When I haven’t been chasing around after my cousin’s medication I’ve been looking at jobs. I’m so utterly disheartened. The loss of confidence since being made redundant sits as a heavy weight and with each job I look at all the things I can’t do, aren’t trained to do, have zero interest in, find things that I’d like to do but for one reason or another can’t. Don’t want to do. I need to find something that will get me out of this black hole that I’ve fallen into. Not even a response from the last three I’ve applied for. Been through interviews only to get no feedback and no response.
I could kick myself that I didn’t apply for the taxi job that I saw the other week. I’m feeling done with Nursing. To add insult to injury just as I was typing this dropped into my in box. I had previously sent this to my manager where I worked up until being made redundant when it was available before. Again not even a response despite it coming on the back of the gaps audit I’d been doing. Another reason why it’s hard to shake off the feeling of hopelessness. It’s a fallacy to talk about meritocracy or effort leading to reward.
“The QNI invites expressions of interest from healthcare organisations that are interested to commission nurse-led innovation projects in the community.”
Perhaps it’s these constant reminders of what I was trying to do that make letting go so difficult. Meanwhile twenty people queue up for sandwiches as I walk past. Bitter, moi?
My sibling talked about promotion when the dog died. A sore throat and fatigue followed a couple of days later by a positive covid test and my thoughts wander to the corrective lens of the precautionary principle, wonder how any negative externalities have been created (Heying and Bret Weinstein p242 A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century).
My phone is still being repaired, waiting for a new battery that hopefully will resolve the problem. Can phone batteries be recycled? If so where? Looking it up I wonder if what I thought were salt fields we in fact lithium fields. Where the open mines in Australia that I’ve seen lithium mines?
Kemo kindly messaged me wondering where I’ve been as did Muhammed, the phone a missed connection in our communication. An email too asking why I hadn’t responded to an invitation to interview. All accessed via the home computer, rescheduled for a date later in the week. Meanwhile no response from another job. The personal is political, the NHS being left behind by so called outsourcing companies. I wonder if they know or if it’s a political policy.
No wonder at the shortage and not just Nurses, the vacancies shout louder. Effects of Brexit? What or whom is lost, how are these valued people ethically replaced? What is the role of inclusion that so far seems to be missing in policy beyond a tick box exercise. When even asking gets no response
Where is the prototype, evaluation of results, prototype again? Instead I see re enacting of the same.
International Nurses learning to negotiate the barriers, like their forbears I’m assured not taken from red list countries but are we sure? People like to travel and I see the adverts for Nursing in America or in the Middle East, NHS an acute shortage on top of a chronic shortage of Nurses, a global shortage. What just another resource to exploit? Trained Nurses so Kerala continues to train and we import? Why are white men disproportionately over represented in the better paid jobs?
How can we repair, rebuild after having had a 87% global impact on invasion? Now perhaps the time to look at Ladder4Action : “We aspire to a world where those who create and share knowledge are supported and empowered to create real-world change. To nurture a fairer, more equitable world, we will eliminate the theory-action gap and make knowledge creation and sharing more practical, ethical and inclusive”
I wonder what those doing decolonisation work make of all this, meaning different things to different people, not a reading list but more actions rather than words. Wonder if there will be a representation at a conference I signed up to.
I went to a webinar with Dr Addy Adelaine, an international social worker and methodological expert on inclusive research and accountability listened to a familiar story of trauma, this time with the UKRI. Chrisomo Kalinga talks about how there has been a lack of consideration of support for black academics to thrive after the knee jerk reaction of many universities after the death of George Floyd and this seems to be born out in Dr Addy’s experience.
An international expert who found it impossible to find work here (UK), who despite having a PhD in NGO accountability, experience in disaster management found her concerns were not taken seriously here. Questioning along with 100 others the merits of using 4.3 million to protect people with not one black person posing the research questions despite the global majority suffering more adversity.
390 days taken to respond to a racist issue, 12 open letters where previously there was an average 24 day response. Racist troupes trotted out like concerns around being “less intelligent”, “Angry”, “Aggressive”.
A friend gave me an article to read, it talked about how universities have a tick box scheme where they are happy to call out academic’s like Dr Sewell but fail to interrogate the human rights abuses of those providing their funding.
Perhaps co incidentally on our trip to London we were asked to sign a petition asking our politicians to intervene in Chinese human rights abuses, concerns raised about people who are doing a particular type of Tai Chi, practiced for generations locked up and organs used for transplantation.
We need a safe guards review looking at inclusion risks, identify breaches legally and unethical practices. Demand inclusion in policy development.
I’m thinking back to a YouTube video I shared on Twitter about white fragility and I’m brought back to that question how does that function? It upholds the status quo whilst providing a tick box that we see. We see it. Now what? That internalised superiority and investment in the racial order (which we know was made up to uphold those with power, we’ve even seen it morph as those who were not white are now white), the power of segregation how might these be challenged for us all to thrive?
Dr Addy spoke about how when working in different countries she is seen as white, now she comes to the UK and is seen as black, her very id variable and subjective. A human treated without humanity by those with greater power. We were given consent to talk about this guest speaker, from Race Reflections, who’s membership is once again open. She asked us to think about whose voices count.
This question reminded me of a book I read a passage described how even when Northern feminists visited the Global South their voices drowned out those people who knew more about the difficulties they were facing, sought to set an agenda that wasn’t theirs to set.
Last week Muhammed was teaching me how to say a greeting in Mandinka (as I’m writing it, I’m questioning if that’s right). He is a patient teacher and learner and fluent in 4 languages, we share photos of where we live. compare our rabbits. I struggled to pick up the pronunciation, thwarted in my practice by not having my phone. It made me reflect on how racism is lazy and unquestioning, how assumptions are made, how the best talent is easily missed. He loves teaching and it made me wonder about opportunities for both of us, either of us. Made me wonder about vaccination status and what would happen when the tourists come. What next
Made me think about someone I met who was scarred for life after the way they’d been treated at work. Will the subaltern be heard?
I’m surprised about yet another short term contract and fear for the harm done behind it yet again. But then they made it clear they were uninterested in learning not just about the money.
I’ve just received an email from the QNI I wrote to them in March telling them about my blog. I had previously asked them for help as to a way forward but they too expected me to continue working without governance and working for free with advice for how to get in deeper. Self sabotage again? Or calling out the harm? Perhaps just everyone so busy that my voice was lost?
I had a mammogram this week (link to more info if you want it: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/breast-screening-mammogram/). We laughed at how uncomfortable it is and how it must have been designed by a man, it was OK but I see the point and as I answered the questions it got me wondering about the people I’d met and how many of them had access to mammograms, reminded me of the follow up that they didn’t get without access to an ongoing address. Perhaps it’s easier now that you can access your surgery online. Though of course they didn’t have a phone.
Tea pots, mushrooms and eggs were the theme of our family zoom. Life drawing, air dry pottery, daffodils in the snow, Trees and plants planted to celebrate. Frog spawn in the pond, earlier than last year we’re told.
We were reminiscing about a cot, not sure how we got here (this subject I mean). I’ve mentioned it before, our themes don’t change.
Our Mum worked as a Nanny during the war. Our cot acquired from the family she worked for. For now no longer required and collecting dust but will be handed down to whoever comes next I guess.
Grandad renewed the top rail. I remember the children teething on it’s rail. When it was passed to me it came with the story of all the parents gone before on knees, tired with a child who would not sleep. Added anxiety because the old spacing of bars didn’t conform to the latest safety standards, fearful of what the visiting professionals might say. Fearful of safety and what we might do to make it safer, a new mattress and worries about the chemicals within. Noting the old teeth marks and wondering which were mine.
Next in line with ancestry of one generation after another going against social norms of their times. with babies born before. From family strife people walked away to carve out a different way only to repeat some of the patterns of the past.
There follows a conversation about childcare responsibilities, fear expressed, contraception and the possibilities of different co-parenting relationships.
Two new pets, acknowledgment of how ours rules the roost as we cuddle and kiss, breathe in the loose fir. Wonder about possible lung irritation like with birds or perhaps just a protective sneeze.
Discarded feathers picked up and incorporated into a new book mark, ideas shared. We laughed at how the birds don’t recognise boarders. It chimes with a book I’m reading the migration of people to address SAD
Perhaps it’s not such a co incidence that I spelt borders like that.
We had a light dusting of snow this week, the long johns were back on. A meal out, dressing up. The students served us as they learnt their trade. Discussion over the tip and need, a shared place of study. A reminder how we used to have a hospitality, catering and teacher training college here. Long gone. A conversation with a stranger or two both near and far. A dying Dad far away, a difference forgotten, more in common than not.
We visited a different town. The shops stand empty, a skeleton of it’s former self. We came away empty handed, except for that out fit from the charity shop. Old buildings once the post office or well known high street banks or brands gone. People wandering around in the cold. Begging, lone men bedding down in doorways. Where are the women?
A home not quite as warm as usual
Confusion over a hospital appointment, a gift lift to an appointment that wasn’t there. Confirmed, not confirmed, who knows. What next?
Masks on, masks off, masks on. Local covid rates up by 1300 from last week as predicted for areas of deprivation. It isn’t a cold, it isn’t flu it’s a multisystem disease with the chance of dying much higher than flu, the chance of acquiring multiple co morbidies higher, increasing the need of life long treatments. Where people can’t afford to isolate, where self employed people get on with life. A conversation, a debate where again we discuss life for whom?
Two higher risk activities this week, weighing up risk and benefit. While the mindful person sits outside alone and worries about their child far away. worries about who will look after them as time goes on. We sit outside for them. We wear our masks for them and reflect on how we came to be at this point. Waiting for a package still undelivered and wonder about the way forward.
Hear more warnings about a scam a relative got caught in. This time from an insurance company. I reflect on how Dad was fleeced, double glazing, new shower, lottery, the paperwork that came through the door piled high. Most of it unopened. Just piling up. Wonder how or if that has changed going forward alone with the dust.
There’s our AGM on 22 April at 7.30pm in our public hall. You can vote, if you’re a member everyone accept the president shall retire, but they can be reelected without nomination. You have to nominate before 14 April 7 days before the meeting if you want to nominate someone then they reelect their own chair. It’s all done in writing and obviously the nominated person needs to agree in writing and there has to be someone who seconds the nomination. That needs to be done through Stephen Collitt.
This week has been another of racism, classism and just about every other ism so whilst that is reflective of the online space there is an opportunity to get involved locally if you have the passion.
Yesterday I went to our anti racism meeting we were reflecting on a video of a psychoanalysis’s conference. I’d watched the video before, I returned to it again with not enough time and having lost the notes I’d made. They aren’t lost. They’re somewhere in my collection of notes and rambling thoughts. I felt irritated with myself because I couldn’t find the work I’d put in. Being disconnected from my work is a familiar experience. As I was kindly reminded that disconnection was forced and denied. Some might say deliberately homeless, some might say a ‘choice’ for self preservation.
There’s a similarity, the personal, political all to do with external violence. Meanwhile the deck chairs are quietly moved around. Ineffectual and not addressing the real issues.
This week has been all about grief, not mine, though mine, ours but not ours.
Bystanders and silence in the face of extreme anguish. Do we learn nothing from our past? Some of my silence has been not knowing, fear of getting it wrong, not knowing who to believe knowing that we only get to hear one side of the story.
I learnt that Marie Curie a name some of us may be familiar with actually signed her theses 1. Recherches sur les substances radio Actives.
2. Propositions donnees par la faculte
Mme Sklodowska Curie. Marie Sklodowksa Curie was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland. Facts that have been washed in the laundry of white supremacy for our consumption here (UK). Anytime I hear Poland I think of a person I Nursed years ago fearful of having her identity known then later standing at the school gates chatting to Polish friends who sadly went back home because of Brexit upheaval of so much of what the children had known..
I think about the Royal family, Darwin, John Locke and Samuel Pepys how only now as I read more about colonialism are their crimes seen in the light. Just because I’m only now reading it doesn’t mean that this has not been there all the time! Just like the America’s we didn’t discover!
I think about the white women and their roles both as enslavers (owners and violence perpetrators). When I hear of the demerara up rising the name sparks a sense of knowing, wondering, not knowing. The Sugar in my cupboard states founded in 1858. With each new fact I wonder about what we have been taught and why, the gaps for a reason and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading.
White women’s violence equal if not more vicious then mens. Queen Elizabeth 1 the virgin, sweet toothed, illegitimate, polygot, red head, catholic, murder suspect, small pox survivor Queen sanctioned Britain’s establishment of a terror based society, not that that’s what we were taught back in the day.
Dr Velma McClymont has suggested that a way forward recognising the brutality and Oxfords historical links to Codrington College and the Royal family’s complicity in 1562 and the City of London’s importance to the West Indian Merchants the time has come as an act of contrition to offer scholarships for the displaced descendants of Britains’s West Indian “plantation” children. Such an act should be viewed as a first stage in dismantling systemic racism in education. The article was written in July 2020 Racial justice and Britain’s colonial past. The other stuff a collection of remembering’s of things that seem suddenly to come together from books I’ve read.
I’m late for a meeting. I’ll come back to this. Helping with knitting whilst also trying to think about this. The bunny runny loose.
I’m thinking of a phrase that Guilaine Kinouani uses in her book white minds. Taken straight back to a how the owner would behave knowing as they now know that they aren’t the owner of the previously enslaved.
So a tick box exercise that benefits the few and potentially assimilates into whiteness that is still not addressed by a solitary (in solidarity) act.
In our community group we were thinking about how apologies work. The power of an apology. I was taken to my own need for an apology for how I’ve been treated conveniently circumventing my own complicity in how white supremacy is upheld. It’s hard for each of us to look into the mirror but we are asked to.
I think of stories taken without consent. I’m sorry. I’m conscious of my role in being an overseeer.
I think of gatekeepers that keep resources in a few hands. My role in gate keeping, how that might be different.. Yours? A complicated story of intertwined internalised white supremacy. What would we want for ourselves? Our loved ones, if they or we were fleeing a disaster?
I’m interrupted by a ping, change UK asking us to support a petition to grant emergency visa’s for Ukraine, 2 weeks filled with worry and stress people slowly waking up to realise how our response to people fleeing conflict is woefully inhumane. Thinking how many are students. Remember when we asked if healthcare workers relatives could come to the UK? When we were fearing for lives lost talking using words like hero? Who? Those that can come? or Can’t?
Are we conveniently forgetting that boarder violence we’ve spoken of as traumatic even when there is nothing to fear? Imagining something different.
Something happened that there is no language for, left confused and wondering if I was perpetrator or disrupter. Consistent with trauma to blame myself. Was it the fear of getting it wrong, being in the wrong? What Chester Pierce wrote about in the 1970’s and I’ve referred to before. Myself? another?
Suddenly that note from the school concerning those with allergies comes to mind. A denial? A distraction? A not so subtle reminder of “You’re not welcome here.” Just as Derald Wing Sue states a brief everyday exchange that sends a denigrating message to certain individuals because of their group membership in this case people living with allergies. I’m sure the school were well intentioned but it doesn’t change the impact. My micro intervention on twitter in response to this made me feel at least a little better, highlighting how children with allergies are excluded and othered. An alternative way might have been saying how it would be made safe for children with allergies. That’s the second experience of exclusion around allergies this week! But it’s a distraction from the more serious atrocities in this world. The bake sale is to raise money for Ukraine.
Anyway, back to the micro aggression in our group. Should have asked for clarification? Did someone do that? Is that what happened? How many of us are left confused? What emotion is left after this encounter, what bodily response? Disassociation from body? My goose pimples, cold feet, feeling shaky. Intention separate from impact. Cardio vascular effects, impacts felt we are reminded in obesity, chronic cortisol, insulin resistant diabetes, impacts in cardio vascular health. (Guilaine Kinouani 5/3/22)
Once again I find myself reflecting on how there’s that false hierarchy of perceived impact between the physical and the psychological violence of micro, macro aggressions and assaults. Is there a wearing away overtime, I’m sure I’ve become even more sensitive to some overtime, unlearning others, perpetrating others. More subtle after the civil rights movements interventions but no less different in the violence and distress, we’re told.
Reflecting on whether or not there was space to talk through what happened? Give comfort?
That underlying racist message coming through. A brief moment of confusion easily dismissed as nothing. But not nothing. Painful at the receiving end. The wanting to be a good person getting in the way of learning.
I’m distracted. Finding it hard to concentrate on this job in hand. I have that interview coming up. Changing the subject in whataboutary? Or perhaps the same subject re=inacted. (The little dash on my keyboard doesn’t work, eaten off my our bunny, so I’ve gone for the equals as closest to it, making do).
I’d like the person to know that I feel it too, that confusion of what happened. The racism that happened. That intervention was made. Can’t quite grapple with who made it. Caught somewhere between conscious and unconscious. An assumption of who might know. A spot light where no spot light is needed, directed to the wrong person? Interrupted.
I’d been involved initially, looking at policy but surely those in charge couldn’t have thought I would set up a new service as a volunteer? Would they have expected that of anyone else?
It adds to the confusion, hesitation, doubt I feel. The feeling of othering, the need to restate my story over again, the need to restate my intentions, my credentials. What might others have been thinking?
Perhaps they thought I could do this, my enthusiasm avoiding things like pay? The lack of trust expecting things to be done for free? But then of course covid came along disrupting. Remember how I gave that account of what I was seeing? Noticing and describing?
And now we learn I wasn’t the only one complaining; that report Nursing Narratives: Racism and the Pandemic Anandi Ramamurthy, Sadiq Bhanbhro, Faye Bruce, Anil Gumber and Ken Fero a story of victimisation 42.8% had suffered excessive scrutiny and punishment during their working lives prior to the pandemic. 28% had experienced excessive scrutiny and punishment in the first year of the pandemic, gaslighting, not trusted, bullying that impacted patient care, racism intersected with other oppressions such as Islamaphobia and homophobia, unfounded referrals to police and NMC.
In the survey 60.3% of Black and Brown respondents said that they had been prevented from progressing in their working lives prior to the pandemic.
28.2% had been prevented from progressing during the first year of the pandemic. The way systems had been set up didn’t prepare Black and Brown Nurses for racism and discriminatory practices in Education and Health care.
Nurses reported a consistent pattern of failing and being placed on action plans during training, this continued in different guises within the workspace once qualified and this manifested itself in limited opportunities to progress.”
The report tells us despite being given a heavier or more complicated workload, and being treated like a newly qualified member of staff dozens of interviewees were determined to challenge racism.
Trust your doubt someone kindly said, try as I might I can’t find her name, she knows who she is and thank you. Though I’m left wondering how I might use my skills if all life lines are cut, back to those transferrable skills. Wondering what else I might apply for. Leave Nursing, something else? Many questions still to answer, unsure of the path as the path of innovation was blocked? Keen to avoid anything that might look like racism based on National origin.
Books of resilience (yeah, I saw they eye roll!) and resistance to abuse advise not to necessarily take what’s on offer. I’m holding that. Going into it with an open mind, yet again giving the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps communication was interrupted and they never knew. Unlikely, but you never know. Perhaps it’s not that at all.
I’m thinking about my skills and achievements, wondering about their criteria, wondering about the next working environment, the scope for innovation and development.
There are some things I need to seek clarification on. Some known people (patients) I have concerns about, how they might be reached. I value my experience, my local knowledge, have ideas on how support may be offered, conscious of shared stated goals.
Anyway, we’ll see, I try to tell myself, thinking about transferrable skills, making use of my buddy system for support and accountability, whilst retaining difference, writing it into being in my head.
That’s the thing, it makes you feel like you’ve made it up, question what’s real and what isn’t. I value being treated like a person, I’m seeking a job that gives that. I’ll test them out at interview and see where we go. I value having my professional skills and knowledge acknowledged, the efforts that I make in keeping myself updated rewarded. I value apologies and opportunities, and time to discuss shared goals from those who need to make them and I’m guessing others do too.
I’m conscious of good work already in place where I volunteered and expertise that is currently on offer in Colchester and opportunities to develop, connections and networks already made. Conscious of metastases and the need for advance planning, aware of precarity of accommodation here. I’ve sat here too long, my mind taking me to possibilities that may not be on offer. Disruptions to sense of place.
A friend asked me about the hours of the new job and how they might impact us.
It made me reflect on what we give up to work. The personal financial and lifestyle losses. I’m in awe of the people working between the gaps during war.
That conference I went on talked about the normalised dysfunctional state of work, the inflexibility. My privilege is showing as I try to comprehend working in a war zone.
I remember speaking to someone during some HIV training years ago. They’d worked in Gaza and as they laughed about their fear of being being a woman alone stuck on the North circular, comparing it to their experiences of war I couldn’t help but wonder at their humour hiding so much of who’d they’d Nursed and what they’d experienced. A well known coping strategy. Anyway I’m off on a tangent. Where was I.
I think about the support I give to my cousin and how that may be impacted, the support I give and take from my new friends. My cousin can’t be happy for me, she’s worried about how she will be impacted. I try to reassure her, I might not even get the job and they haven’t said anything about hours anyway. I’ll still get to be with you I say.
She asks you will still be able to go to the hairdresser’s with me? It clashes with opening hours so at this point I suspect not but I keep quiet on that. And anyway, I may not get the job. If I do she’ll have to go alone or perhaps she’ll agree to a carer though obviously she said she didn’t want that before. I wonder if I could pay someone? I wonder if financially I’ll be able to, what with fuel bill, the availability of carers, what her preference is. What else to consider?
If I don’t work I’ll lose my registration. It was hard won.
The staff where I did my practice hours took the piss out of my moans. Instead of understanding that we were paying for extra childcare with each additional hour I had to be there. My previous job insisted on 12hr shifts or nothing. I think of a previous crisis with my cousin and the kindness of a colleague and how she stepped in. A woman in fear of her career, juggling a new baby. How the systems are rigged to benefit the patriarchy and assumptions of who will jump when jumping is required.
They laughed at me when I complained about the costs of childcare because it was much less than the childcare they were paying (as I was part-time). Conveniently not noticing that they were being paid and I wasn’t.
Their childcare bills were greater or equivalent to their mortgage or rent. It was crap for all of us.
The childcare available didn’t fit with shifts so other people are impacted with helping out. Not everyone has people that can help.
I’m conscious of the potential disruption of the ecology of support. Balancing the pros and cons. Conscious of the extra carbon footprint of working further away. This a song of privilege, wonder how that might be extended to all.
Proximity bias something that is a marker of the status quo.
New charities have been set up, extending the reach, adding to the machine providing corridors of support I wonder if they’ll reach the women and children far away, providing medicine and shelter. Will they be without the anti black and brown racial and religious bias we’ve seen?
My child was asking me if we could build a nuclear shelter. We talked about the one in Mistley. It’s reminiscent of my childhood. I remember walking home from junior school. The sun was bright and low in the sky. It gave me a fright and I ran home as fast as I could, wondering if I’d ever be with my family again. Like my Mum did as they ran to the Anderson shelter? It beggars belief that we have failed to move to a different way of being in this world. How could life be different?
I’m listening to hope as China uses it’s role in intersession. Turning it’s back on the past and focusing on human rights, a new world order with love at its core? Some will be horrified by my naivety but could we envision a world of peace and negotiation, coproduction without the weaponry that seeks to destroy us?
The world health organisation were calling for help with safety of health care providers, provision of therapeutics corridors of support. Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, Palestine wherever, wondering what a world without inflicted terror would look like?
I’m yanked back to reality with the need for support in the here and now, a new diagnosis of leukaemia and all the unknowns flighting through my friends brain and I wonder about safety from covid as they have their chemo, how that might be different. 4385 current people with covid here (Tendring, UK). Not a cold, not flu, a multi system disease. Up 404 from last week (Zoe study 3 March 2022).
Worry only about what you can control we’re advised by mental health teams 🤷
Anyway since I’ve been writing this between jobs. I’d better get on with the job in hand.
So I learn about trauma, then racism, I learn about how access to services, healthcare, education is the thing that determines health. The social determinants of health. I learn that access is EVERYTHING, how we are treated, respected is EVERYTHING and now I find myself going for a job 13 miles down the road to do the thing that I was doing here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’ve been invited to interview. Will my age, where I come from be held against me? Time will tell. If it is it’ll be because I have a chip on my shoulder, and why wouldn’t I given how I’ve been dismissed and ignored. Remember that “Oh well”?
Sometimes there aren’t the words. I check the job description, it’s what I sought to do here (Clacton / Jaywick people) with clients (wrong word but I’m angry and frustrated, something I’ll be tone policed for) my knowledge and learning is invisible because whiteness chooses to not see it. Actively chooses to ignore it.
Good job I’ve got that experience of the social determinants of health and how this directly effects patients! I wonder if I am the only person to see the irony.
The essential criteria is the willingness to go the extra mile. I wonder if the time endangering my registration will count? I wonder if the advice to volunteer because opportunities quickly follow will be remembered?
Will the racist expectation to work for free be remembered? Will those housed and helped be remembered, will the empathy for the disadvantaged and socially isolated be extended to include people who come from here? Will the calls to safe guarding be remembered? Will the prevention of cockooing be remembered, Will the generalist clinical knowledge that was shared be remembered? Will the going the extra mile be remembered? Will the fight to get mental health support be remembered? Will the team working and collaboration be remembered? Will the problem solving and leading be remembered? Will the triaging and prioritising be remembered? The referrals to palliative care? The participation in ECHO?
Anyway, it’s raining, I’m off for a walk
Wish me luck for the interview? The whistleblowing helpline is 0800 74725 for anyone who might need it.
I’m excited for the job (trying not to build my hopes so I’m not disappointed if I don’t get it) but it doesn’t come without irony and saying what I experienced to get me here and a sadness that the service wasn’t important here. As I write that. I wonder if that’s gaslighting but then reading the job description has been gaslighting. Is that how it works negative experience fuelling the next experience? All I tried to get was an Inclusion Health Nurse (Homelessness and Rough Sleeping) for here. I wonder how the role would have evolved with support, what links to research, what links to service development, what meaningful support for those who could be included.
As the world protests and calls for no war we notice the best of us and the worst of us. Like many I watched the bravery of a woman standing up to a Russian soldier, handing him sunflower seeds to grow where his dead body would lay. How utterly depressing. People caught up in a war they don’t want. Nurses and healthcare teams around the world picking up the mess of what’s left.
I was reminded this morning of how it’s International Women’s Day on the 8 March https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme. A time for us to look at our role in upholding the patriarchy. Our role in the war fighting for our freedom.
I made a bid for freedom this week. I’ve applied for a job. Two jobs pending in the application process. A paid position doing exactly what I was doing here in a voluntary capacity, 15miles down the road. When I attended a Race Reflections guest speaker event I listened to Bernard Sweeney and Dilean Mac Searraigh they spoke of the parallel system / culture they live in. They talked about the high suicide rate, lowered life expectancy and increased rate of those experiencing homelessness, the invisible scars of racism, the frustration, the prohibition of movement and segregation. The deliberate ways whiteness tries to make you forget who you are, not about melanism we’re reminded by Guilaine Kinouani.
I’m English and I wonder what that means. Last night we watched Where hands touch. There are racist troupes but beyond that, like Layna (Amandla Stenberg) I wondered what it is to be German, I too wonder what it is to be English. (here’s a link to the film trailer https://youtu.be/0t8iVtFGHCc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yLkq-jEHKE Bernard Sweeney and Dilean Mac Searraigh talking about beyond the Pale. When I listened to this I think about the enormous great churches we see in rural parts in this country and think how populated it must have been in rural areas compared to now. Yet part of Brexit was not wanting more people here. I guess along the lines of racism, us being ok, the other somehow not. How deep routed the dislike of the other, how we’ve been taught to fear and see difference in the other, internalised and hard to shake off. It makes me think of a group chat I was on. How people who had moved away talk about escaping. I think about how that has been in my family our history of violence as perpetrators and victims, more complicated than the binary.
The resonance with Ireland as what was an honour based society. Proving it is today, with opening visa’s for people from Ukraine. I’m reminded of the people we took in here in the past, walked past that statue in Liverpool Street Station of the children suitcase in hand. People leaving their land who don’t want to leave, forced to find a way to keep themselves safe, students trying to get home. Antiblackness in plain sight.
Our hearts ached on the family zoom as we talked about how desperate people must feel as they pass their children overhead, blood type written on school rucksacks. Then I saw the men walking in solidarity not allowing invaders into their country. Wondered where the women were. An environmental war. Russian soldiers not knowing why they were there, not as they’d been told.
Woke not to the sound of bombs like others have but to a discarded balloon, floated here from heaven knows where, everyday environmental disaster.
The Irish Model created whiteness, (not an attack on ‘white’ people nor a call to genocide but the system of oppression from the 1660’s) it taught us how to other, disconnect people, divide and conquer, taught us people were wild “beyond the pale”. An actual place in Ireland. Ten mile radius that hasn’t left us. People 99.9% related.
Ambushed by books and guns, a ‘normal’ without context to history. The projection of whiteness telling us something is wrong with other, Jesus weaponised. That same person who washed a strangers feet and told us to welcome the stranger, treat them with love.
Meanwhile the children moan about the homework. While we search for the book of the universe the apprentice moves on, without regard for the person who needed to be included.
Move beyond inclusion we are told. Act out of fugitivity, a roaming principle with the power to shift and be responsive (Bayo Akomolafe), reshaping desire, reorient hope, reimagining possibility and do so separate from the fantasies nestled into rights and respectability (from What white people can do next Emma Dabiri 2021).
Perhaps it’s relevant that as people talk about SWIFT we consider how the framework for the modern banking system laid the foundation for colonialism and how that might be different going forward. Meanwhile international travellers can’t pay their hotel bill or take their beloved pet.
This morning’s tweet by Maggie a student Nurse who gave twenty pounds to a person experiencing homelessness gave me stark contrast to what happened yesterday and poise to reflect.
Yesterday we were in London. We were caught up in a crowd and swept past someone sitting in the rain calling for help.
As we reached the bottom of the steps in the crowded underground station I turned to the person with me and said. We should have stopped, why didn’t we stop, we should go back.
The moment quickly passed and we were caught up in the next thing, finding our way and offering directions (all be it confused and probably adding to the confusion across the language barriers).
That moment of guilt at not stopping can easily be assayed by other acts of kindness but that didn’t help that person in that moment of crisis.
So I can go into one about my own personal failings but that doesn’t alter the fact that not one person stopped.
A human being in distress and a whole cohort walked by. I think of the people in that crowd, different nationalities, people from all over the world. None of us stopped. People of different professions, people who would have, could have made a difference all walked on by.
How many of us can honestly say we didn’t see, made a conscious decision not to help? I suspect more of us than our discomfort might allow. An uncomfortable truth.
Our shadow selves perhaps that seek excuses.
Yesterday we were talking about the normalised Islamophobia in the UK. Normalised anti Blackness, Normalised brutality of women. Now perhaps on this day of “random acts of kindness” perhaps we need to sit with the normalised nature of homelessness and grapple with our positionality in ending this. Random acts of kindness won’t end homelessness.
“The legal definition of homelessness is that a household has no home in the UK or anywhere else in the world available and reasonable to occupy. Homelessness does not just refer to people who are sleeping rough, and is not just a problem found in high-value housing markets such as London and the South East.
The causes of homelessness are typically described as either structural or individual and can be interrelated and reinforced by one another. Causes and their relationship vary across the life course.
Structural factors include:
poverty inequality housing supply and affordability unemployment or insecure employment access to social security Individual factors include:
poor physical health mental health problems, including the consequences of adverse childhood experiences experience of violence, abuse, neglect, harassment or hate crime drug and alcohol problems (including when co-occurring with mental health problems) bereavement relationship breakdown experience of care or prison refugees For most people who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness and rough sleeping there isn’t a single intervention that can tackle this on its own, at population, or at an individual level.
Action is required to support better-integrated health and social care, and to help people to access and navigate the range of physical and mental health and substance misuse services they require in order to sustain stable accommodation.
Health and care professionals play an important role, working alongside other professionals to:
identify the risk of homelessness among people who have poor health, and prevent this minimise the impact on health from homelessness among people who are already experiencing it enable improved health outcomes for people experiencing homelessness so that their poor health is not a barrier to moving on to a home of their own There needs to be clear local action, partnership working (across the local authority, clinical commissioning group and other local organisations) and understanding and alignment of commissioning decisions to prevent and respond to homelessness across the life course. This can include:
reducing the risk of homelessness to children and young people to strengthen their life chances enabling working-age adults to enjoy social, economic and cultural participation in society breaking the cycle of homelessness or unstable housing by addressing mental health problems, or drug and alcohol use, or experience of the criminal justice system This requires strong local leadership and prioritisation to identify unmet need, funding and actions to address gaps in provision.
Having banged on about this and the consequent health inequalities long enough and just experienced silence from our CCG I’ve written to them again asking about progress. This person wasn’t here (Clacton) but homelessness and racial trauma go hand in hand I would have thought.
Homelessness is more than being without a home it’s about that lack of a safety net, for support I’d suggest.
My cousin, a person without close relatives (🙄) but with caring friends who couldn’t provide the help needed phoned in huge distress. She’s in debt. She’s never been in debt. Reminds me of another family I met. Destitute because of a “missing” housing benefit payment. A promised payment that never arrived. It went to court. Required to go to Colchester without transport or money to get there. When there is no buffer, there is devastating effects. Family arguments, recriminations, hungry children. Family problems one after another that can hit but don’t go well when there is no safety net. Was it the same as those whose livelihoods were crushed by the post office IT scandal?
I think of that now in the context of what I’ve learnt about systematic oppression and so called health inequalities. Inequalities by design.
I think about the many opportunities for intervention that added to the trauma instead of helping. What might have been different if people and systems had capacity to help.
Money would have helped to a degree. But what was needed was a timely response and care, “humanity”.
Like with covid and climate change, racism, all the isms, lessons we fail to face?
A normalised culture of tick box approach? While we silently standby and watch the next unfolding disaster? More people made homeless.
London museum
We went to the London museum. The weaponry and artifacts on display a story of violence, in common with many nations. Wonder how that might be different going forward.
I attended the Royal Society of Medicine webinar with Professor Martin McKee who talked about the divergence in the data, inconsistent testing capacity and a Nation who is already an outlier with excess winter deaths.
The encouraging data of covid infections going down as are hospitalisations and deaths but he reminds us how we’ve been here before. How not all viruses produce variants that get milder.
We’re reminded how a governments duty is to protect the lives of its citizens and I can’t help but inwardly scoff. Perhaps he hasn’t seen the data on inequalities.
Though he has seen how health deterioration data showed up in the Soviet Union, data that things were going seriously wrong.
We were reminded of how the infection rates are still very high. 4014 currently in Tendring (warnings of the unavailability of lateral flow). Up by 193 from last week (Zoe study 17 February 2022)
Crazy to get rid of testing at this point. We were told how we cannot go back to the status quo. Protections enable freedoms. Covid isn’t flu, it isn’t a cold. It’s a multi system disease.
English exceptionalism puts us again outside the norm. Only just now trying to protect our children with vaccination, abandoning them without addressing ventilation and HEPA filtration.
When we needed a steady ship we arguably had no pilot let alone a crew.
I learnt that in the US some states even banned lateral flow and it really makes me wonder about understanding.
We heard how in the history of cholera providing clean water was thought to be unaffordable. Exactly the same arguments used about clean air.
Fortunately because of public health these days here (UK) few children get seriously ill with anything. (Still ignoring the children with ME and the like?) Yet here we have a multi system disease that has been allowed to go unchecked without any one knowing the long term consequences.
There remains high transmission in schools. School absence. Covid deaths in children are too high
We were told as if we needed to be, population ahead of the game already, governments lagging behind; children need a structurally safe environment.
Masks in schools provide reassurance for many.
Downplaying risks to children has the effect of ‘protect our children’ trending on twitter with fears of vaccination instead of the disease.
The data we were told shows the benefits are clear to children and to caste doubt has been English exceptionalism we are told.
Fewer children have died during the pandemic including of covid than normally. Perhaps a hint to look again at road safety, other aspects of children’s lives.
Finally I hear someone questioning why we live with those high flu deaths. “Excess mortality should have been much less to begin with.”
Professor Martin McKee is asked if we are at the beginning of the end of covid. But the truthful answer is “no one knows what will happen, we don’t know where Omicron came from.” The two variants. “We need to be cautious” and makes the point about historical records, viruses don’t always get milder.
I listened as we were told Sweden is doing badly compared to Norway, Finland and Denmark.
Mobility fell, housing regulations got worse than their neighbours. They banned alcohol at one stage. They unlike the UK have a population that do as they are told, culturally it’s not possible to make a direct comparison with the UK. All that we’ve been told before.
GPs are seeing more people. More people are singing off the same hymn sheet we’re told, Mark Karney, Gordon Brown haven’t we already visited this before without meaningful action, investment not an optional add on. But the proof will be in the pudding. Be seen in marginalised groups. Be seen in the consequences of not investing in health.
When we walked on by the person crying for help in the street did we each ask ourselves “How can I make the world a better place?” As Professor Martin suggests. Those who in youth tore up a £50 note in someone’s face or so it was reported shouldn’t in my opinion be on this ship trying to make things better, but perhaps now they know better?
Did governments ask themselves that when they shared the news of dropping protections? Invest in social safety nets as per the findings? Consider the most marginalised and disadvantaged?
