The history of any battle is often the narrative of those who are victorious and those who are the powerful. As a result, most of the history which has been written and taught has been at the cost of remembering and recognising those who have really led the struggle and achieved the victory.

The remembrance and story of Coronavirus in Scotland in the last few months should be one about leadership – but not the leadership of the loud and visible, not the narrative of the strident and self-advocating, not even with respect about the decisions of politicians and scientists, but of those who have rolled up their sleeves to do the work of care, those who have sat with the dying and those who have spent themselves in the giving of life and love to stranger and friend alike. They have been the real leaders of this hour.

There has been true and remarkable leadership during Covid19 in Scotland and in my blog this week I want to reflect on that leadership both to recognise it and treasure it.

A long time ago I used to teach theories of leadership in a vain and I fear forlorn attempt to try to teach people about how to better manage group dynamics and inter-personal relationships. I have forgotten most of what I taught – as doubtless my listeners have – but one or two things have stuck with me. One was the concept of maieutic leadership.

Maieutic comes from “maieutikos,” the Greek word for “of midwifery.” It is a style of leadership which strikes me as entirely apposite for the current times.

A midwife is someone who is immensely important during a birth. S/he is someone who provides support, comfort and assurance. Through encouraging word, by physical presence of a holding hand or wept brow, she enables the mother to bring her baby to birth. Despite all the advances in the technology of birthing it is still this essential human accompanying that is the midwife’s greatest gift and capacity. It is not she who does the work, but she who enables life to happen. She is present at all times, like the support of a bridge that enables you to cross from one side of a river to the other, she is the enabler of fulfilment, the supporter of new beginnings, but she leaves the work and autonomy to the individual mother.

A maieutic leader is someone who is such an enabler. She is present to provide structure and support. The task to be achieved is not one that she as a leader needs to do for personal fulfilment but she creates the conditions, through word, action and presence to enable it to happen. Her knowledge rests quietly, her creativity sits silently, her intervention only necessary if it is needed, but throughout she gives assurance by presence and skill.

Who have been the leaders in these past few months?

The women and men who get up every day and leave their families to go to a care home or to work in the homes of others during this pandemic have surely been the real leaders of these times. They may not recognise themselves as such, they may indeed be uncomfortable both with the concept and the recognition, but it is true, nevertheless. I hope we have all of us come to a better sense of appreciation of the human skills, technical abilities and personal humanity of the thousands who work in social care. Before all this they were described as ‘low-skilled’. This demeans their abilities and capacities and it equates knowledge with that which is possessed through academia alone, rather than affirming the emotional intelligence and human capacity of thousands. The work of care is not easy and should not be romanticised. It is raw, dirty, physical and often upsetting. But these women and men have been in the forefront of the struggle against the pernicious virus we have all faced. That is true leadership, often working autonomously, beyond personal energy and frequently without appropriate recognition. They deserve to be known as the true frontline leaders against Covid19.

There is another group of people whose story might often be forgotten, and they are the managers and supervisors of our health and care services. This last week I received messages from quite a few managers which made me aware of the sheer exhaustion these individuals have been working under, especially in care homes. They have been there from the beginning. At the start they dealt with the upset of starting lockdown, they have struggled with the issues of PPE, of infection control, of testing, of staff absence. They have met head on the need to reassure, encourage and enable others despite all the challenges including in many instances the real grief of dealing with multiple deaths. They have worked long hours with colleagues to keep morale up and to ensure that despite the inhumanity of what was expected, that residents were kept positive and as healthy as they could be. They have dealt with the increasing and at times overwhelming demands put upon them by the system through scrutiny, from constant reporting and increased paperwork, from multiple sets of guidance and new requirements. In recent days they have had to manage the very real desire and pain of families to reconnect and to start the preparations for the restoration of visits and contact. These women and men have been amazing and deserve to be seen as leaders against Covid19.

And my last group of people who have been leaders at this time and who might be too easily forgotten are the residents in care homes and people living in their own home, the families and relatives of all who have had to be isolated and sheltered. This has been hell on earth for so many because no matter how we dress it up the response to the virus has effectively meant that people have been shut away from those they love the most. This is changing for many outside our care homes, but the threat and prevalence of the virus has still not led to the decision to formally open up visiting. Every day I speak to someone or read messages from someone who is enduring the agony of separation and becoming more and more frightened about what they might find when they see their relative again.  This is achingly hard but the strength of character and resolve, the determination of those families to see change which is safe and speedy, the advocacy of family to uphold the human rights and dignity of their loved ones at a time when policy appears cold and disinterested in the personal, is and has been an act of courageous leadership. This is not an easy time and it has and is taking astonishing strength of resolve and character for residents and families to keep going. I only hope that the end of that particular pain is coming very close. This has been real leadership.

So the true leaders in the fight against coronavirus are not those keyboard warriors who use words to show superiority or to prove a point; they are not those who seek personal advance or popular esteem; not those who score political points but are distant from decision-making; not those who point fingers at those who really are out there fighting. The true leaders over the last few weeks are the same folks who are still today fighting the presence of this virus. They are the frontline workers who are bringing compassion and solace, comfort and assurance, doing their hardest despite all that is hurtful and hard. They are the managers and supervisors  encouraging yet more from a drained group of staff and showing their own willingness to muck in and show the way. They are the families and residents who are pulling us all to that point in the horizon of hope which we want to reach soon.

I hope that when the story of this virus is told in months and years to come that we will remember the maieutic leadership of those who care and are cared for. It has been and is leadership of true authenticity, nothing false but completely real. Not loud and brash, but strong and tender; not talking but doing, not draining but affirming.

I hope we can shape leadership in the rest of society and in all our relationships. It will be a future worth living in and working towards if it is one where those who uphold others, who wipe tears away in aloneness, who use a word of quiet to encourage, an arm to uphold a weakened spirit, where their maieutic skills become the norm.

To all who lead today. Thank you

Donald Macaskill 

This has been Dementia Awareness Week and it has been another unusual week in lockdown. Normally every year I would have been attending events, conferences or meetings learning and exploring with others about the nature of Alzheimer’s Disease. For countless thousands it is also a week when we remember those in our own families who have died from dementia.  It is a time when I picture and recall my own grand-mother and mother’s journeys into the lostness of dementia.

This year, however, faced with Covid19 I have spent days thinking and working on practical steps so that we might be able to restore visiting into our care homes to re-establish connection and belonging. But as I have done so I have grown even more acutely aware and concerned about the impact that lockdown is having upon the psychological and physiological health of care home residents as well as people in the community who are living with dementia.

Like many others over the last few weeks I have been moved to a real depth of awakened understanding by the reporting of Lewis Goodall on BBC Newsnight. On Thursday night his input was on the effect of Covid19 on people living with dementia. He reflected on the disproportionate impact of isolation on people with dementia and informed his viewers that  in England 42% of Covid deaths in care homes were from those living with dementia. I suspect in Scotland the figure is significantly higher given that 90% plus of people in Scottish care homes have dementia. He also suggested that many were not dying from Covid19 but from the effects of isolation.

At the start of the pandemic as care homes went into lockdown the advice from Government and public health experts was that individual residents should be confined to their own rooms and that communal areas and activities should be ended or reduced. Normal activities such as socialising and eating together should be halted and that social distancing should be introduced. That is now 12 weeks ago.

So, for 12 long and painful weeks thousands of individuals who are not aware of what is happening and who do not understand why family faces have disappeared have had their lives turned upside down. Critical routines which give a pattern of familiarity and comfort have been upended. Activities to stimulate and keep both physical and mental capacity going have been reduced or have simply disappeared as staff have struggled to deal with real desperate clinical care needs of others. Perhaps most importantly the affirmation of touch and stroke, of smile and hugs, have not been offered or have been hidden behind a scary PPE mask. Staff have struggled with those whose dementia meant they would not remain in their rooms, for whom masks, and shields have been simply terrifying, whose behaviour has become challenging in all the confusion.

I simply cannot conceive what life must feel like to someone with dementia in a care home today. It must surely be terrifying. I cannot imagine how disempowered and frustrated care staff are feeling right now. A nurse on the frontline this week described it to me as “seeing people silently screaming inside and not being able to do what you want to do – to touch and to soothe.”

I know the why, the importance of preventing infection spread and the imperative of protection, but how long can we continue to isolate individuals in the way that we are now doing? This enforced confinement is destroying and damaging just as many lives as the virus is. People are losing their physical body mass; they are losing the physical and mental abilities which they once had, and they are at real risk of deep depression. We urgently need to now find a better balance between infection control and the enabling of life. We need to think about how we can use volunteers and supplementary staffing to allow people the freedom of protected space and place. We have rightly stressed the importance of scrutiny and inspection on infection control practice, but have we given as much attention to the quality of life that is now that of those with dementia in our care homes? For too many there is existence and safety, but life and purpose is disappearing.

Kate Lee, CEO of the Alzheimer Society in the Newsnight programme said that “if this was our children being affected we would be screaming from the rooftops.” Sadly, as she also stated this is further evidence of the way we treat people differentially because of their age or because they have dementia and not some other condition such as cancer.

On this Dementia Awareness Week it is the urgent imperative on all of us involved in the care of citizens to search out new ways so that we can open the doors of confinement, so that we can begin to restore relationship and interaction; start to again give meaning and purpose, fulfilment and enjoyment to those living with dementia.

We have to find better ways to protect than we currently have in practice. There is little purpose in having infection free environments if the process of achieving them is the effective loss of life and meaning. This is the challenge for us all. If we do not then we have lost our own sense of direction as a society. Lockdown in our care homes is  harming too many.

Donald Macaskill 

In early March at the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic I wrote an opinion piece for The National which I concluded with the words:

‘Coronavirus will be a test not just of the infrastructures of health and care, of business and commerce, it will be a test which will determine the nature of our nation. Will we be a Scotland that cares for the old or will our compassion be limited by discrimination?’

That piece was written on the back of statements which suggested that we did not need to worry about the disease because it would only kill the old. Both social media and some wider media comment at the time was full of comments which articulated a view that Coronavirus was a ‘boomer harvest’, one of the many sickening references to the baby-boomer generation. The public health message across the United Kingdom at the time was ‘wash your hands and catch your cough.’

Twelve weeks on the truth is that this pernicious virus has indeed taken a devastating toll of the older age population with nearly three quarters of all deaths in Scotland and worldwide amongst those over the age of 75. It is also the sad truth that those who were most vulnerable as a result of age, frailty, dementia and other conditions, and who have been residents in our care homes, have been the hardest hit. This is the story of this pandemic as it has crossed the face of the world, its hurt has taken away from us our memory and soul, its scars have left a mark which will take long to heal.

So has our response been one of inclusiveness, of valuing all, of non-discrimination or has the pervasiveness of age discrimination and bias, subjects I have often written about, been evidenced in our pandemic response as a Scottish society, as a political, health and care system?

I will leave you to make your own mind up on that. But …

In recognising the evidence, we were getting from China in January, South Korea and Singapore, Italy and Spain in February, France and Germany in March, did we sufficiently protect our older citizens? Did we ‘contain’ for too long out of a desire to ‘bring people with us’ and lessen harm to the economy which meant that the entry into lockdown made our older population all the more vulnerable?

In noting the relative success of a strict test, trace and isolate model in some parts of the world with the continual echo of the World Health Organisation stating ‘Test, test, test’ to anyone who would listen,  did we as part of a Four Nation collective response abandon that safeguard too early?

In our desire to prevent our acute NHS system from being over-run did we so encourage the discharge of hundreds of older people from hospitals into the community and care homes where they were to be at greater risk or was staying in hospital an even higher threat?

In our requirement to protect the NHS at all costs did we fail to recognise the importance of ensuring that social care providers and their staff were to be an equal frontline so that requisitioning PPE supplies for the NHS would make their battle all the harder to fight?

In our desire to be prepared for an overflow did the indiscriminate phone-calls and letters about the importance of ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ orders serve to put older and vulnerable citizens into a state of real fear, leaving them with the feeling that they were of lesser worth or value?

In our requirement to support frontline clinicians to make hard treatment decisions if we should face resource constraints and run out of equipment did our ethical framework not give the impression that age would be used as a primary proxy for decision-making?

In our desire to reduce unnecessary admissions into hospitals in order to prevent the anticipated surge did our official Guidance give older people in care homes the impression that they were not to be admitted but were to be cared for and die in situ?

In our withdrawal of packages of care and support from some of the most elderly in our communities did we not place them at even greater harm not just from the virus but from dying alone, without contact, potentially hungry and disconnected?

I have my own views on each of the above but one thing I am clear of is that the attitudes of age discrimination which existed in Scotland before this pandemic have not been wiped away with its pain rather they have been magnified and lit large.

For years I have written about the way in which we have failed to value our older citizens in many disparate ways. But I see very little point in recounting these. Rather as we leave lockdown we have an opportunity to leave behind systems, models and approaches which have not worked and have failed our older citizens. We have the opportunity to cast off attitudes and behaviours which have served only to limit our humanity by dressing ourselves up into a pretence of equality.

Social care is still fighting this virus. It has not gone away and there is much more still to be done. But this is also a time for re-formation and reflection, renewal and re-orientation.

We have the opportunity to finally have honest discussions about how we will value and celebrate the reality that we have one of the fastest ageing populations in Europe. Faced with the gift of longevity and a growing life expectancy, how are we to enable those living longer even with conditions such as dementia to live until the end in the fullest and richest way possible?

We have the chance to change the way in which we value social care and those who work in it. It is not acceptable that we consider that being paid the minimum or living wage should somehow be the summit of our collective aspiration. It is not acceptable that there should be such disparity in what the State funds and what we expect citizens to pay. It is not acceptable that if you are struck down by cancer your care is largely paid for but if you live with dementia you and your family end up being charged.

We have the chance to take some really hard decisions about how as a society we pay for the potential of age which is in our midst. We need to have these grown up national discussions which we have all shied away from especially the closer we get to an election season.

We have the chance to challenge the gender segregation which equates care as being a woman’s work and thus accords it less status where the reality is that care should be the challenge of all, for all and by all. A society that does not care is not a community but a collective assortment of individual egos.

We have the chance to see those who are old as vital contributive individuals. Life does not end until you take your final breath. Let us stop viewing our humanity as if it has a use by date. Let us seriously work at inter-generational levels so that we harvest the knowledge, creativity, skill and ingenuity of all our citizens.

We have the chance to create a system which enables real choice rather than blanket solutions, gives respect and autonomy to our citizens and which takes seriously the human rights and dignity of everyone.

There will be many legacies left by this pandemic. Tragically for many of us there has been raw pain and loss at the heart of the last few weeks. But we owe it to everyone today and tomorrow to make sure that we seize the opportunities we have been given and to really build a social care system and a Scottish society where all are valued and included regardless of chronological age. This will not be achieved by point-scoring, by political fundamentalism, by defensiveness or entrenchment, but by real collaboration, honest humility, and a shared passion that we can and must do better.

Donald Macaskill