As someone who was, ‘capable,’ I was making a
bit of a name for myself in the company.
It wasn’t very hard to do, I can assure you. The upper echelons of management seemed to favour
social workers, which is probably why the whole field of learning disabilities
was in such disarray. I was quite
surprised at the number of support staff who were actually studying to become
social workers, although when you see their hourly rate of pay it is
understandable why many people would be attracted to such a job where the key
employment skills have nothing to do with leadership, organisational ability or
even problem solving but insist that you are absolutely fecking useless to begin
with. I was an ex-military man and
therefore really only understood direct, fast, positive action, an approach a social
worker wouldn’t recognise if it stomped up and slapped them in their face.
One job I had been given was to support one
fellow, one afternoon, each week, but there were two of us. I met up with John who seemed to be a nice chap
and who was very quick to inform me that he was studying to become a social worker. John had worked with this fellow for some
time and almost treated him as family. We
took this fellow out every Sunday afternoon, John seemed to be a great friend
of the family and I soon discovered that the other gang of useless incompetents,
the DHSS, were messing them about and they, the family, were balancing on the poverty
line. When I met the fellow I was
surprised that there were two of us to support him. Forgive me for saying this but he was about
four foot tall and walked like a monkey.
That is the quickest and most accurate way of describing him and I mean
no disrespect or offence whatsoever. We
were taking him out for lunch and he was unable to eat anything through his
mouth.
He lived on a diet of liquid food which was
specially prepared for him and was fed to him through a tube in his stomach. John informed me that this fellow loved architecture,
so every Sunday afternoon was spent visiting Cathedrals from Chester to
Preston, National Trust properties and other historical places of interest
within the area. I loved it especially
being introduced to places like Port Sunlight, the model village created by the
Lever Brothers for their Sunlight Soap factory workers in 1888. I never knew about the place but having been
introduced to it spent many a wonderful hour there, learning about its variety
of buildings and different styles of architecture, not to mention the Lady
Lever art gallery which is well worth a visit.
When it came to the meal time I was always a
little bit wary. We knew that the sight
of us feeding someone through a tube in his stomach was upsetting to some
people and once again the question of rights came in to it. Did this fellow, who got his sustenance
through a tube in his stomach, have the right to sit in a public café and be
fed? Did we have a duty to try and
shield the public from what we were doing, should we have snuck off in to a
corner where no one could see us? It reminded
me of the debate that still goes on to this day, about women breast feeding in public. The guy had no verbal communication skills,
so I could never ask him how he felt about the situation. He did have a fair set of hands on him and I
soon learned why there were two of us supporting him.
I noticed that one of his shoe laces was undone
and went down on one knee to secure it for him.
I was a big roughie toughie ex-military, rugby playing, red meat eating,
bloke; this was a weak four foot nothing chap, what had I to worry about. Well; he latched on to my hair with both
hands and tried to pull my feet out through my head. And it was as times like this that you often
reassessed your life, like drowning, where they say your life flashes before
you. Luckily John managed to break his
grip and I composed myself and wondered if we could get him slip on shoes in
the future. We had one or two people
supported in the community where the company were very pleased with the position
that had been secured for that person.
One day I was called in to the head office, there was a problem with one
of the prime cases, could I help.
Of course I could, show me where to go. Well; it was the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, a
major obstetrics, gynaecology and neonatology research hospital in Liverpool. They had managed to get a job for a fellow
delivering, three days a week, throughout the hospital. I’m sure you will be glad to hear that it was
the post he delivered and not babies. The
usual support staff had been placed on suspension for two months so someone had
to step in and cover the duty or we may have lost the position. I could see no reason why not, so agreed to accept
the job. Once again everything was in
place. I would arrive at the fellow’s
house, well; he still lived with his parents in Aintree, and a pre-arranged
taxi would turn up and take us to the Women’s Hospital. We had three mail runs throughout the day,
delivering and collecting the mail throughout the hospital, and then a taxi would
turn up and take us home.
Nothing too difficult, well, not at first
glance. I was a bit perplexed as the
fellow had no verbal communication, I could talk to him and I thought he
understood me. He could use his hands
and lift and reposition light objects, oh and perhaps the most important factor
was that he was in a wheel chair, which he could not propel or manoeuvre. The permanent guy in charge of the mail room
came in and we introduced ourselves to each other. He was a very busy and important fellow so
couldn’t afford much time to train me on the job, so I went in to military
mode. The mail arrived in sacks which my
charge couldn’t move or lift, so I would lift them up and empty them on the
counter, which he couldn’t reach. I
would then sort the mail out into the various pigeon holes and then place the
mail to be delivered in the mail trolley.
My only real worry was that I got the correct
post to the right office to tell you the truth.
So I found myself sorting and delivering the mail, three times a day in the
Woman’s Hospital in Liverpool for two months, while pushing a wheel chair and
chatting away to the fellow in it. It
was a boring and repetitive job and it did require a certain amount of
dedication to get through each day but it was so important to the company that it
had to be done. At lunch time I would
sit with the caretaking staff, the electricians and carpenters and painters and
have a bit of a laugh. They soon accepted
my friend and I felt that for that one hour at least I was doing him some good,
encouraging him to join in with the banter, which of course was mostly about
football which I knew absolutely nothing about.
But he would smile or grimace in response to their comments.
At the end of the two month period his original
support guy was found not guilty and returned to take back over the duty. I was glad to hand the duty back to him and
asked if he felt that he was able to communicate with the fellow. I was horrified to learn that he had created
a sheet of characters which, when laid out before our guy, would allow him a
limited amount of communication.
Questions could be asked, information could be given and the fellow
would point to a small picture or symbol on the chart indicating his response. I was so angry and confused that something like
this could happen with a company that was happy to claim that it was the best
in the country. I felt awful that for
two months there had been no commination between us because someone forgot to
tell me that it was in fact possible.
I began to wonder what on earth was going
on. I had already experienced situations
where mismanagement of medication could have killed people, lack of information
meant that people were being supported in a negative way and the whole shooting
match seemed to be geared to keep money flowing in one direction. On my first day in the cushy job, the house
in Croxteth, I was approached by a member of the team who informed me that he was
a fully qualified social worker and if he suspected me of any foul play he
would make my life hell and ensure I never worked in learning disabilities again. Had I taken his head off, there and then, I
may have been accused of doing so for various reasons. He was a weedy little five foot nothing homosexual
social worker who was deaf in his left ear, so I kept my eye on him, based on the
Shakespearean quote of, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Being a mathematics nerd I would always
volunteer to finalise the accounts at the end of each week, and everyone else seemed
happy to allow me to do this. I began to
notice that when certain people went shopping they would buy bottles of wine
and as neither of the two fellows who lived in the house drank alcohol I found
this strange. Certain people liked to
take them out for expensive lunches, there would be a lot of, ‘buy one get one
free,’ deals like for example with shampoo, but only one bottle in the
bathroom. And the one that got me the most
was the way people could buy twenty quid’s worth of petrol when I would have
been one hundred miles away in the car at the time. I could see that the world of learning
disabilities was top heavy with useless social workers; it was time someone
like me was let loose on the workforce.
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