Castle Painting

Interesting i think you would like to know-an almost exact replica is in the Kings Park high school senior cafeteria as i eat lunch there everyday i cant wonder but tto think if sum1 copied it or maybe enspired by the same creator it dates back to 51-gargoylez

Real nice... keep these kids locked in an asylum and make them a painting symbolizing Disneyland... a place where they'd never get to go.

Thank you, Mr. Motts. I agree it was pretty swell that someone actually tried to do something nice. A little while ago we were making negative comments because other places were too sterile and blank. Guess you're doggoned if you do, and goldurned if you don't. ;-)

On the other hand, I don't know whether this was actually a pediatric wing, but regardless, my experience has been that the majority of mural paintings such as this done in mental health facilities are done by the people who actually are living there at the time.

painting was done by patients as a form of therapy

WHERE IS THAT PAINTING...WHICH BUILDING

Adding colour to a bleak existance. Nothing wrong with that.

Sparking imagination is always good

If one can look at a painting, no matter how simple it might be, and have their imagination sparked...then it's worth it.

I think that this is symbolic of "Slipping off into LaLa Land".

My mother used to say "You're off in LaLa Land" when I wasn't paying attention.

Reddll that's what my riding instructor says whenever .. well all the time haha.

This picture really captures the beauty of the painting. Good shot Motts. Shows that just because you may have a disability, you also have an amazing gift.

It's a pretty nice painting and if a kid did it they had alot of skill for their age.

No children at KPPC for many a year before its closure......no pediatric ward

this is a great picture and some one probably took some time painting it so everyone......SHUT UP!

Im in my mid 30's and ive never been to Disney Land.

Why is it that all of these wall murals are so LAME ? ! ? ! ? !

All of these wall murals in all of these government run institutions look like they were painted by some Junior High School kid who did not any sort of proper and formal training in the arts at all.

There are no lines, no depth, no scale, no imagination and above all no classic beauty.

These pathetic paintings and the horrid bathrooms are just two of a long string of terrible injustices of which were inflicted upon these poor people.

Signed: An American Soldier stationed in Germany.

What do you want, a Rembrandt in every decrepit falling-apart institution? Most artwork in these sorts of places either come from inmates or workers, and neither probably have 'proper and formal training.'

(Well... maybe Van Gogh. Certainly crazy enough, but no 'classic beauty' either.)

Well Scolopendra; I guess that you are right about the wall murals and paintings. But still you do have to admit that there was and I am sure that there still is alot of abuse and mistreatment of the men, women and children who were and still are so called "taken care of by the State".

Signed: An American Soldier stationed in Germany.

[Caution: Rant ahead - please feel free to fast-forward to the next post.]

Joseph,

There is a lot of abuse everywhere. As a person whose job it is to prevent abuse in residential facilities and who has worked in 5 different residential facilities over the past 22 years, I am betting you there is a much smaller possibility of abuse in these places at the current time than there is almost anywhere else in the world.

I can personally vouch for that being the case at the facility where I currently work, or I wouldn't be there. Our staff have to examine everyone daily who lives in our facility when they assist them with their bathing routines (the people who live at the facility where I work have severe and profound intellectual & developmental disabilities and need a lot of assistance for bathing and other self-help activities). On a daily basis I personally see every report on every injury or accident that occurs to our 500+ people and if one shift misses reporting an injury (including inflamed hair follicles, pinpoint bruises, shaving nicks, mosquito bites, etc.), the next shift will almost always pick it up. And if they miss it and it is found later (yellow, aged bruise found that had not previously been reported) there is often hell to pay because whoever was responsible for the care of that person missed reporting an obvious injury. There can be no chance of on-going abuse such as occurs in many private homes because when one shift leaves there is another fresh set of eyes coming on, and every week the staff have days off so that a different person has a chance to work with and examine our folks on each shift on each of our 43 living areas.

Those of us in risk management each have an assigned section of campus to walk through at random times weekly on all three shifts (this includes weekends and holidays - I worked 6 days in a row this past week and filled in as a direct care staff for two 3-hour stretches because our staffing was low), and every shift of campus has an assigned shift supervisor who must walk through every living unit on their assigned sections every day on their shift. That means they do 1095 checks yearly. Every living area has registered nurses whose offices are on the living areas. It is not like the old days where they had glassed in nursing stations. The nurses have one of the living area bedrooms assigned to them that they have converted into an office, so they are right there when needed. Staff are not allowed to hide in offices, but must work "on the floor" alongside the folks who live there. Many of the professionals also have their offices on the same living area where their assigned folks live so we encourage interaction as much as possible.

I know 250 of the folks who live where I work by first name (and, more importantly, they know me) and I am familiar with the other 250 by case record or by face, and I have only been in my current position for 2 1/2 years. I read every nursing log on campus daily, I see every injury report on campus each day, and I assist my supervisor in deciding which ones need investigation, which ones need follow-up, which ones need immediate (and I mean immediate) response, and which ones may just be medical issues that medical staff will handle. We even require that people report incidents that occur in which an injury does not happen at the time but might show up later, like a fall. I do constant walkthroughs on campus and observe how our folks react to the different staff with whom they work (we have 700 or 800 direct care staff and nurses) and if any of the other risk management staff or I feel at all uneasy about how they interact with our people or how our people react to them nonverbally, we ask for a review or investigation. If we have the slightest suspicion that anyone may have acted without the best intent of the person served, we move them that minute either off work entirely or to a place where they cannot be in contact with the people who live here.

I am betting there are few places in the entire world where you have a better on-going safety assessment and proactive protection of anyone, especially given that a number of these people also have some degree of loss of behavioral control that can make them dangerous to self or others. Some of them need specially prepared meals because they can't chew or swallow well, many of them cannot walk on their own or need individually adapted equipment to help them ambulate, many of them do not have control over their bowel or bladder, over half have of them have seizures that are (sometimes - if we are lucky) controlled with anticonvulsant medication(s), and the majority of folks take a variety of medications because of their various complicated health problems. On top of that, the folks where I work are aging and almost all of them have lived far longer than anyone with such serious disabilities would have lived even 25 years ago.

When someone who does not work at or live in a psychiatric or developmental facility starts to take potshots at the care we provide, I get a little testy. I would challenge anyone to show me that they know of a similar group of people (with or without handicapping conditions of any sort) anywhere in the world who have such a system of checks and balances. Our paperwork is set up such that our system is "transparent" - anyone walking in can see exactly what we do, where our flaws are, and how we have handled anything that has occurred. This includes reviews of where we have messed up and what we are doing to try to make sure it doesn't happen again. The teams I work with are sometimes sick of the "endless" meetings I ask them to have to show how they are protecting our people and how they are setting up systems to prevent similar things from happening again. We put as much effort into preventing sunburns and mosquito bites as we do in preventing fractures and lacerations.

Many of the individuals where I work have osteoporosis due to years of anticonvulsant medication use or minimal ambulation, they can't eat foods that the rest of us eat daily without having the texture changed or they will choke to death or aspirate, many of them have poor ambulation skills and some have no protective reflexes when they fall, many of them will eat anything that they put their hands on because they don't know any better, some will bite or scratch themselves or hit their heads until they are covered with blood, some will rock for hour upon hour and not respond when you try to get them interested in something, and yet every single person out there has at least a handful of staff who will tirelessly stand up for them and champion them and make sure that if they think something is not happening right, they will make noise until someone does something about it. You can't pay anyone enough money to do that - that is shameless, selfless love for one's fellow man, and sometimes at great personal cost.

Do we have abuse and neglect? Yes. It happens everywhere. It always will. Sorry to say that is human nature. But it has a much better chance of being detected and stopped because of all the eyes available and because we know that 95% of all abuse occurs because of systems issues - NOT because of bad people. If you can improve the system you can make assure that there is a lesser chance of abuse/neglect occurring.

No, it's certainly not a perfect system and if the people of the world would get off their butts and vote for money so that these people could stay at home or in the community, we wouldn't have institutional settings. But the truth is that most people in the world don't care about these folks until something bad happens and they see it splashed across their newspapers. And then they are interested for exactly one week until something more exciting happens and their attention is diverted elsewhere.

I will put ALL my money on the odds that my 500+ folks are safer on an on-going basis where they currently live than almost any other place they could be in the world. And you can take that one to the bank.

While reading your comments above (rant) I kept picturing "The Great and Powerful Oz" with flames shooting upwards. I also envisioned Joseph shuddering and shaking like the Lion just before he turns tail and jumps through a window.
You continue to leave me in awe Lynne, er uh Oz!

Being one of the creators of many murals at another state run institution I take offense to your comments Joseph. Brightening up the walls of an otherwise bland ward brought much joy to the people who lived there. And judging from the requests from other wards to have something painted on their walls I'd say having formal training was not a requirement .

this is so pretty.
yet sad at the same time.

Neurotics (archaic) build castles in the air ; psychotics live in them.

Couldn't resist that old line.

Maybe all the inmates were encouraged to add to it over time- each one bringing his or her own creative touch and style to an archetypal image.

The artist had real talent. Shame so few people can see it. Thank you for showing it to us.

It is actually pretty well preserved considering.

Wow. Skit-em, Lynne!

I applaud heavily.

I really liked this painting, and could even use it as the setting of a poem or story. But then, I guess I shouldn't really like it, because after all, I don't have any formal art training. How could I possibly know what is beautiful? In the past 25 years, I've heard many complaints from many people about their time in state care. The one complaint I have NEVER heard is that the art in the state facilities wasn't "good" enough. I also can second everything that Lynne said. Not only do the facilities watch everything very closely, so do the advocates and the state. Agencies are required to maintain files of all the "adverse incidents" that occur, and to properly investigate them, and correct anything that need correcting. Reports are also made to the state protective service division for any unexplained injuries (such as a person having a bruise on her knee, but no one remembers seeing her fall or bump into anything), and for any suspected abuse or neglect, so that outsiders are also observing, reviewing records, and interviewing staff. It is far more likely today that a person is placed in a group home or institutional setting because they are in an abusive situation in their community home than that they are abused in the group setting.

Reminds me of the Disney Parks castles.

I think I went to Disneyland as a toddler.

The flag on top of the castle is the Swiss flag...lol

It reminds me more of Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria - but then that is the castle that the Disney one was based on :)

I think it's good that they had something to dream about even if they never got there.