A Plea to Call Centre Agents

Call centres often have a recorded message reminding customers to respect their staff. So, do call centre agents and the companies they work for respect their customers? Some actions are down to the individual agent but many are down to the company's system and the impact of the whole process on their customers. The individual agent may be respectful but the processes they are required to operate may be disrespectful. Without this three-way respect (customer, agent, process) trust in business is beginning to break down. Here are fifteen ways call centre agents and companies can respect their customers.

 

Bear in mind the customer may already have had to repeat security and other information several times for automated systems. A sense of humour helps.

Allow the customer time to explain why they have called without interrupting them.

Listen to the actual question being asked and try to respond to that specific question. 

Do not speak from a set script if it is not addressing the customer's questions or concerns. Try to avoid stock phrases that may appear meaningless to the customer.

Do not be surprised if the customer interrupts if you are speaking for a long time about something they perceive irrelevant. This is not rudeness. It may save you both time.

If customers are repeatedly not finding the process you're offering helpful report this to your superiors. The company's process is not fit for purpose and requires adjustment or more freedom for you, as the agent, to explore customers' concerns.

If customers repeatedly express frustration about waiting times, report this to your superiors. The company is failing to provide sufficient staff/phone lines.

When a customer tells you they are deaf adjust your head-set so they can hear. Check this out and try to make sure it remains in position for the call's duration. They are not being rude if they ask you to repeat things.

Remember that people with visual impairment cannot easily write numbers down or make notes.

Do not lecture customers about their attitude - you would not be happy if they did this to you.

Appreciate that from the customer's viewpoint the company is providing a service (often one they are paying for) and the expectation is that all employees as representatives of the company will effectively address their legitimate concerns.

Ensure promises such as call backs, e mails etc are kept. If customers complain this is not happening report this to your superiors.

Do not ask customers for their agreement if you have given them no reasonable choice, eg. 'Are you OK for me to put you on hold?'

Do not put customers on hold and then terminate the call or if there is a likelihood the system will terminate it. 

Do not work for companies that do not adhere to these standards. It is not acceptable to tell the customer 'that is not my responsibility' or 'that has nothing to do with me'.

Truth Hurts: So Do Lies

Dawn Butler MP was right, yesterday, to highlight the extent to which untruths have been told in parliament and to add that people have lost their lives as a result. 

Dawn Butler MP

Accusations of lying are very serious and that's why the House of Commons has stringent rules to prevent MPs levelling them at one another.  However, a significant boundary seems to have been crossed in the present parliament. Firstly, 'untruths' in the political world are often a matter of context and opinion. But, as Butler said, in many of the cases she was citing whatever was said had led to people losing their lives. Secondly, although she gave examples of how truth had been damagingly misrepresented, she was punished yet there is no mechanism currently being effectively used to hold to account those who have told lies. As a parliamentary democracy, we seem to have lost our grip on the difference between truth and untruth and to have undermined the various systems intended to expose lying and hold to account those who abuse truth.

To say that somebody lies should never be done lightly or without evidence. But what she said appears to have struck chords all round the country in many different quarters. It would be improper to speculate on contexts about which we know little and conclude someone is lying. Each of us might have an opinion but we can only call out lying where it is something we have experienced and where we have evidence. If truth is being abused, our duty is to speak for our own area of experience and expertise.

In the Social Care sector it is indeed the case that, because of what has been said at the dispatch box, people have lost their lives. I was working part-time in a care home last year. We were repeatedly told by government ministers that 'a ring of protection has been put around care homes'. I'm retired and found myself in the rather unusual position of being a nurse trained in infection control working as a carer in a pandemic. I had worked on a haematology unit where we were required to cover an infectious diseases unit at night during the initial phases of HIV. Haematology patients are often severely immunocompromised so we had to take enormous care not to transmit infection between units (it was actually a pretty crazy arrangement.) So when COVID-19 struck I was immediately conscious just how vulnerable care home residents were and how extremely open every home would be to transmission of the virus. It would take only a few days for it to spread widely within homes and it would clearly be life-threatening to many elderly people.

Families were faced with a dilemma. Some thought about whether they should care for their relative at home but were swayed by the fact that 'a protective ring' was being thrown around care homes and believed they would be safer left where they were. Yet at exactly the time this statement was first being made, I was taking phone calls from hospitals who had been instructed to discharge COVID+ patients and untested patients into care homes. We refused, but many did not and, in fairness, where were these patients to go? As staff, we objected, we warned, we wrote to our MPs and the CQC but the message 'there is a ring of protection' in place was repeated. We were directed to online sites setting out regulations for 'safe procedures' I knew to be unsafe or unachievable in the circumstances, we had no PPE and we were under huge pressure to accept COVID+ residents.

When the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary make statements that tangibly and immediately impact on people's ability to make life-saving decisions they ought to be honest. When they are repeatedly challenged about statements and continue to assert that they are true, we assume it is on the basis they have checked the facts. It could not both be true that  'a protective ring' was in place and homes were being forced to take in COVID+ patients, employing agency staff who move between homes to cover for sickness and isolation. 

The point I am making here is not a criticism of what was or wasn't done (that's a different story) but a protest at the repeated statement of something that, very quickly, everyone could see was untrue. That constantly re-iterated lie was responsible for thousands of deaths. Had the lie not been told there was the possibility that something could have been done both systemically by professionals and for individuals by their families and carers.

Dawn Butler's point is that there are examples of this kind of distortion of truth right across issues, sectors and departments. When parliament cannot distinguish between truth and untruth, or between opinion and proven fact we are in trouble. When parliament cannot hold all MPs including prime ministers to account for the truth of what they do and say, we need an overhaul of our parliamentary systems. When MPs who are trying to point to the truth are expelled while those who repeat untruth are protected, we are not seeing democracy function. The lie becomes 'all is well' when, in truth, all is very far from well. 

In our current circumstances we need more MPs who will pay the price of speaking up. If the opposition benches were to empty out every time a challenge is met with prevarication or lying, the Speaker would have to take action to make the government accountable.

'Every time somebody discovers a truth {s}he becomes a stone in society's shoes.' Bangambiki Habyarimana The Pearl of Great Price.         

IICSA, Abuse and the Anglican Church

                                           https://www.iicsa.org.uk/publications/investigation/anglican-church

I ceased to receive a stipend from the Church of England and the Church in Wales in 2013 having resigned my titles ('jobs'). I returned my licence to minister in 2015. The decision to hand back my licence had been a long time in the making but it was crystallised in a moment that remains clear in my memory. A friend had just told me of the sexual abuse they had suffered as a teenager at the hands of a priest. Presiding at Holy Communion later that morning, I stood behind the altar looking down the cathedral at the patterns of light and shadow. I simply thought, 'I can't go on doing this. I can't go on representing a church that talks about transformation, repentance and healing yet persistently turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to abuse.'

I say the moment had been a long time in the making. It began twenty seven years earlier just after my ordination when I reported some very damaging behaviour by a member of the clergy to my bishop. No appropriate action was taken so I resigned. The bishop was very angry. He thought I was breaking my ordination vows. I tried to explain that if this kind of behaviour was evident in my former place of work (a hospital) it would be expected that it was brought to the notice of managers as it was a danger to others. Nothing in my ordination vows required me to support or keep quiet about such behaviour. In that conversation, my eyes were opened to the insidious corruption in the way power was exercised in the church. This was 1989. Discussions about whistleblowing were quite common in the health service. We didn't call it safeguarding in those days but assertions that 'we didn't know about safeguarding back then' are disingenuous. We certainly knew that some kinds of behaviour were wrong and posed risk of serious harm to vulnerable people. We knew they should be called out, investigated and fairly dealt with.

I returned to nursing. But the church has a reach that's hard to escape. It wasn't long before I gave in to pressure 'to forgive' and 'to remain faithful' and returned to ministry. Over the next twenty five years as a theological college lecturer, a parish priest, an archdeacon and a dean, I witnessed and experienced further abuses of power in both stark and hidden ways. Perhaps the most worrying aspect was the unwillingness of people (all sorts of people but especially some in authority) to face unpleasant or difficult truths. This would usually end with the person raising the issue being belittled, blamed or excluded. There was a deep-seated cultural tendency to think that, as long as things appeared to be all right, awkward testimonies could be ignored or downplayed. Reputations were put before facts. Sometimes wrong simply wasn't acknowledged as wrong.

To get back to that morning in the cathedral, there was something about the play of the sun and rainclouds through the nave windows that helped me see that every person stands either in shadow or in light. You can step from one to another but in order to do that you have to make a decision and take an action. I would have stayed, I longed to stay, ministry was where I had made my life. And yet?

In the words of the psalmist, I asked myself, 'How much longer?' For twenty seven years I had mostly done as the church had conditioned me. When witnessing abuses of power and the appalling treatment of those who speak out I had tried to protest but often given up too easily, accepting at face value assurances that 'steps were being taken'. I had not followed through sufficiently effectively to support those justly complaining of behaviour that not only would not be tolerated in wider society but that is, to quote IICSA, in contravention of the 'moral purpose' of the church. So finally I chose to step out of the shadow and step away. I had believed I could help to make a difference for all those years but the evidence really was that little had changed.

Why am I writing this now? Well, because I see so many within the church doing what I have sometimes done in the past. Seeing but not acting effectively. Suspecting and feeling helpless. Wringing hands but being reluctant and slow to change. Thinking 'it's awful but it's not something that happens here'. I read reactions from bishops that show, even after 5 years of IICSA, the Ball case, the Bell, Smyth and Fletcher allegations, the suicide of a survivor and numerous other convictions and complaints, they don't get it. They don't feel personally responsible and they are insufficiently motivated, as the leaders of the church, to take decisive action. I hear clergy, while complaining about other aspects of the church's attitude to power and sexuality in relation to themselves and their ministries, say, 'This is blown out of proportion; it happens everywhere, not just the church.' I hear lay people, even in dioceses that have had significant numbers of convictions, say, 'It doesn't happen here, really. It's just a few bad apples.' Imagine, for a moment, this was any other charity. If leaders, employees and volunteers responded to a report on abuse in the organisation by saying, 'We ourselves are not taking responsibility, it all happened elsewhere, in parts of the organisation that are beyond our control', people would rightly walk away from the charity.

Andrew Graystone, who has been something of a champion for survivors of abuse in the Church of England, posed a question that spoke to me. 'Don't comment,' he said, 'before telling us what action you have taken to prevent further abuse happening.' In the years since I left ministry I have tried to educate myself about what happened. I've attended AGMs of various organisations that support survivors where I've learned a great deal (some of it very shocking) from survivors and lawyers. I'm training as a psychotherapist and seeing in my placements the life-long effects of abuse. I'm writing and I'm engaged in an arts project that seeks to explore the connection between certain kinds of theology and the use and abuse of power in the churches.

Is it too much to ask that the Church of England and the Church in Wales step out of their shadows and take speedy, transparent, effective action in the light of IICSA's recommendations? At the very least, 

Mandatory reporting.

Independent oversight of safeguarding including, crucially, the  bishops' role.

Prompt, thorough investigation by transparent, consistent, properly administered processes.

Compensation and funded therapy for survivors.

Full acceptance of responsibility. 

Investigation into how power is exercised - what is explicit and underpinned by theologies, what is tolerated, and what unconsciously motivated behaviours are present?   

A New Normal: Beyond Mere Post-COVID Aspiration

In Celtic mythology birds are messengers between this world and the next,
aiding mortals on their spiritual and earthly journeys

For days I've been wracking my brains for something remotely positive to say about where we find ourselves as a country. Despite all the premature rhetoric about a new normal and opportunities to do things differently, we seem to be plunging headlong and somewhat blindly back into the economic-growth-driven life we were used to. 'It'll all be over by Christmas,' proclaims the Prime Minister. 

It seems we've arrived at a place where it's necessary to decide whether we believe the government or the scientists advising them. The government's top priority is getting the economy to work again; all else, including scientific and medical concerns, is subordinate. Scientists tell us that unless we modify our behaviour the pandemic will overwhelm us again (and possibly again and again) leading to many thousands more deaths. If you are healthy and have lost your income I can well understand the inclination to follow the government. If you or a family member is vulnerable because of your health, or if you have lost a loved one, then the scientific advice will be compelling. Of course, we all understand that. It really shouldn't be science versus politics but the government's approach is tending in that direction.

What we seem to have discovered during lockdown is that our economy is heavily dependent on selling products and services that are not essential. We have discovered desperately divided social structures that limit access by some sections of society to essential commodities such as food, a roof over your head, education and social care.  We have discovered that those who lack ready access to these commodities are far more vulnerable to the virus and that large numbers of people whose work ensures the provision of essential supplies and health care for others come from this section of society and are very poorly paid indeed.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves at the moment is this. In the light of what we have had to change over the past four months, what have we learned to do without and how can we capture that space permanently in ways that make it possible for us to give back into society? Less travel, less food, less choice, less security, less doing what we please, less waste? More time, more self sufficiency (as regards food), more focus, more living in the moment, more sharing, more setting aside our own interests to care for others? How can we purposefully redirect our lives? That may be the question uppermost for those of us who have not felt the pain of losing someone. For those of us who have suddenly lost a loved one Morgan Matson's line about 'a thousand moments that I had just taken for granted mostly because I assumed there would be a thousand more' may be the kind of sentiment that fills our days and nights. 

We seem, as a society, to have glossed over the grief and the deaths of the past four months surprisingly hastily. For the individuals who have lost their lives and for their families, 2020 has taken a devastatingly unexpected and final turn. Yet I haven't been very conscious of hearing or seeing the recognition, let alone the compassion, that this tragedy might have led us to expect. When we think more civilians have died of COVID-19 since March 2020 than were  killed in the six years of the Second World War, we might begin to ask ourselves what those 45,000 people might have said to us and what they might wish to see as their legacy. They mostly died frightened, struggling to breathe or sedated, and separated from their loved ones, their lives cut short with little time to prepare. Many were depending on practical and medical help; for some it materialised, for others it did not. 

Our country has been very persistent in remembering the wartime dead. Perhaps it's too soon to make any judgements about how our COVID dead will be remembered but we need to begin to face the question. Since March many of us have had to think about putting advance care plans and final wishes into writing, talking to relatives and medics about what we would like to happen should we become terminally ill and die. It's not an easy subject to address, not always a comfortable conversation to have with family. 

If we haven't already, we might begin to ask ourselves how we would wish our collective passing to be marked on the broader canvas of history. How should so many deaths impact society? One of the best memorials to the COVID dead might surely be a determined national effort to eradicate homelessness and destitution, hunger and extreme poverty. Another might be to reform the social care system and, more radically, to allow the insights of care to pervade our politics. ViaMedia.News has been publishing a series of blogposts entitled 'We Can't Go Back...' Alison Webster, Deputy Director of Social Responsibility in the Oxford Diocese writes, 
'We need an economy that reflects a different reality. One that serves not just the ableist autonomy of the few, but the vulnerability and interdependence of the many. An economy based on good love. Good love invests time. Good love connects. Good love brings us out of ourselves. Good love recognises that everyone has needs, and everyone has something precious to give. We need to move towards this economy now. Covid 19 has taught us this. It has shown us the need to de-atomise ourselves, so that all of us get to participate in the world outside our windows, even if we cannot go outside.'

Moving from aspiration to action is a difficult journey. Like those who have died form COVID-19 we go about our everyday lives expecting that we have time to make adjustments. Their deaths show us how important it is to live in the minute and, if we have an idea about something we could do, to act on it today. It might seem small, it might seem that it won't make much difference and nobody will notice, but if it is done out of love to honour someone who has died, it will take root in our own lives and contribute to a wider effort to shape a new normal. 

What will You Carry Out of Lockdown?

Lockdown has been an interesting experience. In one sense nothing much has changed for me. I work in a Care Home two days a week so I've been going to work as normal. We locked down early and, so far, we've been fortunate in not having any cases of coronavirus. Staff have undertaken to isolate themselves at home, not going out apart from when they come to work. So the 'at home' part of my life has become outwardly much more constrained. There's been plenty of opportunity for relaxation, reading, gardening, meditation, walking in the countryside around our house. I can feel the stress of many years melting away with the significant reduction in pressure to do things, meet people, respond to requests and invitations.

Something that's kept me energised and positive has been the new balance in my life. Two days of purposeful busy-ness and five of reflective spaciousness has felt good. Encounters with other people have been less frequent but deeper. Old friendships have been renewed. I've appreciated the clear challenges at work. It's been obvious what needs to be achieved quickly in response to the virus and the main frustration has been finding the necessary resources. I've been aware that for those working from home for the first time, furloughed or made redundant there may have been less of a sense of work as an 'anchor'. From colleagues in ministry in the various churches, I've picked up a degree of 'overwhelm' in terms of opportunity to prioritise and do things differently; for some this has bordered on an existential crisis. 

Finding myself in a place of heightened practical and reflective response to a crisis has been an unusual and extremely interesting experience. Over the weeks themes have emerged for me that have predominantly been around questions of justice and work. What is the true place of work in our lives and in society? The COVID-19 crisis has thrown up anomalies.

Care work is extremely poorly paid, often at or below the minimum wage. Every day an army of unseen workers cares for the very elderly, the very young and people with disabilities; this crisis has suddenly rendered them more than normally visible. Many have not been paid when they themselves have fallen ill with the virus or have had to isolate. (Care is often paid on an hourly basis with no provision for sick pay by employers.) Meanwhile other workers have been furloughed on 80% pay and have reported 'boredom' or a sense of being on an 'extended holiday.' I'm glad that people have been furloughed rather than losing their jobs and pleased that they have found refreshment amid the anxiety. But the situation has thrown into sharp relief questions about how we value work, particularly the kinds of work the we all rely on heavily to support our lives. Care is just one example. 

So how do we evaluate different kinds of work?

Skill is not perhaps the most helpful measure. It's too blunt an instrument. Justice-for-worker questions may sound more like this

• who works in ways that are essential for survival?
• who responds effectively to needs?
• who brings greater quality of life to most people?
• who has resilience and stickability?
• who enables others to contribute?

Our attitudes to work in the economies of the developed world tend to be focused on a contrasting set of questions

• who can generate market place needs?
• who is effective in suppressing economically inconvenient needs?
• who generates quality for those who can pay most?
• who demonstrates ability to move on?
• who enables me to do what I want? 

The Quaker, William Penn observed that 'true silence is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment'. It takes a well-nourished soul to meet survival needs, bringing depth and quality to all one does, turning up to do it come what may and allowing others space to do the same. A year or so after I started attending Quaker meeting one of the young Quakers asked me what had changed for me as a result of immersion in silence. I quickly thought of the intangibles - I was calmer, more focused, I'd become more attentive in listening and more measured in responding. But, as I thought about it, I was surprised to recognise more tangible changes too - I'd joined a political party, started gardening (which I used not to enjoy), taken on training as a psychotherapist. I'd not directly connected any of these tangible changes with Quaker silence but I now realised that it was the quality of the silence I was experiencing that had enabled them.

The silence and quiet of lockdown has thrown up many questions, insights, glimmers of the ways things could be different; it has pointed me toward some of the actions needed to initiate and sustain this difference. There have been shifts in perspective, shifts in the balance of my life, shifts in what I find I truly need. These, I feel, are the things to value and take forward. 

One thing I will certainly be taking forward is my work to reform our Social Care system. Those who care for our loved ones - our youngest children and our elderly parents - provide the basic 'oil in the engine' that allows society to function. This 'oil' is the ability of ordinary people to go about their business every day knowing that their family will be cared for at affordable cost by well-motivated, competent, compassionate people. Historically 'care' has been the job of the family, often the women in the family. It is no great surprise that one of our lowest paid sectors arises from a trajectory of 'women's work'. Over centuries the role of women in caring has been transferred from the clan, to the family, to the churches, to the social services and health care agencies without any rigorous evaluation of the qualities and skills involved or the intrinsic value of their worth. 

As a society we simultaneously hold contradictory beliefs about care. On the one hand it's something anyone can do - don't parents do it all the time for their children? No special training or resources necessary! On the other hand it's something about which lots of people say 'I couldn't do that for all the tea in China.' Too much patience needed, too many menial tasks involved! Put the two attitudes together and you have a profession that is not thought of as requiring much resourcing or training, where most people do not wish to think about its reality in too much detail and do not listen to the voices or wisdom of those engaged in it. So the myth that there is a plentiful supply of 'angels' who will instinctively do this sort of work, not for the pay, but simply because they love doing it is perpetuated. And 'society' feels very comfortable about that!

A friend recently said to me during a Zoom conversation, 'We no longer live in a society, we live in an economy.' What would it take to turn us into a society of communities motivated by care? We are so far from prioritising care at the moment (a symptom of this being the neglect of Care Homes' voices and needs during the pandemic) that a colossal shift of perspective is required. This will involve putting insights that come from care alongside and sometimes over and above those that come from the creation of market forces. In such a new perspective success may be seen in terms of making people feel genuinely good about themselves, appreciating what they have to offer rather than seeing only what they own and can or can't buy; not measuring them according to externally generated criteria drawn from the need always to create wealth. 
    

I've watched really experienced care workers. They attend to their clients. They read the signs and learn what makes a person feel cared for (as opposed to making assumptions about what a person needs based on their own needs.) Here's a small example: at our Care Home there's a group of staff who take infinite care to work out what a resident might like for their birthday. The genuine delight on the face of a person as they open their present or go out for their treat is testimony to the times they get it right. That same approach underlies all profound care. It is the care we experience in the heart of the Divine, to be known so well that the joy within us is liberated and flows out to others. There is no price that can be put on that kind of care. It is a quality our society badly needs and it isn't until we learn to value it that we will begin to have a just relationship with work. 

Benjamin Zephaniah - Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas

Thinking About George Floyd

The name George Floyd has gone down in history and will not be forgotten. I have been so appalled by his murder I have found it difficult to write anything. As a white person I am all too conscious that I should listen more than speak, but I also know that not to speak at all is to condone violence and oppression.

We are wrong, in the UK, if we allow ourselves to think that what we are seeing unfold in the United States is solely an American problem with roots in American history. We have racism built into the fabric of our society in the UK, too, albeit with some slightly different emphases. I don't have to think very hard or move from my desk or even do any research to come up with stories that show this to be true.

I've nursed alongside black nurses and heard the demeaning comments, jokes, 'compliments' ('she's very kind for one of them'). I've watched the government refuse the right to remain to black people who have served, by invitation, in industries and sectors that would not have survived without them, living their whole lives in Britain. I've read books and watched TV programmes that show the extent to which slavery of black people created the wealth on which much of the British industrial revolution was based. I've seen how people assume the black person in the group is the student (not the teacher), the offender (not the lawyer), the committee member (not the chair). I've seen a group of students demolish or ignore the contribution of the black people in the group because they don't see it as relevant to their experience. I've been laughed at by students for putting books written by black theologians on an essay booklist. I've sat tight lipped but silent when friends and family have made derogatory remarks and jokes about people of other ethnic origins. I've seen mixed race friends denied the freedom to celebrate part of their heritage, 'we think of you as white'. I've done and said things that have demeaned black people without thinking and found it difficult to listen to the rebuke; and so I ask how often have I got away without rebuke because my black friend was too gracious or too weary or too angry?

I know very little - and I want to understand more. My own ethnicity is White Welsh British. I look white but I speak a minority language and belong to a people who are regularly the butt of stereotypes and jokes. 'Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief'. The drip-drip frustration of constantly hearing your language and culture belittled damages your pride in yourself and your heritage and puts you on the back foot. Do I defend, challenge or let it go? I cannot imagine living with that 'on-the-back-foot' experience repeated over and over in almost every aspect of your life - your appearance, your access to opportunity, your freedom of movement and speech, your education, the job market, only having the 'right' to exist at the cost of other people's supposed 'right' to make you the focus of a joke or a comment. The less space you are given the more energy it takes to stand, to be, to refuse to shrink, to judge every situation with just the right balance of challenge and grace. I have had a glimpse of how exhausting that might be. And I feel a tiny glimmer of the cumulative pain.     

The events of this week in the USA are indescribably disturbing. As a white person I feel inhibited to contribute and I invite correction and comment for anything I have said that misrepresents or distorts. But I reflect maybe there are a few ways I, as a white person, can work for change. 

• Always listen to the experience of black people more than speak of my reaction.
• Be honest about my reaction to myself and, where invited, to my black friends.
• Never let a demeaning or racially offensive comment go, never join in a joke or let one pass.
• Make it a priority to learn about and from other cultural perceptions, especially those that are very unfamiliar.
• Immerse myself in black history and draw attention to black perspectives that contradict or amplify the dominant white story.  
• Explore variety in other cultures and avoid joining in anything that stereotypes a race or nationality.

In my own discipline of theology, I'm currently reading Nine African Women Theologians You Should Know About by Stephanie Lowery (with thanks to my friend Revd Ade Lawal for recommending it.) Donald Trump's actions this week have shown how Christianity can be highjacked and used in quite dreadful ways and this has been a shocking reminder of how theology has been used to oppress black people. It is ever more pressing that every theological institution takes seriously and teaches black perspectives in theology.

I'm also reading  Black and British: A Forgotten History by David Olusoga. My parents worked in Ghana and I know that I have inherited a one-sided version of the history of Britain's relationship to the many countries in which today's black British communities have roots.  I've been re-educated powerfully by Olusoga's work on the influence of slavery on Liverpool. I've been shocked to discover slavery's foundational impact on the whole British economy through the extent to which wealth was created for white people (but not black) by compensation when slaves were 'freed'. See here for Olusoga's introduction to black British history, 'the history we are not taught in schools.'

Racist behaviour does not spring only from contemporary attitudes but from deep-seated inequalities, exploitations and oppressions that are not acknowledged in popular versions of history or theology. That is as true in the UK today as it is in the USA and George Floyd's death should disturb us in Britain a very great deal. 

Why Repeat Social Care Mistakes with COVID-19 In Schools?

Back in March, incredulous care workers were listening to their distressed managers coming out of meetings in which plans to 'safely' discharge elderly people from hospital into care homes had been outlined. If regulations and guidelines were followed, there would be minimal danger of transmitting COVID-19 - and, of course, there was all this stuff called PPE everyone expected to see delivered any day.

All our experience of working with the elderly plus our gut instinct told us something was amiss. What was being suggested was risky, dangerous and, to say the very least, taking a capricious liberty with the lives and manner of death of vulnerable people. I am not writing this with the benefit of hindsight. At the time many of us made protests. I wrote to my MP and the CQC. 

Had we known then that patients who might be or were infected with COVID-19 would routinely be sent to care homes where there was no particular expertise in nursing highly contagious diseases, no PPE and no facilities for isolation, we would have shouted a lot louder. Had we known that GPs would not be allowed to visit and no provision would be made for proper palliative care in some cases, we would have swung from the trees and yelled.  We accepted the situation with huge trepidation because we knew these lovely, trusting, vulnerable, elderly people needed to be cared for. We drew up the very best plans we could in the circumstances. Many homes went to extreme lengths with staff voluntarily isolating themselves from family for long periods, living in caravans and tents and making their own PPE.

It was a disaster. We had known it would be.  Although many elderly people have been successfully shielded, on May 15th the BBC reported more than 18,000 excess deaths in care homes in England and Wales during April here. Members of the Social Care work force are twice as likely as the general population (including NHS workers) to have died here.

Now, the government seems to be making a similar miscalculation about schools. With the reproduction rate (R) scarcely below 1 for a few days, this reckless government has issued guidelines for social distancing in schools, keeping children in 'bubbles' which prevent transmission between too many households. These guidelines are being challenged by teachers who say that they are simply not workable. The teachers have powerful representative organisations (unlike carers) to speak up for them. The BMA has lent its support to voices that are saying not, 'we don't want to go back to school' but 'we don't think it's safe to send reception class pupils back to school, in this way, now'. Experience, gut instinct and scientific data are all crying out, 'this is very risky.' 

I am no expert in children's health but I do know that there are a whole range of studies that suggest we do not accurately know the extent to which COVID-19 affects children. Nor do we know the extent to which children transmit the disease. There have been studies in China here and elsewhere here but the research is at an early stage and they mostly show what we do not yet know rather than draw definitive conclusions. A syndrome has been identified where children who have had the disease later develop an inflammatory condition that has landed some in ICU here. 

We all know the extent to which children bring infections home from school, especially the youngest. A friend's family was affected when her sons contracted the virus at school in March. They were, thankfully, not very ill, but Mum and Dad (a doctor and an agricultural scientist) caught it and were off work for weeks. I've just watched a Conservative MP's youtube video describing the approach to distancing that puts children into groups or 'bubbles' of 15 with a teacher. Should someone contract the disease, only the 'bubble' and their families would need to isolate. If each child has even four people in their family, this would result in over 60 people isolating for 7-14 days or perhaps much longer, many of whom could be vulnerable or might be key workers. 

Children have to get back to school but every instinct and a lot of evidence is shrieking '1st June is too soon.' Why experiment with the safety of our youngest children? (In many countries with excellent educational results, they would not be in school until they were 7.) Why not wait until R has been consistently below 1 for weeks rather than days? 

Teachers are not raising objections because they are cowardly, lazy or obstructive. They are raising professional concerns because they instinctively know that we are taking a huge risk with the well-being of children and families. Just as the carers were back in March, they are extremely worried that the regulations and guidelines they are being given are inadequate to contain the infection and, worse, that all the factors relevant to the situation have not been properly considered. They do not want to see unnecessary deaths or the permanent disabling of children or parents who contract the disease. They remember the false assurances given in early March that it was 'very unlikely the virus would be transmitted to care homes' even as care homes were beginning to report that it was being transmitted. 

Teachers and carers have one thing in common. They look after the most vulnerable and the most precious members of society - our children, our parents, those who are abused, those who have dementia, those who have disabilities and are disadvantaged. Most disgracefully, this week, parts of the press have turned on teachers. Regularly, the same parts of the press attack carers who are among the lowest paid and least trained workers in society for alleged dereliction of duty over conditions in care homes. The truth underlying such attitudes is that, as a society, we have become so focused on economic growth and workplace productivity that we have no interest in resourcing and supporting those who do the kinds of work that shore up the quality of our children's and parents' lives. We give lip service to the importance of education and the crucial role of teachers; we clap and call care workers 'heroes' as we send them to look after the dying with no protective equipment. We do not listen to them, we do not take their advice, we do not resource them properly. We allow them to be invisible and disparaged and then we blame them for not overcoming the difficulties our demands place upon them. In failing them, we let down the very people we say we love and value most. A civilised society, at the very least, funds care for its infants and its dying and we have failed the test for the latter. Do not let us fail it for the former.

Changing the Narrative on COVID-19

This little mask is one I have been supplied with to use at work. I have to save it in a plastic bag and reuse it for the same client each time I visit. For 4 weeks I have worn this mask on 12 separate occasions for an hour at a time. 

I have been placed in a position where there are three possible narratives I can tell myself about my companion mask. 

1) 'I must wear it as directed because it is the policy of my employer and I would be at fault not to do so.' (This is what I have done.)
2) 'I should not wear it as to do so under these conditions is a hazard. I am likely to pass on infection or become infected myself by repeatedly wearing a dirty mask. To comply with a policy that research shows may result in harm goes against my duty of care to clients and my training as a nurse.'
3) 'I should speak out about the fact that professionals who need PPE are being forced to implement unsatisfactory policies based on specious information and I should campaign for improvement.' (I am also doing this.)

It's immensely stressful to abide by what you know to be a false narrative.

These three narratives co-incide with the possible positions each of us has been placed in by the government. 

1) 'I must follow government lockdown-easing guidelines because not to do so would break the law or breach public trust.'
2) 'I should not follow government guidelines where they create an infection hazard to myself or others and can be shown to depart from properly researched supporting evidence.'
3) 'I should support campaigns to call out incorrect information and unsatisfactory policies.'

Narratives 2 and 3, of course, invite official censure and disciplinary action - dismissal (in the case of masks) or sanctions or a fine (in the case of government guidelines). 

Narrative 1 ought to be the path we could all follow but there's a problem with it. It's becoming increasingly obvious to a large proportion of the population that this narrative is failing because it is a false narrative, requiring us to act in ways based on skewed interpretations of scientific evidence. The government can see that, due to its earlier decisions, it is losing power to control events and that, now, it is beginning to lose control of the narrative about what is happening. The only option then becomes to change the narrative as the Prime Minister did last night. Last night's change of direction was not about infection control or about economic expediency, it was about spin. 

Now that the message has changed from 'stay at home' to 'keep alert', the responsibility for what happens has passed to the individual. It is now my responsibility and your responsibility to prevent the spread of the virus, despite the fact that the tools we need to do so have been found missing, wanting, absent or, in the case of the moderately clear messages about lockdown, have just been pulled from under our feet.

The CQC guidelines tell me, 'if you carry out procedures' properly then there will be minimal risk', the implication being that if I or a client get infected it will be due to my failure to use a mask properly. The government is now telling us 'if you go to work or school and social distance on crowded public transport remaining alert at all times, we can keep R below 1', the implication being that, if we don't, it is due to the failure of the general public.

At some point and by some means we have to be able to say, 'No. You are asking us to play roulette with the nation's health.' You have imposed policies that are the worst of all worlds. The lockdown is massively damaging to the economy (a price most of us thought worth paying to safeguard health), yet you are starting to lift precautions before R (the infection rate) has been consistently below 1 for longer than the incubation period of the infection, thus potentially throwing away all the advantage of the lockdown.

     

Resurrection Hope

This Easter I have been very conscious of the words Jesus spoke to Mary Magdalene when she first recognised Him and went to embrace Him after His resurrection. 'Do not touch me.'

So apt for our strange times on a practical level.

On a spiritual level, also apt. Jesus was risen and that was a cause for joy. But he was telling Mary, 'Things are not going to be the same as they were before.' The resurrection changes everything, you will be different, you will find joy and purpose and new life, but the future will be new. 

Today, for many, perhaps all of us, the future will not be as we expected, but it is there for the shaping and hope, faith and love will triumph.

Christ is risen!

The image is by He Qi, a Chinese artist, Do Not Hold On To Me.

COVID-19: Perspective From The Past

On a pine-clad hill with views of the rolling Nottinghamshire countryside near where we live, you come across the Polish Cross Memorial, a memorial to the first men of the Masovian Squadron who were killed, returning from a flight in 1940.

Sitting in the quiet wood, I felt very connected to my parents' and grandparents' generations. In youth and middle age, across the whole of Europe and across the world, their life was disrupted by separation from loved ones and by being sent to do things they did not want to do, maybe did not agree with. In living and dying, they depended on others, often strangers.

They shaped for us a future which was more peaceful than anything they had known, not perfect but better. Less war, better health care, basic pensions and welfare available to many.

 We are not fighting each other, we have it in our power to do what is asked of us and we can emerge from this with better values, recognising that the lives we all enjoy often depend heavily on the unseen and costly actions of others.

4IR, the Wellbeing Agenda and the New Politics

Britain feels to me like a country that has lost its grip on reality. We are sorely divided with people living in different bubbles of delusion while flinging insults at those who are not part of their bubble. On social media you can flick from the sunlit uplands - 'We'll be living a prosperous dream now we're free of the EU' - to doom laden depths - 'Democracy is fighting for survival with the media and judiciary under attack'. There are two very different types of nostalgia on offer - Type 1, 'Britain has stood alone and will be great again,' and Type 2, 'Life in the EU was full of wonderful opportunities and the sooner we rejoin the better.'

Then there are the more personal lines of attack, 'It's democracy, get over it,' 'You only see it like that because you read the insert name of paper,' or 'You voted that way because you're uneducated and don't understand the consequences.' If you mostly read one type of propaganda you can feel quite optimistic. It's all about positioning ourselves globally so we can prosper by capitalising on the AI and robotics revolution. New wealth and jobs will filter into the economy and we are on the brink of a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Conversely, you can begin drawing up plans for emigration (or a move to Scotland) if you read other sources. It's the end of the welfare state as we've known it, the economy is doomed, free movement and necessary migration have been halted and the government is secretive and out of control.

What we seem to have lost is a sense that we are all in this together. The country has taken an enormous risk at a time when, globally, the known order of things is shifting in unpredictable ways. We are all responsible for the future we create. I find myself searching rather forlornly for groups, organisations, communities that are engaging in informed ways with the reality of the changes that lie ahead. We seem to have revised many of the previously defining categories that provided our landscape. In political terms 'conservative', 'liberal' and 'labour' appear to have taken on new meanings. It appears that to align yourself with current Conservatism is to be in favour of radical change and to be very right-wing. The liberal project appears to be floundering, partly as a result of the tensions that its own generosity to diversity breeds; there is a new sense that people don't trust Liberals. The Labour movement appears no longer to represent the interests and concerns of the working class and perhaps we are not even sure we can define groups by the kinds of work they have (or don't have) any more. Nationalism and regionalism are increasingly seen as ways out of intractable difficulties over the distribution of resources and power. Other than the fact we all inhabit the same little archipelago of islands, there appear to be few shared values that hold us together and our political landscape is undergoing some kind of revolution.

Without intending to be (she thought she was making a philosophical point), Margaret Thatcher was prophetic when she said 'There is no such thing as society.' What is 'society' the new British way? Some fundamental issues need addressing and a key question to ask is,'What does it mean to be human today on these islands?' It's as fundamental as that. What basic needs do we share? How can we meet them? What does almost every person value?

When we address our future in these terms, we come up with things like

• a symbiotic relationship with the environment that supports our existence
• food, warmth and a roof over our heads in a variable climate
• provision of basic care and treatment in sickness and around giving birth and dying  
• a means of earning 
• education in the skills that are needed in our society and an appreciation of our common roots 
• dignity and respect whatever our origins
• freedom of speech and action tempered by the protection of laws that define and uphold limits for the good of the many
• compassion - both directed toward ourselves, especially when vulnerable and the capacity not to be so self-obsessed that we cannot show care for others
• space for creativity, invention, imagination, uniqueness
• means of engaging in travel and trade

This picture does not accurately reflect my experience of British priorities today. We have a society where increasing numbers of people are excluded from even these basics. Different groups suffer in different ways - some lack food and a home, others lack care in their dying days, others experience their education as anything but conducive to creativity, others have no access to work and others lack basic respect due to difference or characteristics they can do nothing about. This happens in all societies. But today's levels of inequality in Britain are beginning to destroy us. We seem to have set our face to ensure, or perhaps turn a blind eye to, increasingly uneven levels of inclusion and provision. We have collectively said, 'That's OK.' We share no humanity that causes us to ask, 'What risks are acceptable to take with other people's lives and work?' 'Are there levels of cost-at-others'-expense to which we will not stoop?' We have moved to a place where our values are shaped by the overall wealth the country can generate and the conditions for this are set by those who will profit the most at the expense of those who will not profit at all.

There is no nice way to say this, Britain has become a place where greed, actual and aspirational, rampages unchecked while quality of life for many goes mostly unattended to. When teachers tell stories of washing clothes and feeding pupils before they can teach, someone will say, 'Well good for them, teachers have always done this.' When carers say, 'We need more resources,' they are told, 'Soon we'll have robots to do most of your work.' I'll be honest. I don't see leaving the EU as a sensible way to create a better future for Britain. However, there are many issues about our commonality (or lack of it) that urgently supersede the debate about whether we should have done it and the means by which it came about. The fact that we did it is one symptom among others of the very concerning malaise that pervades British life today.

If it is true that the world is entering a Fourth Industrial Revolution at a time of ecological crisis for the planet, Britain needs urgently to make changes in its habitual ways of categorising, thinking and participating. A new humane politics is needed that is a far cry from the political developments we see currently in the Johnson government or among opposition parties.

Last autumn, the Prime (First) Ministers of Iceland, New Zealand and Scotland put forward a proposal for a new way of looking at the performance of governments here. In their Well Being Agenda measurements of GDP take second place to, or at least are considered alongside, indicators of sustainability and equity. GDP is put alongside its cost to the environment and its effect in creating inequality. Factors that take into account well-being and happiness for the whole population have as much weight as the raw creation of financial wealth. The argument is not that GDP does not matter, but that its importance must be balanced by other indicators when it comes to assessing the overall success of a government or the health of a country. This is not dissimilar to the kinds of priority found in the Scandinavian countries and Finland. More detail can be read  about this challenge to conventional economics on the Wellbeing Economy website and in Professor Alister McGregor's recent book Well Being, Resilience and Sustainability: A New trinity of Governance.

I am struck by a very sharp contrast between the contribution women make to the governments employing this new approach and the overwhelmingly male composition of the British government and parliament. The recent furore over the hiring of a government minister with statistically-driven views on eugenics highlighted the extent to which government policy is now formed by an elite, largely male group who act on highly rational approaches to statistically based data without drilling down into things like motivation, empirical evidence of consequence or emotional engagement. Their thinking, research and prediction-power is predicated on a startlingly truncated and one sided understanding of life embracing limited fields of experience. In short, our political life manifests a desperate loss of balance - female/male, right brain/left brain, affective/intellectual, symbiotic/autonomous - in terms of ideology, education and experience.

One of the new political groupings that ought to be emerging in this climate is surely a constituency around sharing and balance, with values drawn from recognition of the emotional bonds that tie us to our planet and bring people together. The dangerous loss of such perspective in Westminster politics accounts for many of the imbalances we see in the way politicians and the media conduct themselves and for many of the features of society that have caused the disillusionment leading to the Brexit vote. We urgently need a feminising and a greening of our political system. The Women's Movement marches that followed the election of Donald Trump have, as yet, failed to live up to their promise in terms of delivering a realistic challenge to mainstream politics. The ecological movement appears to be having a little more impact. One thing that these groupings have achieved is the bringing to light of alternative ways of assessing data and even deciding what data is relevant. As movements they meet with much opposition by dismissal and ridicule (think of Trump's criticisms of Thunberg) but slowly and surely some inadequacies and blinkered attitudes are starting to be be confronted.   

The problem with both the climate crisis and British politics is that we do not have much time. The pace of change is measured in years not decades or centuries. There is little point in putting energy into trying to return to a glorified past (of whatever variety). It's equally pointless to expend disproportionate amounts of effort trying to hold to account those who have shown themselves oblivious to laws, rules and codes of ethics. What Britain needs now is people who will grasp the new ways of trading and generating wealth with a firm and vocal commitment to ensuring they deliver sustainability and rising levels of national and international equality. Or to put it more radically, people who demonstrate a commitment to making sure the sustainability of the planet and decreasing inequality between people shape what it is possible to produce and sell.