City Council meetings in 2024 were attended by all 14 members. To combat this attendance issue, members of the Public Works Committee debated Tuesday about making a change to Chapter 31 of Danville's City Code, which would make it easier for the council to pass proposals regardless how many members are in attendance. As it stands now, eight votes are required to pass a proposal. The Public Works Committee voted in favor of recommending the City Council change Chapter 31, making it so that only seven votes are required. Alderman-elect Doug Ahrens — who will be sworn in alongside other new members May 6 — spoke during the Public Comment section, saying that making such a change would 'diminish the role and the authority of aldermen that are the closest representatives to the people.' 'For the past 35 to 37 years, that's how it's worked. Everybody's known that it takes eight to get the job done, and sometimes you win, sometimes you don't. But that is the standards that were established, and I would hate to see the standards lowered,' Ahrens said. 'If aldermen can't get to the meetings, they shouldn't get paid. 'These meetings are when aldermen serve their role to represent their constituents and make votes that matter... Sometimes, if we have elected officials who aren't able to serve the role, it's time to step down.' Half of the council makes $225 a month, regardless how many meetings they attend, while the other half, who were more recently elected, make $350 a month, according to Public Works Committee Chairman Mike Puhr. In order to withhold pay for lack of attendance or change the pay system so that alderpersons are paid per meeting, the full council would have to vote on making such a change to the city's code, according to Mayor Rickey Williams, Jr. Puhr spoke about the history of the issue, saying it had been discussed several times in the past few years, in part because the council was misinformed, he said, by previous Corporate Counsel. 'We were informed by the previous corporate counsel that we could operate on a majority of a quorum of aldermen present. We found out later that wasn't true, and since we don't have our own rules in place, it causes us then to have to go by the dictate of the state,' Puhr said. Alderman Mike O'Kane was opposed to making the change. 'I think this is a knee-jerk reaction to somebody not having a vote going their way on occasion,' O'Kane said. 'I still believe in the eighth vote. It makes us work harder … It helps the majority of our members ensure decisions reflect the view of the broader body of the whole Council, not just a handful that show up, not a small minority.' O'Kane was also against a portion of the proposed change which would have given the mayor a vote in certain circumstances. 'If less than the full City Council are present, a measure, ordinance, or resolution will pass with seven affirmative votes. The mayor may cast an eighth or seventh vote to pass a measure, ordinance, or resolution, whether or not the vote of the aldermen has resulted in a tie; or when a vote greater than a majority of the City Council is required by state statute or City ordinance to adopt an ordinance, resolution, or measure. The mayor shall not cast a vote if such vote would result in a tie,' the proposed change read. 'The people of the City of Danville did not vote for a mayor who could vote. They voted for him to run the city and the councilmen run the meetings and do the legislation, not him doing both. That'd be like if the president was going to the Congress and voting. It's just not right,' O'Kane said. Williams asserted that the change was not his idea, but one brought to him by Puhr and other council members. 'I was not a part of this committee. After they came to their conclusions, they did show it to me, but I was not a part of this committee,' Williams said, adding that he 'does not care either way.' Alderwoman Carolyn Wands supported the change, saying the Council was 'here to do business.' 'I've been at some [meetings] where where it's been very hard to to pass something … and I feel like we need to make some changes,' Wands said. 'I'm for this, basically because we've got to do business. We're put here to do business, not put it off. And I think too many times, things have been tabled and sent back.' A far as the possibility of sick alderpersons attending meetings virtually, via video call or conference call, Williams said the current city hall building is not equipped for such technology. 'It's not a lack of desire, it's a lack of not having it. And given that we're gonna move within a year, we don't want to invest in the new technology to make it better,' Williams said. Aside from ensuring working technology, the City Council would also have to apply to the Attorney General's office for permission to allow alderpersons to attend virtually, and each physical absence would have to be approved. Moreover, there are some stipulations that require a quorum of physical attendees in order to pass proposals, Williams said. The decision of changing Chapter 31 will be left up to the City Council to decide at their next meeting Tuesday, April 15.
BBC News
04-03-2025
- BBC News
PSNI data breach: Christopher Paul O'Kane denies terrorism charges
A Londonderry man has denied terrorism offences linked to a major data breach by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).Christopher Paul O'Kane, 52, of Iniscarn Road in Derry, appeared at Belfast Crown Court on Tuesday to be arraigned on four charges under the Terrorism pleaded not guilty to preparation of terrorism acts and possessing articles in the use of terrorism, namely two mobile phones, an encrypted USB device and a laptop. He also denied possessing two spreadsheets containing details of serving PSNI officers and offences are alleged to have been committed on dates between 7 August 2023 and 19 August 2023. Mr O'Kane also pleaded not guilty to viewing YouTube videos relating to improvised explosive devices between 1 August 2023 and 19 August 2023. The data breach happened in August 2023, when the PSNI released the names of thousands of staff and officers by mistake, under a Freedom of Information (FoI) list included the surname and first initial of every employee. It also included their rank or grade, where they are based and the unit in which they work. The accused twice refused to stand during proceedings on Tuesday and Mr Justice Fowler told the court clerk to proceed with the arraignment as Mr O'Kane sat in the dock.A lawyer for Mr O'Kane asked the court for three weeks to lodge a defence also told the judge there would be "very significant early witness agreement in the case'' and that he would forward that to the prosecution in due said an independent expert is to be retained to examine two mobile phones which were allegedly found in Mr O'Kane's bedroom during a police date for the non-jury trial was set and Mr Justice Fowler said he would review the case in April.
The Guardian
09-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Can we break the anxiety habit?
Key work events make me anxious. They give me chest pain, a churning stomach and disrupted sleep; my thoughts run through all the mistakes I could make and replay every bad experience in my past. Why put myself through this, I reason, which inevitably means that when, say, a high-stakes meeting is on the horizon, those feelings are worse, more intense, more prolonged. It's a vicious cycle and one I admit early on when interviewing the anxiety expert Owen O'Kane. O'Kane doesn't seem surprised and why should he be? I bet everyone tells him about their anxiety. My dread, avoidance and catastrophising interior monologue are bog-standard these days: research by the Mental Health Foundation in 2023 found that 60% of UK adults reported experiencing 'anxiety that interfered with their daily lives in the past two weeks'. We're anxious about global geopolitics, the climate and the cost of living; our health, jobs, relationships and what strangers think of us. It takes children out of school and adults out of work. It's an uneasy background thrum everywhere, something I have assumed to be a product of our ill-adapted, threat-seeking brains being constantly confronted with every terrible thing in the world through the shiny rectangles clutched in our sweaty hands (US psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt recently characterised a whole demographic of smartphone natives as 'the anxious generation'). So the title of O'Kane's latest book, Addicted to Anxiety, and the question it poses ('Have you ever considered you might be addicted to anxiety?') feel sort of confronting. Is O'Kane saying our anxiety is our own fault? He doesn't look like a provocateur when he logs on to Zoom – his sweet dog is slumbering in the corner and there's collage art reading 'Love is the answer' on the wall behind him – so I wonder, did he have any, well, anxiety, about how it would be received? 'I really agonised about the book and the title,' he says. 'Then when I started to write it, I said, no, I believe whole-heartedly this is the book I want to write.' He's aware it might sound tough. 'Did I want people to stop and think and did I want them to catch their breath for a moment? Yes, 100%. Because I don't think there's enough of that. There are so many false promises about healing your anxiety forever, never worry again… There's so much bullshit out there; I just think I don't want to be part of that.' O'Kane has seen enough anxiety to know we need something better than the 'bullshit'. In his career as an NHS lead psychotherapist, he saw soaring levels of anxiety both in practice and reported in his reading. ('It was really clear that the research was telling us more and more people are anxious, younger population groups, older population groups and everything in between.') He also observed it in his personal life. 'With family members, with people I meet in the street, talking about their kids struggling, or their husband…' His 'aha' moment in terms of framing anxiety as an addiction came when he was running a small NHS anxiety group, which was making promising progress. He told the group that he noticed everyone seemed to be doing well, 'I fed back the changes and noticed there was this deadly silence in the room. Then someone joked: 'That's made me a bit frightened that you said that.'' Another man, a former drug addict, jumped in. 'He said: 'Bloody hell, I thought it was hard to give up the drugs. But this is bloody addictive.' The minute he said that, everyone in the group laughed, so they got it. And the thing was, I also got it. I thought, this is the one thing we don't talk about enough. We talk about the ways you think, what happens in the body when you're anxious, we talk about the process, but we never really think about that attachment to anxiety.' O'Kane is at pains to stress that anxiety in itself is not bad: throughout the book, he describes the importance of treating the 'anxious self' with compassion and gratitude. 'It's an important part of our humanity,' he says, and welcoming it rather than pushing it away creates a sense of ease and understanding; it's just doing its job, after all. 'Anxiety is designed to protect us and keep us safe. Without that mechanism, we would get into all sorts of bother,' he says. In his own life, growing up in Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, anxiety was 'about survival', he explains. 'To let your guard down or not be cautious or not be watching out for the next problem did lead to actual and real danger.' But for him, and for anyone inclined to or wired for high levels of anxiety, it's easy to end up with 'a mechanism that will just keep playing out threat, threat, threat'. So we're all anxious beings and circumstances or susceptibilities make us more so, but what makes anxiety addictive? 'It's not an official diagnosis,' O'Kane acknowledges in the book. 'There are no 12-step programmes for anxiety addiction.' But anxiety does have a lot in common with mainstream addictions which, he says, 'come with a promise: I will make you feel better; I will stay with you; I will get you out of this situation; I will take away your pain.' The mechanisms of anxiety, he argues, make similarly big promises. 'I will protect you; I will keep you safe; I will stop bad things from happening. So, who wouldn't want that? Who wouldn't think that's a really good thing to stay attached to?' There's a sort of magical thinking involved: we believe our anxiety is essential to keep us safe, so we get hooked on the feelings, sensations and thoughts – the altered state, actually – it creates in us. Anxious people don't 'wake up each day thinking 'I need my anxiety hit,'' he writes, but they do 'attach to their anxiety as if it's a safety blanket.' It's odd to think of what anxiety provokes in the body and the mind – unpleasant physical symptoms, irrational thoughts, self-sabotaging behaviours – as comforting, addictive coping mechanisms, but that's what they are, O'Kane suggests. They offer short-term relief from threat. 'I can guarantee nothing will go wrong if you avoid that dinner party; I can promise you that you won't feel rejected if you don't apply for that other job. Those promises are alluring. But, of course, the problem is, the more hooked and attached you become, then the bigger the anxiety becomes and you get caught in this almost circular loop.' So how do you break that cycle? The book provides a step-by-step guide, helping sufferers to acknowledge and accept their anxious selves, offering DIY techniques for deactivating their physical symptoms, accepting the emotions they are experiencing and detaching from anxious thoughts. Perhaps the most muscular part of the process is tackling what O'Kane calls the 'rascals' – the behavioural strategies that offer short-term relief, but actually strengthen your anxiety longer term. These might include making excuses not to confront or do things that make you anxious, getting angry, impatient or argumentative, using substances to dull your anxious feelings, resorting to compulsive behaviours and rituals or constantly seeking reassurance from others. Why do they need a firm hand? 'I guess the robustness is because your anxious self needs to know that you're in charge. Anxiety is a really powerful mechanism. It's a life-saving mechanism, so it's not weak. Negotiating with it has to be equally strong.' This is where the language of addiction is most helpful, O'Kane says, 'because most habits are addictive'. The parallels with addiction and recovery break down for O'Kane around the notion of powerlessness. The whole book – subtitled How to Break the Habit – is about precisely how much power we have over anxiety. 'It's about breakthroughs,' as O'Kane puts it. He has reservations about the notion of powerlessness in mainstream addiction treatment anyway, though he understands people find it useful. But with anxiety, the narrative of powerlessness is particularly unhelpful. 'When it comes to this, you're not.' His own story is proof of that. In addition to spending his formative years in, effectively, a war zone, O'Kane describes in the book and in a very moving TED talk he gave in 2022, the fear, shame and pain of growing up in Northern Ireland both gay and Catholic and being ferociously bullied and humiliated. In one anecdote in the talk, he describes being called queer and spat on by a group of boys, then instructed by a passer-by to 'wipe that off quickly before anyone sees you'. He landed in adulthood, he says, with 'primal, hardwired responses to look out for threat even when it's not there.' Rebuilding a positive, functional relationship with his anxious self came through therapy and his psychotherapy training; he maintains it with 'healthy choices'. O'Kane says he's 'unapologetic' about his wellbeing now: he eats well, maintains good sleep hygiene, plays the piano, walks his dog, exercises and meditates daily, a practice he describes as 'a safety check'. He regularly reminds himself: 'Whatever is going on in my life, I'm not that thought, I'm not that emotional state, I'm not my ego, I'm not the fear.' Recovery, he says, is also about 'not over-attaching to my story'. That's apparent when I say I found some of those anecdotes very sad. 'I see them differently,' he says. 'I just try and see it as, OK, that was my experience and my story… then I had to salvage what I could from that.' His experiences deeply inform his practice, of course, and his special interest in anxiety; he returns often to the phrase 'walking the walk' to describe that. O'Kane didn't need to include his story at all. He's a highly respected professional and a bestselling author with a public profile; on the book cover Davina McCall calls him 'A force for good', and Scottish singer Lewis Capaldi, who has Tourette Syndrome and suffers from anxiety, a 'Huge help'. But, he writes, he didn't want to be the 'Big Man', in Northern Irish parlance; the lofty expert. Why was that important? 'It's a big ask, to ask people to explore their own humanity and to make changes in their life,' he says. 'If I'm not willing to give some of me in that, I shouldn't be doing the job.' I find his writing generous, wise and very persuasive, particularly his description of anxiety as an 'intolerance of uncertainty': he identifies it as a compulsion to control; a focus on past and future to the detriment of the now. But – and it's probably the rascally part of me asserting itself – I occasionally found myself thinking as I read, isn't anxiety an appropriate response to the state of the world and a mark of caring about it? If we're not desperately anxious about everything around us all the time, won't that stop us from taking action? 'The climate is what it is,' O'Kane writes at one point, but does it have to be? 'I never advocate avoidance,' he says. 'The book isn't, 'It's all lovely, let's pretend it's not happening'; it's about, 'We work with what is.'' It would be 'sociopathic' he says, not to be distressed by, for example, the recent LA fires, 'but it would be equally unhealthy if I spend every moment of my day worrying about that – then I miss so many other parts of life.' Nice as it would be to see anxiety as reflective of selfless concern for the world, in his experience, he believes, 'For somebody who struggles with anxiety, it's never driven by altruism; it's driven by almost an obsession to try and control what's happening.' There's a danger, too, he says of trying to 'justify a highly anxious existence based on the state of the world. If the world's chaotic and we're operating from an internal chaotic state, two negatives don't make a positive.' The aim, rather, is to work on creating what he calls 'a steady inner platform' to manage whatever the external world throws at us. In service of that, Addicted to Anxiety includes a list of 'lifestyle stabilisers' including the likes of 'get enough sleep' and 'try to work in environments you enjoy (there is always choice if you explore it carefully).' This is self-evidently sensible advice, but is it always accessible to everyone? I know anxious insomniacs who would love to get enough sleep and work is about economic necessity above fulfilment for most of us. O'Kane's list is evidence-based, he counters; science shows this stuff makes a difference. When it comes to work, 'I believe there are choices out there for every single person,' he says. 'I meet people who say, 'I really hate what I do' and they languish and they stay in it, and I say, 'I have to be that voice for you: if you're prepared to stay in that situation at the cost of your wellbeing and health, that's a choice you're making.'' In jobs he's hated, he says, 'I've always made the decision, even though it hasn't always been comfortable or practical to move and do something different. I've done it because I thought, I'm not compromising. I guess with a lot of these things, when you work in palliative care for 10 years…' This, I think, is really the inarguable core of his writing: O'Kane has the urgent perspective of someone who has seen, again and again, that life really is too short: 'Way too short to play these games with ourselves.' He's helped 20-year-olds with months to live make decisions about how they want to spend their final days, which gives him a powerful certainty that there's always a choice. That's really the message of this book – we don't have to remain in thrall to anxiety; we have choices. 'So much of this is about getting out of your own way.' Addicted to Anxiety by Owen O'Kane is published by Penguin at £18.99. Buy it for £17.09 from
