Experiences from a student and front-line care worker

"...always look after yourself first because I have found if I’m not feeling fit and well then I can't carry out my job as effectively when caring for those who need us most."

We are delighted to present a Q & A style blog from Becca, a Health and Social Care student who has been working front-line as a care worker. 

In this blog, she shares her experiences of being a student whilst working in the social care sector during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Huge thanks to Becca for sharing this with us!


Hi everyone! My name is Becca, I am currently a 4th-year student at the University of the West of Scotland studying Bachelor of Arts (Hons) Integrated Health and Social Care. Alongside my studies, I am a mentee with Scottish Care, with the lovely Karen Hedge as my mentor through the Employer Mentoring Programme within the university. Outside of my studies, I am currently a care assistant within a local care home in Ayrshire, providing specialist care for individuals who are living with dementia and other mental health conditions. I have been working in this role for over seven years, two years as a community care assistant and five years within the care home setting. 

What are the benefits and challenges of being a student and working on the front line as a care assistant?

For myself, the benefit of being a student and working on the front line as a care assistant in a care home setting allows me to plan and organise my diary for student life and working life. Although my planning and organisation skills are quite good, I had to work on them even further to ensure I was participating in my online classes. Because we had to work from home as well as help at work with extra shifts to cover for people shielding or experiencing Covid-19 symptoms. The challenges I have been faced with when being a student during this pandemic is being stuck in four walls for my classes, alone facing a laptop with the rest of my class. It has been difficult as I love socialising with others, meeting up with my friends and grabbing a coffee from the café within the university. I have not been able to do any of that since March 2020 and because of this, it has had an impact on my mental health. The challenge I face at work is wearing the face mask when caring for people who are living with dementia and the majority of these individuals are living with advanced dementia. They often don’t understand why we are wearing masks and often would like us to take them off because they miss our ‘smiles’ when we see them, or they can’t tell us apart from each other. This has become a challenge because it upsets myself and work colleagues to see our residents become distressed and upset with having us in masks when they are so used to seeing us with smiles and could tell us apart in their own way.

 How has Covid-19 impacted my learning and job role?

Covid-19 has impacted my learning because I enjoy bouncing ideas off my class peers and lectures over a coffee and participating in class discussions. I feel it isn’t the same when behind a keyboard and quite often I find myself confused or stuck on something to do with my course work which leads to me becoming stressed because I don’t have that environment to work with others. Sometimes I have managed to book a ‘study space’ within the university and meet up with one class peer, which has helped not only myself but my class peer as well because it is not just myself that has struggled through this. Covid-19 has impacted my job because where we were able to hug our residents when they were upset, now we must wear PPE including face masks on which often scared our residents, and they did not want to come near us because they did not know who we were behind the mask. Closing our doors to visitors and family members was heartbreaking because our residents would look out for their families and they could not understand where they were. With no visits being permitted in the home, often colleagues and I would witness a decline in our residents, which was heartbreaking to see, and I personally think the lack of social interaction from families contributed to that. 

What have I learned from this experience?

From this experience, I have learned to keep your loved ones close even after the pandemic is over. This experience has taught me to ensure I check in with friends and family to make sure they are doing ok and if they need anything, especially my grandpa. It has taught me to plan and organise my time effectively between my student life and my work life so I don’t become overwhelmed with everything that is happening around us. It is vital that you look after your own mental wellbeing especially in these dark times, I often speak to myself and practice deep breathing exercises when I feel I am becoming a bit overwhelmed with everything. I have also found self-care days have been very beneficial in my own mental wellbeing and this has been developed since having this experience of the pandemic as I would not have normally done this prior to Covid-19.

What advice would I give to future people if this happens again? 

The advice I would give to anyone who is struggling through this pandemic or find ourselves back in a similar situation is to look after yourself and speak to someone if you find you are coping. Mental health is so important, and everyone should live a positive, healthy life no matter the age you are. If you are a student and working on the front line like myself, then my advice is to ensure you plan things as best as you can, it might not go the way you want it but if you have routine and plan things to become less overwhelmed and always … I mean always look after yourself first because I have found if I’m not feeling fit and well then I can’t carry out my job as effectively when caring for those who need us most.

The shaming of older people: the need for urgent reform.

I have written many times over the years in this blog that the mark of any society or community that wants to enshrine dignity and humanity is the way in which it treats its older citizens. Events this past week showed just how poorly the governments of the world consider older age.

In New York, but mainly virtually, the United Nation’s 11th Session of the Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing (OEWG) was meeting. The Group has existed since 2010 and is meant to consider the human rights of older persons and identify possible gaps in the law and how best to address them. For some time there has been a growing clamour for a new international treaty or convention for older people.

The 11th session held between the 29th of March and the 1st of April was lively with the largest ever attendance from non-governmental groups from across the globe. One of the reasons for this is the almost universal feeling that the human rights of older persons have been widely broken and ignored during the global response to the pandemic. Indeed speaker after speaker recounted ways in which they felt that the care and support of older people had been given secondary attention, the needs of older citizens had been an afterthought and that the whole of the pandemic had evidenced a discrimination to and disregard for older people’s human rights. It was a series of moving and passionate, angry and demanding contributions. Then…

On the final day of the meeting, April 1st, all those attending participated in the ‘Way Forward’ discussions on how the OEWG should progress its work. International human rights bodies and older people campaigners were unanimous in their view that the drafting of a new UN convention should commence immediately. A number of the Governmental representatives supported this call. But then things began to unravel because the final session almost didn’t take place due to the poor attendance of Member State (or Government) delegates. Many expressed outrage on social media. ‘After one hour and 45 minutes a quorum was finally reached, and the meeting concluded.’ Disappointingly, no decision was taken in the final meeting on the Way Forward or the creation of a sub-group to consider drawing up a new UN Convention.

Now creating a Convention and underlining the legal obligations which world Governments have to adhere to will not in and of itself mean that we will put an end to the glaring discrimination which older people face. I am not naïve and do not think that law alone changes conviction. But it is itself illustrative of the endemic discrimination that older people have faced during this pandemic that representatives of national governments could not even drag themselves to the final session of a UN body dedicated to addressing age discrimination.

The world needs a new Convention so that the human rights of older persons can be advanced and protected.

The lack of action and focus is even more farcical when you consider that in December 2020 the United Nations proclaimed 2021-2030 as the UN Decade for Healthy Ageing. This initiative, led by the World Health Organization (WHO), is meant to be an opportunity to bring together governments and civil society for ten years of concerted action to improve the lives of older people, their families, and the communities in which they live.

According to the Global Report on Ageism, released on 18 March 2021 by the World Health Organisation every second person in the world is believed to hold ageist attitudes – ‘leading to poorer physical and mental health and reduced quality of life for older persons, costing societies billions each year.’ Such a finding is a damning indictment of all our communities.

The aims of the Decade are laudable and include the need for action to change how we think, feel and act towards age and ageing and to ensure that communities foster the abilities of older people. Clearly in light of the passivity of the United Nations last week and  the pervasive ageism in our countries we have a long way to go.

All this might sound and feel to be of academic and distant interest, but it impacts on what we do or do not do here in Scotland. There has been very real unease about the way in which we have responded to the needs of older people in the pandemic. I have written a lot about the human rights failures in our early clinical advice, in our attention to the mental health impacts of lockdown, the use of DNACPRs, in our failure to test practice by human rights assessment, and most especially the impacts on the rights of older people in care homes by a lockdown that went way beyond what was acceptable. There are many other areas where older people feel they have not been heard or valued as the world around them struggled with coronavirus.

It is time for Scotland to join both Wales and Northern Ireland in appointing an Older Person’s Commissioner, to have a post which can hold accountable both national and local Government for their actions and policies as they impact on older people. The work of Helena Herklots in Wales and Eddie Lynch in Northern Ireland has shown beyond doubt that such a post really can make a difference to older people.

I do not have any insight into the political party manifestoes for the election that is a few weeks away, but even if they do not have such a commitment within them, I hope we can all commit to making it one of the legacies of the pain of the last year that Scotland can join other nations in appointing an Older Person’s Commissioner.

The events of the last week in New York show the marginalising of older age in the priorities of world government, they should not be allowed to dictate the response of Scotland to such challenges. How can you have a Decade of Healthy Ageing when you fail to respond to such a glaring need?

Perhaps it is that we need to find some of the angry energy and passionate vigour of older age described by the great Liverpool poet Roger McCough and declare not for us the passive platitudes of political acceptance but the need to transform with urgent vigour and an unsettling of the status quo our response to older age? We will never achieve the aims of Healthy Ageing and truly transform our ageist society unless older age itself acts to demand it.

 

‘Let me die a youngman’s death
not a clean and inbetween
the sheets holywater death
not a famous-last-words
peaceful out of breath death

When I’m 73
and in constant good tumour
may I be mown down at dawn
by a bright red sports car
on my way home
from an allnight party

Or when I’m 91
with silver hair
and sitting in a barber’s chair
may rival gangsters
with hamfisted tommyguns burst in
and give me a short back and insides

Or when I’m 104
and banned from the Cavern
may my mistress
catching me in bed with her daughter
and fearing for her son
cut me up into little pieces
and throw away every piece but one

Let me die a youngman’s death
not a free from sin tiptoe in
candle wax and waning death
not a curtains drawn by angels borne
‘what a nice way to go’ death.’

 

Donald Macaskill

Citizens of another world: autism and older age

Over three decades ago I undertook two placements at one of the major psychiatric hospitals in Scotland. It was during one of them that I got to know George, or should I say that George started to allow me to ‘know’ him. George was the first person I had met who lived with Kanner’s or severe autism. Even the term severe autism is a dubious one often designated by diagnostic models as Level 3 Autism. George needed a great deal of support which his family could not provide, and he ended up in hospital simply because at the time there was no service available to support him.

George struggled as many with an autism spectrum disorder do with social and communication skills and did not use spoken language but instead used a mixture of sound and movement to communicate. He was highly sensitive to light and smell and it took several weeks to learn how to be able to communicate with him. For too many years those around him thought he was of ‘limited’ intelligence but through the dedicated skill of one or two professionals George had learnt to communicate well and with real insight and articulacy.

George taught me about his world through his action, behaviour and communication and sowed in me a life-long fascination for autism. He taught me to see in body gesture and finger flicking a reaching out to bridge our communication, he helped me understand what was meant when he rocked his body, slammed doors or hit himself. He helped me understand the inner frustrations and sensory overload which at time reduced him to acute physical pain. Over the weeks I began to understand that behind his ‘eloping’ and continual wandering there was often an acute incident of a gastrointestinal pain. George allowed me into his world or more accurately he helped me to open my eyes to what he was communicating to me.

Next week from 29th March to the 4th of April it is World Autism Awareness Week. Every time it comes to World Autism Week I remember George more than anyone else. I recall the world in which he lived his life.

If I am honest before I started to meet people like George I had thought of autism as being something which mainly impacted children – which might seem nonsensical today but was a not uncommon view in the 1970s and 1980s. Indeed autism was not included in major western disease classification until that period. But children with autism become adults and then older adults living their lives with autism. On a practical level many of those who are now in older age were never formally diagnosed and have often lived their lives with a minimum or no level of support – the support which would have helped them to achieve a much better quality of life. For not a few older people with autism there have been inaccurate diagnoses or wrong attributions to mental health problems or dementia, which can lead to inappropriate treatment. For too many there is a casual presumption that their behaviour is simply eccentric or the sign of ‘old age’!

In my current role in the care sector the experience of older adults with autism is one which causes me very real concern. Relatively speaking we have so little research and understanding of what the impacts of a lifelong condition like autism are on people who are old and very old. However that which does exist evidences that many older people with autism are socially isolated and have difficulties sustaining employment and relationships. All this is exacerbated with the knowledge that many individuals continue to live with parental and family carers, but inevitably those carers become old themselves and die. The risks of a sudden breakdown when there has been no planning for transition and change are very real, and sadly too many people with autism in late adulthood endure severe poverty and become homeless. I know from speaking to frontline care staff in the community just how many people fall through the gaps in our current disintegrated health and social care system.

Research by Prof Rebecca Charlton from London has shown that age and severity of autism are linked, and that ‘as age increased so did the severity of autism symptoms in social situations, communication and flexible thinking (such as coping with change or generating new ideas or solutions).’ They also found that older people with autism were more likely than younger people to extract rules from situations or prefer structure.

The pandemic has accentuated what for many older people with autism was already a hard and dislocated existence. It has led to very real challenges for those organisations and charities which support people, and it has limited the appropriate access to clinical and medical interventions. It has prevented or halted some positive developments which were focussed on training frontline health and care staff to get better at recognising and responding to late-age autism.

As we seek to recover we must get better at understanding that autism is indeed a lifelong condition, and we must as a wider society become more robust at wrapping appropriate support around people who require intervention in order for them to be as autonomous and independent as they want. Rebecca Charlton has stated that at present we do not even know whether people with autism age in the same way as people without autism in part because of the relative age of our awareness of the condition. People with autism may develop robust coping mechanisms from which we can learn but equally transitions of age may result in sharp deterioration and decline. There is so much we do not know.

In my many days with George all those years ago he taught me that he had a way of seeing the world and being in that world which was foreign to my understanding and knowledge. He taught me that his world was one of value and worth, of depth and mystery, of insight and knowledge. Such sentiments are beautifully expressed by Penelope who shared her poem with the National Autistic Society. I hope as we move forward not just in the next focussed week but thereafter we can as a whole community become more skilled at and dedicated to supporting those older people who live with autism remain citizens of their and our world.

Of another world

I am of another world –

A visitor, a stranger to your shores,

An immigrant born in your heartland.

I am other,

Apart,

A legal alien in native skin,

Vulnerable,

At your mercy.

So treat me gently:

Your customs are strange to me,

Although I was raised within them,

And I fear your people,

Your places,

You.

Accept my behaviours,

As I accept yours,

And understand that I am different,

Not dangerous;

I shall come to love your world;

And it shall become my home from home;

But at heart,

I am always other,

Always apart.

I am of another world.

 

 

Donald Macaskill

 

 

Dying in lockdown: a challenge and opportunity.

Over five years ago in December 2015 the Scottish Government published “Palliative and end of life care: strategic framework for action.” Its core aspiration was that:

‘By 2021, everyone in Scotland who needs palliative care will have access to it.’

Though it did not get a lot of comment or coverage at the time I consider it to be one of the most significant policy contributions of the last few years. It’s overarching aim was rooted in the need to ensure that access to palliative and end of life care was available to all who could benefit from it, regardless of age, gender, diagnosis, social group or location. It stated further that ‘people, their families and carers should have timely and focussed conversations with appropriately skilled professionals to plan their care and support towards the end of life, and to ensure that this accorded with their needs and preferences.’ It acknowledged that communities, groups and organisations of many kinds needed to understand the importance of good palliative and end of life care to the well-being of society.

I have been reflecting on this document and its core recommendations in the last few days. I wonder how far we have advanced in achieving its overarching aim that by this year, 2021,  we would all be receiving the palliative care that we want and need? I wonder if more people today are experiencing the sort of death which they want and deserve, are enabled to die where they want to end their days? I will leave it to others to evaluate the recommendations and their outcomes, but this weekend especially I cannot but consider the extent to which in the last year as a whole society we have had to face head on the reality of death and dying to an extent which perhaps has been unparalled in recent decades.

In a few days’ time we will come together as a nation on the anniversary of lockdown in silence and word to remember not only those who died as a result of Covid19 but the tens of thousands whose death occurred in the last year; a year of detachment and distance; of absent touch and lost ritual. For some it will be a time of very personal and painful remembrance.

Last week in my blog I reflected on the hard and heart-wrenching experience of those who have endured lockdown and death in our care home sector. Those who died in our hospitals and care homes have rightly received much focus and attention. Less noticed have been those who have died in their own homes.

The work of academics at the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research at Napier University, Edinburgh, has helped to shine a light on a context which has quite often been forgotten during the pandemic. Their work has analysed data from National Records of Scotland and has shown that the total number of all deaths at home since the start of 2020 was 24,183 up till the week starting the 15th February in 2021. They note that this is 36% more than the average number of people who died at home in the equivalent period in 2015-2019. Their earlier work has also stated that in the early stages of the pandemic there was an even more dramatic change in the location of death. The increase in people dying in their own home has been an astonishing one and is true regardless of geography but it raises many questions which are worthy of further research.

I know from conversations with those who provide care and support for people in their own homes that the last year has been an especially hard one. Lockdown has come with a hard price for so many. A huge burden was placed upon family and informal carers as packages of care and support were withdrawn, especially in the earliest days of the pandemic. Frontline care at home and housing support staff often felt that they were the forgotten frontline with little societal and system recognition for the challenges they were facing.

Over the last few weeks and months I have increasingly heard stories of families and individuals who struggled at home not just with the mental health but also the physical health pressures brought about by the pandemic. There were those who told me that their anxiety over contracting the virus meant they did not contact GPs as early as they should have when things began to go wrong, or they didn’t attend appointments and consultations out of equal anxiety.  I have heard from frontline workers concerns that individuals were not as supported in their own homes with health and palliative conditions as they might have been.

As someone who has been involved in palliative care and bereavement work for a long period of time, its critical central importance as a basic human right is one I have much advocated and argued for. The way we are supported to die well is as important as how we are supported to live well.

So have all those ‘extra’ people who have died in their own homes, received the sort of care and support, the appropriate amount of pain management and palliative and end of life care as they might have? That is a question we need to answer with some degree of urgency not least as many of us suspect that the dislocation of services and supports may go on for some time yet.

Ultimately there will be real benefit in enabling people to be able to end their days in their own home or in a homely setting. The statistics of those who are admitted to hospital in the last few weeks of life for no real clinical benefit are very disappointing. But of course, dying at home is only something we should aspire to if we are able to guarantee a quality of care and support that meets our needs and offered by a workforce who are appropriately trained and resourced. I am not at all convinced that is where we currently are.

Tuesday’s moments of remembrance will also be a time for us all collectively to reflect on the extent to which, both as communities and as a nation, we are going to be there for those who have been bereaved in the last year. Theirs has been a cruel pain, often of isolation and detachment, unable to properly be with those who have died in many cases and in even more unable to say farewell in a way which has supported and reconciled, upheld and soothed their grief.

Over the coming weeks the individuals and organisations behind the development of Scotland’s National Charter for Bereavement will be using social media to raise awareness not just of the Charter and its aims but of what it means for us to create a society which properly supports those who are bereaved and grieving. The way we care for those who are left behind by loss is as important as the manner in which we support those who die. The silence and memories of Tuesday 23rd should act as a springboard and an incentive to ensure that we foster communities of acceptance, belonging and resourcefulness so that all who need support in their bereavement will be able to access that in whatever way they need. Such will be the mark of a proper and long-lasting remembrance worthy of the grief we have endured.

But in the end of the day when the politicians have left the stage, the media has packed up its notebooks and cameras, the commentators have filed their reports, the strangers have walked away, and you are left alone… at such a time grief is ultimately something we carry alone on the shoulders of our heart. Not just on Tuesday coming but every moment of every day there are thousands upon thousands who will cry themselves into busyness and being, who will sorrow themselves into their breath, in memory and recollection which will never cease, for them perhaps only the words of a poet can even come close to the feelings for which we need all of us to be present to offer solace:

Nobody ever told me.

Nobody ever told me

it would be this hard;

that I’d wake up in the morning

and think that you were there

lying beside me in our bed;

that I’d walk down the street

and recognise your shadow

following me in the sun;

that I’d listen to the radio

and hear your voice

inviting me to sing;

that I’d sit in the park

and watch you go by

in a group of strangers.

 

Nobody ever told me

it would be this hard;

that I’d wonder why I should

get up in the morning;

that I’d think making plans

was a child’s playground game;

that I’d rage with anger, red and raw,

at your leaving;

that I’d wonder was it me

who did something

that made you go away.

 

Nobody ever told me

it would be this hard.

 

Why can’t someone tell me instead

how I can stop crying

and dam the tears from soaking my pillow?

How I can start again when all I want to do

is rest in our lost togetherness?

How I can ‘move on’ when I only want to settle

in the place of our memories?

 

And please someone tell me

when will this time come,

the time they all talk of

in easy careless cliche,

the time which they say

will heal all things

and help me to live again?

Beyond words … there is silence: a reflection on care home lockdowns.

We are in the midst of a period of anniversaries. Last Thursday it was a year since the World Health Organisation declared Coronavirus to be a global pandemic and we have to date witnessed the deaths of over 2.6 million people across the world. Today is also the anniversary of the first death in Scotland of someone who had Covid19.

But the 13th March is also the anniversary of lockdown for many of Scotland’s care homes although by then last year a good number of care homes had already chosen to shut their doors to all but essential visitors. At the time no one could have imagined or thought that they would be locking down for more than a few weeks. After all, care homes had been used to lockdowns for other infectious diseases such as norovirus and such experiences were rarely for more than two to three weeks. At most I remember most commentators were talking about three or four months

I recollect at the time writing and talking about the fact that I believed shutting our care homes was a necessary and essential act in order to literally protect and save lives. At the start of the pandemic and for the first few weeks I am sure this early action did indeed save lives. There was so much we did not know about this virus and the fear that many of us felt was real and palpable. And of course in those early days we did not know about asymptomatic spread and the hidden threat the virus held even when staff were wearing what was then an accepted level of personal protected equipment. We did not know the impact of the spread of the virus and the hidden killer which it was.

Over time and especially as protective measures were finally introduced such as testing new admissions to care homes and the testing of staff including those who were asymptomatic the balance of protection against exclusion was felt by many to increasingly be wrong and misplaced. That is why the publication in recent times of new Guidance in Scotland called Open with Care has been so important. That is why it is imperative that we now realise especially with all the mitigations in place that the human right to association and contact is intrinsic to individual health and wellbeing.

An anniversary is a moment for reflection and consideration about actions that were taken or not taken, about mistakes that were made and lessons that need to be learned. I remain convinced that lockdown was essential at the start but if we consider what we know now it is clear that moving forward, and given the almost inevitability of future pandemics, that we cannot again exclude people from essential contact and relationships. Given what we now know surely we have all of us collectively to make sure that those who live in care homes, in sheltered settings or indeed who are patients in hospitals do not experience the isolation and exclusion which has been theirs in the last year?

So today, and especially tonight as I light a candle, in reflecting and in remembrance, I will be thinking of the countless hundreds and thousands who have lived through this lockdown pandemic in our care homes. I will be thinking of the residents and their families and friends, and of the staff who despite at times overwhelming fear and anxiety put themselves daily on the frontline to care and give support. They were and are the ever-present ones whose solidarity of compassion and care cannot be forgotten. And I will also be thinking of those whose life has ended in the last year. For though hundreds have died from Covid there have been countless more who because of restrictions and exclusion have not been able to spend the time they have wanted and needed with family members. There have been too many who have died alone without the touch of love from faces known and cherished in both care home and hospital.

We can never undo the past, but we can commit to making sure that we learn the painful lesson that lockdowns in care settings should be limited and specific and should never again extend to the length of time which they have. I believe this also means we have to work seriously at thinking today how we can enable contact and care from family to be delivered and supported even during situations of ‘outbreak’ and even in what we have come to call ‘Covid wards.’

This last year has taught me both the power of words but also the necessity of silence. There are times at which you simply cannot wrap your feelings into words and so it is better to be silent. There are times when what you hear and experience is so profound whether by shock or sadness that it is better to rest in silence. There are times when the pain you witness and feel makes silence rather than words the only companion to the hurt.

The writer Ben Okri sums this up well in ‘Birds of Heaven’ :

“We began before words, and we will end beyond them.
It sometimes seems to me that our days are poisoned with too many words. Words said and not meant. Words said ‘and’ meant. Words divorced from feeling. Wounding words. Words that conceal. Words that reduce. Dead words…

We are all wounded inside one way or other. We all carry unhappiness within us for some reason or other. Which is why we need a little gentleness and healing from one another. Healing in words, and healing beyond words. Like gestures. Warm gestures. Like friendship, which will always be a mystery. Like a smile, which someone described as the shortest distance between two people.

Yes, the highest things are beyond words.”

So as I reflect on this anniversary of lockdown I will seek a place to be silent, to be beyond words. I will listen beyond words to silence, to reach beyond tears to healing, to find beyond hurt a new determination, to grieve beyond this day and to commit to uphold and support others.

Every single person who has been affected by the care home lockdown during this last year will have their own memories beyond words and today’s anniversary will be hard and painful for far too many. But today must also be the end of the hardness and the start of reconciliation and restoration, of renewal and hope. Today has to be the moment not solely to remember and grieve but to commit to working together to change tomorrow. That work can only ever be done in collaboration and partnership, not in anger and fear, not in distrust and hate, but by finding that space where we can sit together, work together, commit together… that place which changes our future by our own hands… that place which is beyond words and is the silence of two people, of a whole community, loving and supporting one another.

Donald Macaskill

 

International Women’s Day blog from our National Director

This has been an unprecedented and horrendous year. This very latest chapter in the story of care has for many turned out to be the hardest as new strains of the virus stole our chances of remobilisation.

Yet, when I think of those who work in social care, 84% of whom are women, the feminist phrase ‘nevertheless she persisted’ comes to mind. March 8th is international women’s day. This year’s theme is #ChooseToChallenge making it a good time to consciously recognise and raise the role that gender politics have played in the long-term under recognition of social care and the pernicious effect of paternalistic structures and systems on all those who provide, work in, and access care and support. Pandemic response has been a microcosm of that experience, leading to scrutiny, division and blame at a time when what is needed is respect, collaboration, and support.

The voice and expertise of skilled social care professionals, when listened to, offers routes to manage the pandemic in situ. We have seen this in the embedding of the most recent guidance, finally co-produced with sector experts.

In the Engender report ‘Sex and Power in Scotland 2020’ we read that only 2 out of every 50 people who head up the top Scottish Companies are women. This is quite a comparison to the 2 out of every 3 who hold CEO and Director level posts in social care. There are two ways that we must look at this. First, we must celebrate a sector which has championed and supported so many women into leadership roles. This is not purely down to statistics, but because of a sector which very often applies its expertise in person-centred and person-led care and support to workforce development. There is much that other sectors could learn from this approach.

Secondly, we must note the vast difference in the number of men in senior rather than frontline roles. Diversity is a greatness, and this highlights the need to welcome more men to frontline social care. But also, not to rest on our laurels, 2 out of 3 is impressive, but not representative of the 84% in frontline roles. There is still more to be done about that proverbial glass ceiling.

I recently heard Dame Stefanie Shirley speak and she said that ‘you can tell ambitious women by the shape of their head – it is flat by being patted patronisingly’. Now my first reaction was to laugh out loud, but this was quickly followed by a sharp intake of breath as its accuracy hit home.

So many assumptions are made by those outside of the sector about what social care is and does. We have no better spotlight than now to showcase our expertise, skills, and professionalism. I ask my fellow flat headers and those that they work with, to #choosetochallenge by sharing a story about what you do in social care. We have an opportunity to change perception, it is our responsibility to take it.

Thanks to the SSSC for providing social care workforce data.

 

Karen Hedge

National Director

@hegeit

Butterflies and Caterpillars Say No to the Age Gap: a reflection.

I was walking along thinking about what I would say in this blog, aware of the fact that it is National Intergenerational Week from the 8th-14th March, when my 6-year-old companion opined – apropos of nothing – “Ladybirds are different from caterpillars. They don’t look like, but they are the same; they are family; I like them both.” Now I suspect that this observation has arisen from an over-abundance of David Attenborough and Adam Kay’s Anatomy –(which if you have not read you should! ) – but it is so apposite.

Intergenerational Week is this year an online campaign backed by many organisations and is all about celebrating the times when people of all ages come together, make friends and work, learn, relax and change one another. In the year that has passed we have so missed those moments of connection and togetherness as lockdowns have separated old from young, generation from generation, and the absence has ached and hurt. Perhaps those who have missed the connection between different ages the most have been residents in care homes and even though in Scotland indoor visits are now starting again we all long for the day when children can see grandparents and great-grandparents.

The organisers of Intergenerational Week also point to a pre-pandemic reality which I know for countless folks rings true and that is that for many of us being connected across the generations has changed over the years. We are a long way off from the times when most families lived together across the generations, or at least in close proximity. Many of us live our lives a distance of time and travel away from our older generation not least because so many are having family later in life. Busyness, older parenthood, changing leisure patterns as well as mobility have all affected family generational connections.

Last week I wrote about the impact of loneliness and isolation during lockdown on the mental health of all people, but perhaps especially the old and the young. The pandemic has taught us a painful lesson about the risks of loneliness and isolation, and the importance of connections which previously we might have taken for granted. The pandemic has also in a positive sense shown us the ability of human individuals to reach out, to cross divides, to make the effort to get to know, to be concerned for, and to connect with those who are different from us regardless of age or circumstance.

Moving forward we need to work hard at not just restoring the inter-generational connections and opportunities we used to have before the pandemic, but we also need to put effort into making sure that we can create new opportunities for the age divide to be removed and shattered.

We need to, I believe, do much more at creating spaces and places where the generations can work and relax, live and simply be together. There is a real risk that we create divides in the name of infection prevention that limits our capacity to be close to others and to form new and meaningful relationships across the generations. One of the worst legacies of our pandemic response – though I know a health necessity- has been the idea of social distance. To be social you can never be distant, you have always to be close and proximate, alongside to touch and be changed by interaction.

But the pandemic has also shown us the risks of creating false divides across the generations. There have at times not least in media and popular dialogue, been the risk of creeping age discrimination. The prioritisation of the welfare of the young should never be seen as an opposite to caring for and the focus upon those who are older. Community cannot be created by binary choices or by accentuating the value of one group against another. Community is always nurtured when all peoples regardless of status or role, culture or origin, and critically regardless of age are included, valued and heard.

We can do many more things to work at promoting and advancing inter-generational activity and opportunity. We can resist the temptation to create older age into ghettos- in villages separate from the living of youth; we can create care facilities for those who require support in the heart of our communities and cities. We can resource better models such as student and older age co-operative living, which enable the generations to live, move and have their being in connection one with the other.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a meeting where representatives of Young Scot shared their issues in relation to technology, including the challenges of digital poverty and exclusion. On hearing these issues I was aware of just how similar the challenges they spoke of are for those of an older generation. In an era of increased dependence and reliance upon technology and digital, the risks of technological exclusion and digital poverty don’t discriminate on the basis of age alone. However the benefits of inclusion equally cross the age divide. The potential of those who are  young who possess the skills, confidence and familiarity with technology to share these with those who are older in order to enable technological and relational connection across the generations are immense.

The potential of inter-generational connection is immense; it is so often untapped and rarely prioritised, but in essence it is what creates truly inclusive communities, with or without technology.

The motto for the week ahead is Say No to the Age Gap – it is one grounded in the age-old insight that we are all of us so inter-connected that a focus that does not prioritise and attend to the needs of all, fails all. We need to learn to recognise beauty, flight and freedom in the caterpillar as much as we do in the ladybird. Age is but the outer skin of reality which hides the real person.

I love the insight of the continuous flow and connection between all ages and generations French poet Antoine de Saint-Exupery depicts in his poem Generation to Generation. His words also carry with them an injunction and encouragement to us all that it is our task and responsibility to be the both the teachers of tradition and those who learn from all ages:

In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.

Love, like a carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.
Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies
of our passage: when we wed, when we die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.

Let us bring up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to them
their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given the keys.
We live, not by things, but by the meanings
of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords
from generation to generation.

Donald Macaskill

“I need to be found”: mental health and older age.

One of the saddest consequences of the Covid pandemic has been its impact, not least through lockdowns, on the mental health of tens of thousands of individuals. There is thankfully a wide and extensive acceptance of these impacts and a shared resolve across politics and society to do something about it.

I am also pleased that there is a growing recognition of the mental health impacts of the pandemic upon older people. This last week has seen an excellent article in the British Medical Journal on this very subject. But in a general sense, both societally and politically, the mental health distress and damage on older people has unfortunately been a lot less written and spoken about and yet it is, I would suggest, of equal criticality as the mental health impacts upon children, young people and those of middle age.

I was reflecting on these realities in preparing for a contribution this coming week at a roundtable organised by Voluntary Health Scotland and the Open University. The session is entitled Falling Off a Cliff at 65: serious mental health issues in later life. It is painfully clear in their work that the mental health of older people have been significantly impacted by the pandemic and lockdowns.

Undoubtedly, there has been in the last decade a growing awareness of the significance of dementia and delirium in the mental health of older Scots. The problem is, as those of us who work in older people’s care and support, know only too well, mental health and distress in older age goes way beyond these two conditions.

I wrote a blog on this subject some four years ago and sadly not a lot has changed. There has always been a risk that the focus on dementia has taken our eye off other mental health and life enduring challenges faced by older Scots. The absence of a distinct focus on older people’s mental health issues in the 2017 national strategy was particularly disappointing.

I remember speaking to someone who had lived with chronic depression most of their adult life and had received good supports until they got to 65 years of age. Then almost overnight, he told me, it felt like the system was abandoning him and the supports he had been used to changed and disappeared.

“It was like standing at a window and seeing everything and everyone who had helped you live your life, especially in the down times, walk down the street and wave goodbye. I felt really alone.”

That sense of abandonment is evident in the research undertaken by the VHS and the Open University and sadly it is the experience of too many once they have reached the age of 65 that it is like ‘falling off a cliff’ in terms of service provision. By March 2020 both organisations had gathered a level of evidence, but then paused their work due to Covid-19. You can read their initial report here. I am pleased it is starting again not least because the problems remain and have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the pandemic.

When I speak to frontline staff in the community and from what people tell me the pandemic has resulted in a worrying deterioration in the mental health of older Scots. Whilst there has been an understandable and appropriate focus upon the impact of lockdown on people in care homes, there has been less focus on the impact upon older people in the community.

People who might before have developed routines which enabled them to be connected to others and therefore to maintain their mental health have had those connections limited or severed. There has been an exponential growth in loneliness and isolation; self-help groups and therapies have stopped or become limited; and the reality of digital poverty for older people has meant on-line and virtual equivalents have not been an option for many.

Speaking to community nursing staff I hear stories of significant dehydration as people have neglected their nutrition and wellbeing, of increased confusion, loss of memory and motivation, increased frailty and depression. There is a growth in the number of people falling and losing weight. I have heard too many stories of older people separated from family contact, disconnected and downcast, alone and empty, isolated and too often ignored.

The mental health impact of Covid on older age is profound and shaming. This was already a population more likely to experience health inequalities, more likely to be socially isolated for longer periods of time and to suffer more profound impacts from the requirements to shield and protect.  All that we developed as tools for connection and protection have been used less by those of older age. This is a population much less likely- partly through frailty but also through fear, to exercise and self-motivate, to fight the black dog of the night through the light of activity and exercise. Depression has clearly increased to worrying levels and reports of self-harm at anecdotal level are deeply worrying.

Before Covid we needed to get much better at supporting people who have life enduring mental health challenges to transition from adult to older people services. This includes properly resourcing the older people care sector to train and equip staff to both recognise and to deal with mental health issues and challenges beyond dementia and delirium, and also to give greater priority to enable the development of new models of support which can cater for individual and particular mental health needs in older age. With age comes so many losses over which the individual has little control but around which it behoves society to provide support.

But much more than that we have to as a whole society take older people’s mental health seriously. We have to accept the crippling reality of hurt that is the daily grind of too many and has been for decades. Mental ill health is sadly not solely the experience of youth.

We need to get better at finding those who need to be found, naming the hurt and answering the plea. We need to remember deep inside that agony has no date by which it is spent, distress no destination at which it departs, depression no age by which it is managed. For too long we have swallowed the myth that age conquers the mind and its ravages, that with experience comes coping and with chronology challenges diminish. Mental illness has no use by date, it does not lessen as bone and muscle decline, it merely changes its whisper to shout louder in another tongue. What age seems to do is to increase absence and heartache for too many at just the time that some in society seem to consider that the expense and effort of support is best offered to others. Scotland has the opportunity to put the mental health of all our citizens first and foremost in our recovery from Covid, and a focus on older people’s mental health issues has to be central to that effort.

The model and actor Cara Delevingne beautifully captures the necessity that is the challenge to all of us – to be open to find, regardless of age, those who need accompaniment to journey through the landscape of the mind.

 Who am I? Who am I trying to be?

Not myself, anyone but myself.

Living in a fantasy to bury the reality,

Making myself the mystery,

A strong facade disguising the misery.

Empty, but beyond the point of emptiness,

Full to brim with fake confidence,

A guard that will never be broken,

Because I broke a long time ago.

I’m hurting but don’t tell anyone.

No one needs to know.

Don’t show or you’ve failed.

Always okay, always fine, always on show.

The show must go on.

It will never stop.

The show must not go on,

But I know it will.

I give up. I give up giving up.

I am lost.

I don’t need to be saved,

I need to be found.

Depression by Cara Delevingne

 

Donald Macaskill

Climate change blog from our National Director

I originally wrote this piece in November 2019, but for a variety of reasons, it was never published. There always seemed to be a greater emergency in social care which took precedent; supporting the social care workforce, promoting human rights, challenges of financial sustainability and of course now, a global pandemic.

However, I have decided to go ahead and publish today. Not just because this afternoon I am on a panel at the Health and Social Care Alliance, as they publish their report: Sustainable Health and Social Care: Climate Change and COVID-19’ in which they call for £25 million to support a climate change innovation fund for social care, and the forthcoming hosting of COP26, but also because it is becoming increasingly obvious that the right time must be now.

Pandemic response has in many ways improved our environments, we have reduced our travel for instance and while this should be celebrated and even maintained, we must also consider the impact of increased use of chemicals and disposable equipment such as PPE. These items are of course essential but will have a long-term impact on our environment. Additional to that is the theory that with our natural resources now struggling to maintain balance, we will experience an increasing number of pandemics. Horrific to conceptualise proving to me that the time is indeed now so here is that piece from 2019, perhaps even more relevant today than ever:

In the last few weeks, the plastic cotton bud ban came into force in Scotland.

Over the last 25 years, the Marine Conservation Society has collected 150,000 plastic cotton buds from beaches in Scotland. This legislation follows the microbeads ban in 2018, with further climate environmental related legislation expected in 2021. Scotland’s Government initiative ‘Action Against Plastics’ is in line with the EU Single-use Plastics Directive, in an attempt to reduce the use of single-use plastics and the impact they are having on the planet.

The climate change issue is no more pertinent to me than on seeing the findings from a childhood friend and climate change expert who has recently returned from an expedition to East Greenland where she documented some of the irreversible changes resulting from climate change. Melting glaciers which can never be replaced, whole ecosystems disrupted. It’s funny how more real things seem when they happen to someone you know.

Originating from a perspective of infection control, single-use plastics are everywhere in social care, from cotton buds to protective equipment, to packaging for our medicines and food. There is a real opportunity for the care sector to play a role in leading the way to reduce waste, but also to find other ways to uphold safe high-quality care, in a more environmentally sound way by changing practice, and exploring new materials. The mantra of ‘Reduce. Reuse. Recycle’ has much to offer in this space and some care staff have been involved in adopting and embedding such a culture in their organisations. Via the Scottish Care Strategic Nursing Group, we will also ask the ‘Infection Control’ team at NES for suggestions and resources that they may be able to share.

However, single-use plastics are not the only contributors to the increasing climate change crisis. Health Care Without Harm estimates that measuring the greenhouse gas emissions solely related to heating and cooling the worlds healthcare providers (using the WHO definition so including social care) would make it the fifth-largest contributor in the world. Their report ‘Towards Sustainable Healthcare’ outlines 5 areas where change can be made for the sector as a whole. It covers energy, procurement practices, chemicals, pharma and food, all of which have implications and opportunity for social care. Whilst we can choose how and where we draw our energy, the chemicals we use and the food we buy, but overall, the biggest implication is currently outwith our control. Where external agencies have authority in terms of commissioning and procurement practice, it more often favours cost over quality and sustainability in all definitions.

Across the UK and beyond, organisations have been making eco-conscious changes, but this can often be more achievable at scale. Given that most care providers in Scotland are SMEs, despite desire this can seem a more daunting task.

For care homes and housing support, there are many options that providers have been implementing for over a decade – better insulation, water and lighting efficiencies such as eco taps and aerators, and LED lighting installed where they meet the expectations of creating a homely environment. Last week I met an architect with whom I discussed ‘smarter design’. They have particular expertise in optimising natural light in care homes thus reducing electricity use, but they also described to me the effect this can have on regulating body functions such as your heartbeat and even when you urinate. Design affects the widest definitions of the environment. Structural change is of course more difficult if you have an older property, as to retrofit can present challenge and cost. However, as some of these changes are cost saving in the longer-term, they may also be financially worthy of investment. Whilst access to such resource can be compromised because of the prolonged underfunding of the sector, it is clear that issues of environmental sustainability are just as important for our Commissioning Authorities as for providers and staff.

Whilst some of this also applies to homecare offices, the opportunities for care at home providers lie more in clinical consumables and PPE, and in travel. Smarter route planning can reduce emissions, as well as reducing travel time for employees and reduced vehicle costs.

Indeed, digital and technological developments such as care planning tools may be a significant answer to a range of challenges as they have the opportunity not only to reduce paper waste but also to develop into citizen-owned and controlled systems, making data sharing and data analysis much simpler to experience and access. Projects such as medicines waste reduction which can be enhanced by using digital systems such as E-MAR not only reduce waste, but significantly reduce costs, not to mention the impact of reducing the transport required to issue and deliver scripts.

Scottish Care’s Executive Committee recently revisited the communique written at the Five Nations Care Forum over a year ago, on the role of a sector already renowned for its impact on humanity in extending its activity to include sustainability. We discussed the actions of some providers towards achieving this and would like to hear from you on what you have been doing to support the sharing of good ideas across Scotland. Whilst a culture of environmental audits can help organisations to regularly review their practise, access to a resource full of ideas may offer suggestions to enable other providers to identify and act on areas for improvement. It is also a fantastic way not only to showcase your own work but to positively showcase the sector as a whole in actively addressing the challenge head-on.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Aware, Awaken, Action.

Karen Hedge

National Director

@hegeit

Losing a language: dementia and bilingualism.

I have always been fascinated by language and the way we communicate. Perhaps part of the reason for this is that in the early stages of my life it was an issue that dominated a lot of my waking hours. I was an identical twin born to two parents who spoke Scottish Gaelic most of the time. Like many twins – indeed over half – we developed our own ‘twin speak’ (cryptophasia). Twin language is a way twins use to communicate with one another and is a language others cannot understand. It is typically full of onomatopoeic sounds and new words adapted from adult language which makes it sound as if it is understandable but to the non-twins it is usually not. Combine that with a good dose of Skye Gaelic and when I went to primary school it didn’t take long before frequent sessions with the Speech and Language therapist became part of my weekly syllabus! It meant in practice that when we went to primary school we had to un-learn and unpack the communication constructs of our early years and learn to speak a language and a system of communication alien and foreign to us.

It was there at speech therapy – or at least in the estimation of the therapist – where I was taught to ‘speak properly’ and of course to speak English the self-declared language of the educated and professional.

That last observation is only a bit tongue in cheek. Gaelic has long been marginalised as a language unsuitable for intellect and knowledge. My late great-aunt was a strict Skye headmistress who had to discipline school children for speaking Gaelic whether in classroom or playground yet in her own home she hardly spoke English. She showed me the directives that instructed her to suppress Gaelic.  Indeed my own parents belonged to a generation where they had been ‘told’ even if they did not intuitively believe that Gaelic would keep their children back!

I’m reflecting on the issue of language and mother-tongue because tomorrow, the 21st February is the United Nations’ International Mother Language Day designed to “promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”.  It is a day where we are encouraged to celebrate the diversity of language in recognition of the role they play in cultural and societal diversity.

Language is critical – it can be a gateway to a world of discovery or a door slamming in one’s face, limiting progress and access, shutting off opportunity and possibility. I know that because Gaelic was taught out of me, given no value or credence, and as a result my own ability to express myself, to be confident in using English my non mother-tongue, held me back for a period of time. It undoubtedly created in me a dislocation where I wanted to use the tones and rhythms, the timbre and sound of Gaelic but was dragooned into the disciplines of what I felt then was an inexpressive English tongue.

My own early experience has meant that I am probably more sensitive to the importance of not making assumptions about those whose language is not my own and am utterly convinced that the suppression of any language causes cultural and individual damage and trauma. And yet we live, perhaps especially in the United Kingdom, in times where monoglot imperialism assumes that English should always be the dominant form of international exchange.

Language helps to knit our identity, it weaves us into the fabric of community and culture, it nourishes the poetry within our bones and feeds the dreams within our blood. Language is the bridge which crosses divides and can be the pull of lover, the painter of song, the harbour for unsettled times.

Due to globalisation the uniqueness, the colour, the vibrancy of language is increasingly under threat as the world rushes towards the grey homogeneity of the latest lingua franca.

Every two weeks a language disappears and according to the United Nations at least 43% of the estimated 6000 languages spoken in the world are endangered. ‘Only a few hundred languages have genuinely been given a place in education systems and the public domain, and less than a hundred are used in the digital world.’

I have always had a love affair with Gaelic, yearning for a lost fluency and familiarity, but she has been a mother tongue to whom I have been a less than dutiful child. It is a loss which I have increasingly regretted. not least because the critical importance of bilingualism came home to me a few years ago as I witnessed my own mother live her last years with dementia.

Her later years were a time where as the disease progressed she turned into the world of her earlier memories, developing sharp recall and detailed description for days long since lost in time. It was also a time when she increasingly reverted to her mother tongue, the language she knew from childhood, the tones and timbre of which were the companion of childhood and culture, the oxygen of love and belonging.

We now know from numerous research studies that being bilingual is one of the forms of cognitive stimulation that requires a very different and diverse range of activity within the human brain. On top of this we have solid and extensive research to show that the onset of dementia symptoms in individuals who are bilingual can be delayed by between four to five years compared with monolingual individuals.

Just as with my own mother I have heard stories from care home staff who have described how individuals with dementia who had reached a stage of little or no communication, came alive if there was a carer who was able to speak to them or sing to them in their own language. Just as with my own mother I have seen the spark of light in tired eyes as they have remembered moments and memories re-captured through the memory of song in their own native tongue.

We desperately need to value the ability to use mother tongues more than we do. So it is that a carer with a bilingual or multilingual skill is, I believe, a greater asset than one who is not. We have an impoverished view of language which limits not just our ability to meet the individual needs of people but diminishes the whole fabric of our commonwealth. Our language is not just the way we communicate, it is an intrinsic part of our identity, of who we are as a person. It is both an enabler of our belonging to community and a sign of that belonging.

So personally I will commit to do better to re-capture my lost tongue, even if my partner- in conversation is no longer around, but I will also continue to stress that for us as a society to truly care for another, professionally and personally, we need to tune ourselves into strange and different  tongues, we need to learn to love the language, we need to nourish all those sounds of colourful words unknown to us.

The poet W.S.Merwin in a haunting poem captures just what it is we lose when we lose a language.

LOSING A LANGUAGE

A breath leaves the sentences and does not come back

yet the old still remember something that they could say

 

but they know now that such things are no longer believed

and the young have fewer words

 

many of the things the words were about

no longer exist

 

the noun for standing in mist by a haunted tree

the verb for I

 

the children will not repeat

the phrases their parents speak

 

somebody has persuaded them

that it is better to say everything differently

 

so that they can be admired somewhere

farther and farther away

 

where nothing that is here is known

we have little to say to each other

 

we are wrong and dark

in the eyes of the new owners

 

the radio is incomprehensible

the day is glass

 

when there is a voice at the door it is foreign

everywhere instead of a name there is a lie

 

nobody has seen it happening

nobody remembers

 

this is what the words were made

to prophesy

 

here are the extinct feathers

here is the rain we saw

 

W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees, 1988, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

 

 

Donald Macaskill