"Love alone is capable of uniting living beings in such a way as to complete and fulfil them, for it alone takes them and joins them by what is deepest in themselves"
Pierre Tielhard De Chardin (1881 - 1955)
I saw a care home for older people selling its 'service' like this:-
"We care so you dont have to"
and I heard a mum who said that social workers were trying to 'get her to let go' and that it would be better if her son who is a lovely joyful presence, who happens to be autistic and have epilepsy, were to have his own life away from his mum and his big brother.
In a place I managed their was a pervasive culture in which parents were labelled and blamed and judged - 'they dont care' , 'they are over protective' , 'they are always complaining' were the schemas amongst managers and staff. The workers had not considered how it is to trust a group of people to take care of and asist your family member day after day...or how it is to be away from the people who love you into the hands of people who don't. The family support group was a place where we were able to get closer to the truth.
There is a subtle sense in which when 'services' get involved something has changed forever. The sense that the person loses some deep sense of family identity by becoming a recipient. I have worked hard in seeking to provide respectful and useful support for much of the last 20 years and I know how difficult it has been for me to retain my own sharp sense of family and of the value of intimacy with families in the work that I have done.
Family life is sacred, the fear and pain that has been a feature of the lives of many disabled people is frequently not explored or understood.
My plea is to make explicit our need to understand each other - a willingness to listen profoundly can be so healing and can create the conditions where real partnership and solidarity can emerge.
Andy
Sunday, 7 February 2010
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Love, Honour and Loyalty save this government and the people of this country £87 Billion a year we unpaid 'carers' are told. Yet we command no respect from people in so called profesional positions.
ReplyDeleteAt a time when government is telling all of us it cannot afford the bill for social care.
The government would seem to have an agenda for separating young disabled people from their families in a misguided quest for independance. We are all dependant on each other for love and validation of our exisitence in a day.
Governments and professionals in social work should firstly be looking at strengthening and supporting families, instead of becoming the enemy when families need a little support to reduce the stressful effects of caring fulltime.
Our fulltime is just that 168 hours of every week of every year,done carried out with true dedication for the welfare of the people entrusted to our care.
Most of us if we are lucky recieve £53.10 a week for caring, this is an income replacement benefit for which we must provide a minimum of 35 hours care per week, we obviously don't do it for the money.
Every essence of care learnt over long periods of time, every move and response, all internalise knowledge that cannot even start to be written down in a person centered plan, they become second nature, placed way before our own needs. You cannot buy that, it is LOVE, it cannot be replaced in any care home with any rota of assistants who come and go, who no matter how much of a relationship they may have with the person they are working for or with can and will always walk away at some stage - not families though - we care because it is the right thing to do - simple really!
Wouldn't we all do the same thing for the people we love?
Thankyou for responding to the blog on family life.
ReplyDeleteWith respect
Andy