My late mother used to say that the seasons changed when the schools went back. With the passage of time, I have come to realise the truthfulness of such observation rather than to dismiss it as I once did as the fruit of Highland pessimism. As Scotland’s schools have returned or are just about to, the seasons do indeed seem to be changing. The days are getting shorter, the summer bedding plants are dying back, and there is a slowing of nature as it begins to get ready and prepared for colder times.

It is therefore maybe not surprising that next week along with colleagues from across health and social care I will be attending a workshop session to explore winter preparedness. Last year was a very challenging time for many who worked in, delivered and importantly those who used social care and health services. So, it is very necessary for planning and preparation to take place early in our autumn. But just how ready are we for the weeks and months that lie ahead? I want to reflect in this blog, briefly, on where we are at in the world of social care in Scotland as we start to move towards the winter.

Covid 19.

To all intents and purposes, for the vast majority of the public in Scotland Covid has disappeared from both thought and consciousness over the last few months. Its fear and hold have been burnt back by the summer sun. Indeed, at the end of the month the current practices around testing of health and social care staff will stop altogether unless someone is being discharged from a hospital into a care home. Though there is a rider that testing will happen for individuals if there is a clinical need.

But of course, for those of us working in social care Covid has never disappeared. It is still here and the casual dismissal of its impact by some ill serves those for whom its impact remains significant. There are countless thousands of Scots who are immune suppressed and who are struggling to lead ‘new normal’ lives because of their fear of catching a potentially damaging virus if they interact with a society where protections and mitigations are minimal. Indeed, for those individuals the very dismissal and denigration of their desire to protect themselves has made themselves even more fearful of social exchange.

In addition, there are tens of thousands of our fellow citizens for whom Covid has had a lasting potentially life-long impact because they are living with the consequences of Long Covid. I cannot imagine there is anyone out there who does not know someone living with Long Covid. And for those who simply and dismissively say catching Covid is just like getting the flu (though when did getting the flu become such a casual happenstance) then I would ask when did you hear of tens of thousands with ‘Long Flu’ or permanent damage from the flu affecting thousands? Indeed, the negative impacts of frequent infections of Covid are increasingly being researched with not a little scientific and clinical concern in some early studies. Covid is not ‘just’ the flu by any stretch of any imagination.

As we move into autumn this last week there has been a much increased media coverage about whether or not there has been a growth in Covid cases over the last period and whether this is something we should be concerned about. In truth this is hard to determine when there is no real community surveillance, but we do know that the World Health Organisation continues to identify new variants. One such is EG5 or Eris and even more recently BA2.86 which was identified first in Israel just last week and is already causing some anxiety as to its rapidity of spread. Not surprisingly new variants will keep coming. What is important is whether they will escape the vaccine and community protection which the majority have at the moment. The BBC related the levels of Covid in a good piece this past week  in Should we be worried about Covid this winter? – BBC News  .

But anecdotally I am coming across many more friends, family and colleagues who have Covid or have recently had it. (If only we had decent community tracking!). The data we do have is mixed but does seem to show an upward trend which is a concern given that this is early August. Data reported on the 17^th August on the Public Health Scotland database indicated that there were 183 people admitted to hospital described as acute Covid admissions. This was up from 139 the week before. This meant that there were 219 people in hospital with Covid19 on the 13th of August compared to 166 the week before. According to data from National Records of Scotland reported on 17^th August there were 17 deaths involving COVID-19 in the preceding week (to the 13^th). This is an increase on previous weeks. The Care Inspectorate reported that in terms of the number of Covid outbreaks in the week to the 15^th August there were 39 care homes which was 17 more than the previous week and is 4% of all homes reporting. This is a 3% increase in a fortnight, and I hope is not a developing trend but anecdotally one is hearing of more staff off ill with Covid which is also reflected in their data stating that for the care homes which reported to the week ending the 15^th August with Covid here were 108 staff absent which is 0.3% of the workforce from those 60% of homes which reported. A fortnight before this was 47 staff – so a doubling in absence rates.

As someone who looks at this data on a weekly basis there is clearly an impact from new variants and what appears increased transmission. It makes the roll out of the winter vaccination programme all the more critical for all who are eligible. What I think is a concern is the potential impact of a bad flu season on top of Covid19. Last winter we avoided a bad flu impact in part because of a more effective vaccine.

So even if we are able to step up our Covid and respiratory response there is likely to be a continued pressure on a health system which is already under strain and on a social care system and workforce which is in a worrying state.

Workforce

The health and morale of our workforce is a key issue for winter preparedness. Obviously, absence due to Covid is a matter of concern for any person working in social care. But we are already in a situation where the workforce in social care is, I would contend, at its lowest ebb. I will not rehearse again the immense disappointment felt by frontline workers and organisations around the failure of the current Scottish Government to come good on their promise to pay frontline staff £12 an hour. We still do not have an indication of a timeframe for this despite the promise being made in the spring. What has happened since is what we all knew would happen and that is a haemorrhaging of frontline care staff from independent and third sector organisations into both better paid public organisations and the NHS, and even more worryingly out of the health and care sectors in entirety. Like many I was pleased with the news of a few days ago that our junior doctors had settled their dispute, but even this news makes frontline social care staff feel yet another kick in the teeth. What must happen for the promise of increased remuneration to become more than a political soundbite and instead to be a promise fulfilled?

Last year was very challenging for the organisations I know whether care homes or homecare providers, regardless of them being charitable or private. It was very hard to hold onto staff and even harder to recruit in such a high employment and competitive environment. With the fact that NHS colleagues are now getting paid so much more than social care it will be harder still. The gaps were plugged at huge cost last winter using agency staff, but even agencies are struggling to recruit.

But more than the issue of pay is the issue of regard and value. I have lost count of the demoralising conversations I have held over the summer with frontline care staff who simply do not feel valued. We are a lifetime away from claps on a Covid Thursday night.

Sustainable services

Alongside a demoralised workforce social care provision in Scotland has never faced the extent of financial instability it is now enduring. Given that in Scotland so much provision is delivered by smaller organisations this has left them susceptible to very real risks not least because of the ongoing cost of living crisis and the lack of external and public investment in care and support. I have a very real concern that to keep their heads above the water and because of a lack of frontline staff that social care providers, whether care homes or homecare organisations, if called upon to increase capacity and response in the weeks and months to come, have done previously.

We are already witnessing a level of care home closure and a reduction in bed availability the like of which no one I talk to can remember. More and more care homes, if they can, are making the decision not to admit residents funded by the National Care Home Contract because it is simply not sustainable. In terms of homecare more and more hours are being handed back because they organisations cannot afford to deliver them at what they are being paid. More recently the level of late payments and cash-flow issues are having a profound impact on small homecare organisations. Social care is a sector whose fiscal fragility should send alarm bells ringing.

Whole system thinking.

What matters most to people at any time of the year not just winter is that they remain at the centre of all our planning and preparedness in the weeks ahead. The challenge of these days is not about numbers and statistics, but about what the experience of every individual is. I have written many times in this blog that getting through a winter (or any season) is not ‘just’ about delayed discharge, or making sure that the acute sector hospital flow is operating well, or even discharging people to be supported in their own home through models like hospital at home. It is all that, of course, but it is also critically about preventative care and support; intervention upstream that delays decline and enables people to remain independent for as long as possible. Too much of our focus (both in terms of media and politics) is on one part of the health and social care system at the cost of the whole. Investment in social care and homecare in particular would massively re-right that imbalance.

In general terms then I am very concerned about the capacity of an already stretched system in health and social care to respond to whatever the winter brings us. If we use the obsessive media metric of delayed discharge our numbers are very high for the time of year. According to the latest published data at June 2023 census, 1,738 people were delayed. The high point of November 2022 was 1,977 people delayed. Our hospitals are working at levels which after such a long period of maximum occupancy are exhaustive.

The risks of the following season are clear from rising Covid and other respiratory conditions, a tired, exhausted and devalued social care workforce, a failure to invest in the social care system as a whole, and in my viewpoint a myopic focus on one part of the system rather than the whole. This is all made worse by the stripping of funding and support from many communities and third sector organisations which has left our neighbourhoods ill prepared to support their citizens. Added to this the immense pressure placed upon the army of unpaid and family carers over the last few years has led many to the brink of being unable to continue and this is not helped by the voids and gaps in respite day support and opportunities.

There is, however, no shortage of talented committed individuals across the whole of Scotland willing to make the difference, working hard to get things right. There are plenty of innovative ideas which are being put into practice and implemented across the country to make sure that the experience of citizens is as positive as it can be and literally that lives are saved and enhanced. We all know planning is critical but planning only works with honest appraisal of the environment around you and if the adequate tools and resources are made available in order to get the job done. Planning only works if the analysis (which most agree on) and the solutions and interventions (around which there is much agreement) are enacted upon. I hope by working together rather than in siloes we will not only get through these coming weeks but thrive but all of that doesn’t just depend on collaboration, critical through it is to have everyone pulling in the one direction, it also depends on political and societal leadership and making hard fiscal decisions which for me means starting to prioritise social care. If we get social care right this autumn we will all get through the winter.

Donald Macaskill

 

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I was chatting to my 9-year-old daughter the other day about the Global Ageing conference and events which are coming to Glasgow in a few weeks. She turned to me and asked, ‘Are there going to be young people and children there?’ I replied that there were sessions on inter-generational work but I wasn’t sure if there would be children. Her retort was ‘Ageing is for everyone not just old people. Children are ageing.’ Out of the mouths of babes ….

Because of course, she is right. The way we age is for all generations and years. And yet I am made to reflect on the extent to which both in policy and practice we are not always inclusive of the perspectives of the young when we consider ageing. Have we made ageing just the preserve of the middle and older generations? If the saying that youthfulnes is too important to leave it to the young is true, is it also true that older age is too important to be left to those who might think of themselves as old?

I continue to be shocked by what I see and read on social media about attitudes to older age in particular. Even this past week when responding to the news that there were increases in the rate of Covid19 in some parts of the UK one person on ‘Twitter’ or is it X, stated quite openly that it was positive as it would remove more old people and thus reduce the pressure on the NHS!

We have a long way to go before we create a society where all ages matter and are valued and treated with dignity and respect. Our humanity and our lives should not have a use by date stamped on it dependent upon another’s perceived sense of value.

Today is the United Nation’s International Youth Day. This is an annual event to celebrate younger age and is not unlike the similar event to recognise the value and contribution of older age held on the 1^st October each year. This year’s theme is

Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World. It is a recognition of our global transition towards an environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly world. As it states ‘a successful transition towards a greener world will depend on the development of green skills in the population. Green skills are “knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society”.

All ages can, I suspect agree and applaud such a statement.  I hope that International Youth Day will as always enhance its message. But whether it is this year’s theme or any other it is not a campaign or destination that will succeed or be reached by the young alone, any more than any campaign of an older age group or day can be successful without the voice, presence, and contribution of the young. So why do we consistently act as if we are all on different journeys?

We have come a long way from a situation where it was believed that engaging with young people in the aged care sector was about the quarterly visit of primary school children into a care home to entertain and perform (though there is nothing wrong with that!). The work of organisations like ‘Generations Working Together’ has shown us that real inter- or multi- generational work is not to consolidate the cultural stereotypes of age but to challenge them. The young child visiting a care home has so much story and vision to share and the older resident has so much creativity and innovation to commence in the dialogue between the ages. One is not passive and the other active. There must be a mutuality of understanding that each generation, each person has as much to learn and share, to receive and give as the next.

Organisations like GWT have a vision, which in their case is ‘to live in a Scotland where different generations are more connected, and everyone has the opportunity to build relationships that help to create a fairer society.’

This is about moving and breaking down the barriers of ignorance and stereotype, priority and policy which can present blocks and stop the generations from working together.

So, whilst it is always going to be important that we challenge discrimination where one group is treated more or less favourably than other – and that still exists in our society in relationship to age as the older you are the more likely to be the victim of discrimination you become – we need to expend as much priority and resource upon  inter-generational working.

Ageing belongs to everyone – it is not just the preserve or focus of one demographic group. What do the young say about what it means to age? What does ageing mean to the youth of today? Well that is inevitably a very individual question but one thing we know is that there is a library full of research papers and reports that show that people who view the ageing process in a positive manner and as something to enable them to achieve their potential and dreams tend to enjoy much better health into their later years than people who think about ageing as decline and deterioration, frailty and loss of independence. A positive attitude around ageing benefits us both physiologically and emotionally. If we think positively about growing old, then we live longer – it is as simple as that!

In the face of such overwhelmingly clear research around being positive about ageing, it would also have to be admitted that the cultural stereotypes about older age still dominate and perhaps have become even more consolidated.

Ageing really is for everyone – it is the business of our whole society not just to challenge negative attitudes and behaviours (which remains critical) but to start to celebrate, value, appreciate and herald older age and ageing. My nine-year-old is absolutely right and I hope by the time she reaches ninety she will belong to a community and a nation where all generations celebrate together as well as on their own days for youth and older age.

I agree with the positivity of the Argyll based poet Rebecca Pine:

Old Age

I have, I think, most organs that
I started with. Some shaped by time
foreshortened, elongated, dulled.
I keep at bay time’s passage with the thought
this must I do, this might I do, this ought.
Thus never having nothing on my slate
I draw a little, dance a little, write;
and sometimes in the middle of the night
think splendid thoughts which trickle down
to verse. While opera and music still delight;
there’s history and nature to explore
and conversation with the worldly wise,
I’m washed by tides like pebbles on the shore.

Old age! Old age?
I’m sorry sir, I fail to recognise
the title on the page.

Old Age by Rebecca Pine – Scottish Poetry Library

Photo by Paolo Bendandi on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill

I read recently that both because of the cost-of-living crisis but significantly because of the severe environmental changes which we have witnessed across Europe this year that the way in which people spend their holidays is likely to change. The argument stated was that it is likely that fewer people will chose to go abroad and spend time outside their own country. This has long been an issue for citizens of the United States where only 37% of people hold a passport and an even smaller proportion of that have left their country but it is not something we have witnessed in Scotland or in the UK as a whole. The journalist who was reporting these factors questioned whether or not the lack of people going abroad from Britain would result in a change of attitude and behaviour towards other countries. He opined about whether or not people would become more insular and perhaps dismissive of the perspectives, views, and attitudes of others. Is there a risk we will lose an internationalist perspective?

Internationalism is at the heart of the Scottish character. It is that conviction that we become better, we mature and grow as individuals and as a nation, when we look beyond the horizons of our own knowledge, experience and world to explore elsewhere, include all and to learn from others. It has been a characteristic of Scottish identity from the earliest of times and has enriched our nation and communities.

As many of you will be aware my own organisation Scottish Care together with the National Care Forum will be hosting the Global Ageing Conference to be held in Glasgow from 6-8 September. A lot of work has gone into creating an event which will bring some amazing international voices to Scotland to reflect, share and inspire on issues relating to the care and support of older adults in the years to come. You can find details and sign-up opportunities on the website at Global Ageing Conference 2023 (globalageing2023.com).

As one of those involved in the planning and delivery of an international event, I have been spending some time reflecting on the nature of internationalism not just in general but for the world of social care in specific and I want briefly in this week’s blog to reflect on a few issues and themes that have arisen about working internationally and the diverse perspectives that come to bear when being involved in such an experience.

I have already stated above that in wider society in the United Kingdom there seems to be a growing trend in part because of circumstance but also because of changing attitude away from internationalism and international approaches. Some of the comments I hear in relation to social care go along similar lines. I have heard the statement that ‘everyone is different, so I am not sure that the perspectives of others in other countries have much to teach me and the way I work or deliver support and care.’ Undeniably it is true that every community and society works and acts differently, equally true it is one of the principles of social care that we should always have at the centre of all our work and relationships the peculiar and particular needs of the individual (person-centerdness) but it is I think naivety in the extreme to suppose or imagine that circumstances both in terms of an individual person or a community are so unique and distinctive that there are not lessons to be learnt, perspectives garnered and insights to be explored from contexts and communities very different from our own. Indeed, the last couple of years has taught me personally that in Scotland we have an astonishing amount to learn about a whole host of areas from perspectives and communities very different from our own, whether it be insights on community engagement and person-led approaches to care from Singapore, innovative approaches to dementia from India, or the empowering and skilling of the care workforce in Africa. The loss of a sense of internationalism whether in social care or society in general is a real risk because it impoverishes and risks the development in its place of narrow parochialism and negative nationalism.

A second point I sometimes hear is that when there are times of very real challenge then one should concentrate and focus on the issues to hand and not invest in either the future or in exploring new approaches, ideas, and models wherever they may come from. The risk of such a perspective is once again that a community or a person becomes insular, narrows the vision of the possible to that which is known, and creates a future solely from inside their own mind or experience. It shrinks the world to their own backyard. It means that we are not open to be inspired by others, prepared to accept that what or the way we do things might not be the best or end point, and that there could well be insights and imaginations from elsewhere that could literally change our world. Of course, there are very real challenges in investing resource into exploring new approaches and possibilities, but it strikes me that to draw the horizon of the future so close to your own experience, risks a very limited perception of what is possible in our living.

One last observation I have about what I fear is a loss of internationalism is that faced with so many challenges that as organisations, communities, and individuals we need to expend our energies on those challenges alone and not to seek to take on new work or activity. Concentrate on the now and leave the bigger issues or threats to others. Personally I consider that such a turning your back on the questions and answers of another is very risky. It is a perspective that believes it is possible to confront global or shared threats alone. The very opposite is the case. Whether it is the challenge of environmental and climate threat, the shared challenge of safety and defence, or in my world the shared challenges of how do your recruit and retain a workforce in social care; what approaches and models of care and support will people want in their older age in 10, 15, 20 years’ time; how do we meet the threats to our society brought about by dementia, delirium or any other condition – then all of these yes could be challenged and addressed on their own, within Scotland – or far better they can and should be addressed by a shared international collectivism.

There is, I believe, an importance if not an imperative in being challenged and unsettled out of our own situation and context by people who do things differently, whose insights are not ours and whose discoveries may not be those of our priority. There is a strength to be gained by the solidarity which comes from an internationalist perspective, an energy created by the inspiration and imaginations of others, and an adventure to be discovered when we move beyond the horizons of our own knowledge.

In a few weeks’ time I hope (and know) when the Global Ageing conference and its week of events comes to a close I will as will all those who have taken part, have been inspired, moved, enriched and challenged by the people I will have met (from at this stage 40 countries around the globe), and the conversations I will hold, and the experience of realising that my world and perspectives are not the only ones when we face global issues and shared concerns.

Any international event changes you for the best and I really hope that as a society in Scotland, never mind the world of social care, that we will not go down the path of withdrawing from others in the belief we can be or are best alone. One of the very earliest poems I heard and explored as a child at school is printed below. It is one whose insights I keep learning. I will be renewing my passport when it comes time to do so next year!

‘No Man is an Island’

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man’s death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

MEDITATION XVII, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne

Photo by Anthony Cantin on Unsplash

Donald Macaskill

Tomorrow is International Day of Friendship which was created over a decade ago by the United Nations to underline the critical importance of friendship to human well-being and to society.

As the UN stated when the day was established our world is a complicated place, but it is a place where friendship is probably more important than ever. The idea of having a day to celebrate friends originated from Hallmark (the card folks) in 1919 and was intended to be a day for people to celebrate their friendship by sending each other cards. But by 1940 it died out completely.

It wasn’t until 2011, that the United Nations officially recognised 30th July as International Friendship Day, even though many countries celebrate on the first Sunday of August.

According to the International Friendship Day declaration, people are invited to “observe this day in an appropriate manner, in accordance with the culture and other appropriate circumstances or customs of their local, national and regional communities, including through education and public awareness-raising activities.”

Friendship makes a real difference to people. The United Nations underlines that amongst other things that friendship enhances emotional resilience helping people through good and bad times. Research has shown that even spending just 10 minutes with friends can boost your ability to solve problems and your brainpower. And it helps you sleep and makes you healthier.

Regardless of all the research most of us know that having a network of friends brings real benefit to us. I sometimes wonder with all our focus on social media whether our virtual networks evidence the same depth of friendship that our physical ones do. That said I know that during Covid technology rescued, fostered, and encouraged friendships.

As you age and grow older it can become harder to maintain friendships. This can be the case for lots of reasons, whether due to moving to s new location at key stages of older age and losing networks you had built up or not being able to be as involved in the community and socialising less frequently perhaps because of ill health or even affordability.

Friendship has to be worked at and I remember speaking to residents in a care home some years ago who had become low in mood because though their families visited they had over time lost touch with friends in the community who after some time had stopped visiting. The home manager took it upon herself to undertake a ‘friend’s audit’ during which she discovered who people were describing as ‘missing friends’ and she had colleagues purposefully and over time re-created connections and the benefit to individuals was visible to see. They always had an open door to the community but now the community was much better at supporting those who had chosen the care home to be their place of residence.

I’ve written before about the impact of loneliness in our communities and even in your own home people can over time become isolated through loss of contact with friends. Good social care used to be as much about enabling friends to be in touch, connecting people in ‘social ways’ than just personal care needs. Friendship and its maintenance has tremendous preventative health benefits if only we resourced and prioritised it adequately.

The poet Jackie Kay wrote these words about friendship over a decade ago.

“The Scottish poetry Library asked me to pick a favourite Burns poem and write my own version. A tall order! A big ask. I decided to go for a short poem. I love John Anderson my Jo-in two perfect wee stanzas it tells the story of a lifetime’s marriage and even imagines a kind of togetherness in death…

But I wanted to write a poem that celebrated friendship; so many poems celebrate romantic relationships. So I took the idea of a friendship over the course of a lifetime, imagining that we’d been friends as girls, Ali and I, and that we still will be friends as old women. I couldn’t quite manage the two short stanzas, so I went for three instead! I pronounced fiere -feeree, not fear; the latter is the correct pronunciation but I liked the ee ending since it afforded me more rhymes, and also sounds more like friend to me, dearie fiere. But I was also thinking about what makes us who we are, and that if it weren’t for the friends that we meet along the road, the chance, happy meetings and the ones that feel fated, we would all be very different. Friends shape and carve your life, opening doors, alerting you to possibilities, giving you sustenance and belief. Not just a shoulder to cry on, a rock to fly off. You choose your friends. The gift of a deep friendship goes to the very heart of who you yourself are. It’s hard to imagine how you would get through any challenge, separation, bereavement, disappointment, embarrassment, without your fine fieres.’

I do hope people will give some time to think of those they have lost touch with and to try to reconnect on this International Day of Friendship. I also hope that groups and individuals in our wider community consider those in our midst who are in need of being reconnected of indeed in need of befriending.

I’d encourage you to read Jackie Kay’s poem but my own favourite friend poem is one that equally captures the truth that true friendship just creates a space that allows you to be. It’s written by the poet, physician and scientist Norman Kreitman who died in 2012.

Fishing With Norman MacCaig

Each time I called for him he was perfectly ready,
equipment checked and in smooth order,
pared to essentials. And I, cluttered with gadgets,
would clatter behind as he led the way downstairs.

In the boat, as befits a sedulous angler,
he was taciturn, though between essential words
he would give that courteous, gentle smile
that was his signature, before his gaze returned

to the contemplation of the water. And when
in his own good time he hooked a trout
he’d eye it dispassionately, as one whose life was spent
retrieving silver from all the elements of Scotland.

Fishing With Norman MacCaig by Norman Kreitman – Scottish Poetry Library

Donald Macaskill

Photo by Ricardas Brogys on Unsplash

In two days’ time on the 24 July, it is Samaritans Awareness Day. The very nature and heart of the Samaritans is the fact that they are there to listen to people when they need to talk to someone. They do so 24/7.

Finding someone to listen to your pain and hurt, to give space to have your questions and concerns, your anxieties and fears heard can be really hard.

Listening is not easy. We spend so much of our time communicating but I often reflect upon how little of that time is spent in real and attentive listening to another. In an increasingly hectic and busy world so many of us spend time surrounded by sound and noise, we hear voices and listen to conversations, but I wonder if we give ourselves the time and space to develop in ourselves the skills of deep and attentive listening.

It is a truism that we communicate in many different ways. Academic researchers have stated that in any communication what we hear is actually the smallest part of what someone is trying to ‘say’ to us. It is argued by Meharabian and others that maybe as much as 90% of what we communicate is ‘non-verbal’ I mean by that we do not only ‘talk’ with our mouths and voices but in so many other ways. Our bodies talk to others. The way we lean forward or away from another; our use of wider posture and gesture; the use of our eyes, as to whether we give direct contact or not; the mannerisms we may have; all parts of us communicate and talk. Whilst airport bookshops are full of theories about how we communicate and much of it are the  theories of the unobserved, it is nevertheless true that when we communicate with those we know well we learn to read the signs of how they are saying what they are saying as much as the ‘what’.

Just as our fingerprints are unique to us, I believe every human individual communicates in a unique and distinctive way. Of course, there are consistent similarities, but the art of true communication is to learn what is my own individual language.

Phoebe Caldwell, whose work and career in speech and language therapy and whose development of intensive interaction especially for people with autism has been so seminal, once said to me that communication is like a bridge. There is a hubris and arrogance that assumes that someone can only communicate if they use my language, my way of using body, and sound and word and silence. Real communication is like a bridge. It is as we meet each other in the middle of that bridge that we learn to understand what another wants to say to us and is saying to us, and vice-versa they learn what matters to us. This is the heart of all good relationships.

But when it comes to listening in my experience it is also often the case that what is left unsaid is often what someone comes to talk to you about. We have to give space for people to share what it is that they want to share and talk to us about. Picture a classic visit to the doctor or to someone you have to speak to about an important or urgent matter. I have learned that many folks hide their hurt and issues in the small talk of generalities. It is that small talk that allows them to gain and build the confidence to share what really troubles or concerns them. But it is often shared at the end, in the moment when their hands are on the door-knob of the exit, at a point when they feel as if they can flee and escape from the encounter that is before them. So it is that we all in our own way have to give people the space to share and talk about what is troubling and bothering them. The art of true listening is not always the sounds we hear but recognise what is being said in the silence between the words, the feelings, and emotions someone wants to share but can only do so through the look of an eye, the gesture of a hand, or the shrug of a shoulder.

I would love it if every child at school spent some time learning about how we can truly and attentively listen to others. How we can learn to not interrupt a speaker because we presume to know what it is they are already going to say; how we can give space for people to go deep into what they want to share; how we can recognise the way in which someone uniquely expresses themselves; how to use open and not closed dialogue; how to be comfortable with a silence just long enough for it to be filed not by our voice but by our listening. I suspect if attentive listening were to be part of our school curriculum of learning then our experience of living in community would be so much richer.

Today there will be many people in our acquaintance who will want to talk, who have found the courage to start to reach out and talk, we can and should encourage them to talk to those who are adept at listening like the Samaritans. But I also hope we can use these days as an opportunity for all of us to start to learn how to listen better. I know personally it is a journey of improvement on which I have a long distance to travel – but it is always better to listen, because it is then we truly begin to hear another.

That well known philosopher the Liverpool football manager Jurgen Klopp once said: “If you want to be a leader you have to be a good listener because if you are a good listener, you might just find out what people want.”

And deep listening really does make a difference as the American poet and therapist John Fox puts it:

When Someone Deeply Listens To You

When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you’ve had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.

When someone deeply listens to you
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind’s eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!

When someone deeply listens to you
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.

When Someone Deeply Listens To You, by John Fox (awakin.org)

 

Donald Macaskill