Report Back; Walk in Her Shoes

Walking 10,000 steps a day seems a wholly inadequate way to put on someone else's shoes. It's just not possible to understand what it's like to have to carry all your family's water five miles a day in temperatures somewhat greater than a British March can muster! But trying to walk this far has made me extremely grateful for the water we have access to and it's made me think a lot about how we use precious resources. 

10,000 steps isn't actually that far. I qualify that statement - if you are carrying water or heavy shopping (try four large bags of potatoes) then it's far too far. But if you are just walking to get from A to B with a moderate sized bag or rucksack, it can be done easily in just over an hour. My  Walk in Her Shoes effort this March has made me realise just how much our society has lost the ability? opportunity? willingness? to walk. 

The school I attended was a couple of miles from where we lived down (or up) a very steep hill. I walked down and up that hill two or three times most days as did my mother who did not drive. We carried shopping and books and even on one occasion a double bass! That was normal, all my friends did the same (possibly without the double bass!). What has happened to us in the intervening 40 years? It now seems that for many people it's unusual to walk anywhere much unless setting out deliberately 'for a walk', that is, for serious exercise.

I've always walked quite a bit but I now realise just how much I've learned to depend on being able to hop in the car in order to save those precious minutes for…well, for what? I hope what I carry over from Lent with me this year will be a new determination to use buses and trams more, to walk to post letters, to walk to evening engagements whenever possible, especially in the summer, and to use lunch breaks and time off for a healthier combination of exercise and getting tasks done.   

If You Want My Vote 1: Care of the Elderly

This is the first post in a series highlighting issues I would like my next MP to address.

It is a national disgrace that a recent report  here  by John Kennedy, Director of Care Services at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust, found that 

78% of frontline workers in our care homes

caring for 400,000+ people

earn less than £6.45p an hour

In 2014 when this report was written, the national living wage was £6.50p. It is now £7.85p. Most of the people who care for our elderly friends and relatives are paid less than the living wage. It's time to revisit our values and make some drastic changes.

I've worked as a nurse, lecturer, vicar and manager. I have never worker harder, physically and emotionally, than during a year I spent working on a psycho-geriatric unit. We did 13 hour night shifts with one 45 minute break. We could not leave the ward as there was no-one to cover our breaks but we were often so tired we would snatch half an hour's sleep in one of the armchairs. We laughed and cried with the wonderful people we looked after, many of whom I still remember and think about 35 years later. We had to use our empathy to guess what those who couldn't communicate easily wanted. We were far from perfect, we did our best. I had the most immense respect for the nurses and care assistants who had been doing this with dedication most of their working life.

What has happened to us that we value the people who care for our mothers and fathers and grandparents so little? They do work that includes personal care tasks many of us would find difficult to do once or twice, never mind everyday - work that is often dismissed as unskilled and menial. They have skills, yes skills, of compassion, physical care, empathy, interpretation, persuasion, cheerfulness, observation, ongoing emotional resilience and self care that many with a lower Emotional Intelligence Quotient might envy. They spend their own energy and emotional health in caring for people who are among the most vulnerable in society. They get to work when it snows and it's foggy and icy or there's a road block. If they can't get there, other staff stay on late or come in to do extra shifts, or sleep overnight in a chair to make sure someone is on duty the next morning. They have to get on with whoever is on a shift with them, whether they know them or not, in order to co-operate in the most intimate of tasks. Their skills and experience cover social care, basic nursing care, mental health care, end of life care. They are advocates for their elderly charges in a society that increasingly finds it difficult to make time and space for the elderly or to listen to them. They work with people with dementia whose next of kin may also have a degree of dementia.

Carers do this 365 days a year so that hundreds of thousands of elderly people are safe and warm and as happy as possible. They enable many other people to go out to work and to fulfil the responsibilities they have for other family members. They save the NHS, which would otherwise be caring for many more elderly people than it does, millions and millions of pounds a year.

We have to rethink the way we pay and support carers.

Contact your candidates or Jeremy Hunt (Con) Minister for Health, Norman Lamb (Lib Dem) Minister for Care and Support, Liz Kendall (Lab) Shadow Minister for Care and Older People.