Working with the homeless

Over the last couple of months most of my agency shifts have been for the local council at various projects for the homeless. It’s okay, although like much social care and care work, it is often frustrating and tedious rather than “rewarding”. There are exceptions to this of course and one can always just try to be a genuinely kind person, regardless of how disturbed, stoned or aggressive people may be. Despite everything, most human beings respond to a bit of basic kindness and respect. There are some good people working with the homeless who really care.

As with psychiatric nursing, the reality is that some of the individuals you are dealing with are too badly damaged for anyone to really make much long-term difference to their life quality. Many are simply past caring. Alcohol or heroin or other substances have often taken over, and some are continually in and out of prison for one reason or another. Perhaps I am being overly cynical here and would see it differently if I was involved in keyworking and not just a temporary agency worker. Unfortunately, I suspect not. On the other hand, as with psychiatric nursing, a few do make real progress in recovering and are able to make the most of the help that is on offer. (Soon after writing this blog, I bumped into a very likeable ex-psychiatric patient who I’d worked with, a gifted young man who has made almost a total recovery, and he was full of praise for how much he’d been helped by staff at the NHS psychiatric hospital.)

On Monday I played the part of a tramp in an episode of BBC drama ‘Criminal Justice’, filmed in London and due to be shown in September. All I had to do was stagger around a bit in the background and remember the general state of the people in these hostels where I’ve been working!

Working with autism

Yesterday I did an enjoyable late shift at one of my many semi-regular places through the agency. This one is a home for adults with learning disabilities, challenging behaviour and varying degrees of autism. I don’t think I could cope with it full-time but sometimes this type of work can genuinely be very “rewarding”, to use the well-worn phrase. It can also be physically and emotionally exhausting.

It certainly gets a lot better when you know the residents and their personalities and quirks a bit. Some of the ear-piercing screaming, dribbling and sometimes violence takes a bit of getting used to! Although I need the variety of agency work, I’ve always tried to build long-term relationships whenever I can. I hadn’t been to this home yesterday for a few months, but the fact that I’ve been going there now and again for about three years makes all the difference. It was nice to see them again.

In the past I’ve worked with more extreme forms of learning disabilities which can be quite depressing. When you feel you can make some kind of difference and make some kind of connection, the whole thing feels a bit more worthwhile.

Oatly, alternative to milk and soya milk

A year or two ago I came across Oatly by chance in my local wholefood shop. Oatly is an organic oat drink along the lines of milk or soya milk and I think it’s jolly yummy! The nearest thing I’ve had to it is Rice Dream rice milk which for me is one of the other best alternatives to cow’s milk, both for taste and health reasons.

According to the carton, “Oatly is made from carefully selected oats, based on a unique process developed at the University at Lund in Sweden.” Ah yes it would be…of course!? The only ingredients seem to be oats, water and salt, so if you are into that sort of thing, it’s vegan too. Excellent stuff, I shall no doubt be slurping some more very soon.

Are Sanctuary Housing above the law?

“One of the worst housing associations I have had to deal with…” Tim Loughton MP (East Worthing and Shoreham), September 2008.

There may be one or two people out there who wondered what happened to the devastating noise disturbance situation my ex-partner Lin and I were going through in 2007 and 2008.

Eventually the housing association concerned moved their tenant out (the second crazy anti-social behaviour nightmare in two years – we were attacked and threatened on our doorstep, with loud screaming and swearing at all hours, amongst other things), they properly sound-proofed the flat below Lin’s, and they moved their unfortunate local manager on. Lin is now being treated with the respect that any innocent member of the public deserves. She does actually own her flat after all!

It took five visits to our local MP Tim Loughton and well over twenty letters to Sanctuary Housing and various other organizations (including the now defunct Housing Corporation, Supporting People, and the head of local police) before they took us and several of our neighbours seriously. The police and the local council were reluctant to get involved, although they were helpful at times, especially the supportive but ultimately powerless PCSOs. “It’s not a police matter”, we were repeatedly told. The Environmental Health recorder didn’t get results. No-one seemed to be seriously bothered about the stinking “skunk” cannabis, we wouldn’t have minded ourselves if they’d kept their windows closed.

For over a year, Sanctuary Housing’s behaviour was astonishing:- blatant bullying tactics, lies, dishonest back-covering and incompetence by several managers (fortunately we had evidence of this – you really should be ashamed of yourselves local manager Peter Jackson, Sanctuary Supported Housing head Tim Susans and regional manager Wendy Fletcher, what were you doing? Astrid Kjellberg-Obst and Steve Wood, is all this okay with you?), local and national offices ignoring many of our letters including one sent through their complaints procedure, contradictions and lack of clarity about what the law actually was on more than one occasion, written false representations of what we had written to make it mean the opposite i.e. outrageously manipulative lies, the accusation that Lin had not been co-operating with West Sussex Mediation Services – when in fact they themselves were preventing this from proceeding by not returning the mediation people’s phone calls.

Presumably they thought they could bully us into shutting up? It was obvious there was a real long-term problem but they preferred to try and make us look unreasonable for daring to complain. In the meantime Lin had serious depression, migraine headaches and I virtually had a nervous breakdown both before and after moving out. Both of us had problems at work due to exhaustion and ultimately our relationship itself did not survive the nightmare. The neighbours across the road, a lovely friendly retired elderly couple, were extremely upset by their complaints not being taken seriously.

“Sanctuary Housing? Oh no!”, said a nurse friend of mine when I told her about all this. “They kept ignoring several serious complaints and sending us threatening letters when I was in their student accommodation in Brighton. The university had to get involved on our behalf, it was a nightmare”. We and our MP couldn’t help wondering how many other people up and down the country have been on the receiving end of Sanctuary Housing’s grotesque and morally bankrupt unprofessionalism. And just plain indifference.

On their website, Sanctuary Housing describe themselves as “An industry leading social enterprise helping to set standards across the entire sector”. In his patronizing, clueless and ill-informed letter of denial to our MP, the Chief Executive David Bennett couldn’t even be bothered to get our address right.

According to an article from The Guardian in January 2004, the Chief Executive David Bennett of this “not-for-profit” organization was at that time receiving over £200,000 per year from tax-payers money. (According to Inside Housing and the Daily Mail 25.9.09, he is still one of the biggest housing ‘fat cats’ – now on £288,000.) Good luck to them, the money is obviously rolling in as they expand their “not-for-profit” empire, around 70,000 homes making them one of the biggest Registered Social Landlords in the country. Thanks for sorting out our situation in the end David, but from our experience at least, your organization appears to have one or two problems.

Yes, all the above is actually true! No full apology or explanation was ever offered. Useless. Uncaring. Arrogant. Disgusting.

The progressed Moon through my 4th house

Some time back I realized I completely missed an obvious astrological correlation with my sudden change of residence about a year ago and the generally introverted tone of my life since then. Like many astrologers, I mainly follow the transits of the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto to make sense of the processes and patterns in my life. However the progressed Moon can also be an important indicator, and I had completely forgotten about it!

A quick Google came up with: “The progressed Moon moving through the 4th house often brings with it a strong need and search for ‘roots’ and basic life definition.” “Heaviness and introspection”. “It’s a good time to retire to your own private place. It’s a good time to look inside yourself, your attitudes, feelings and emotional orientation. There is a strong fear of being alone or alienated.” One of my astrological bibles down the years has been Stephen Arroyo’s “Astrology, Karma and Transformation” which has: “A time of retreat, preparation, perhaps staying at home more than before. Almost always a reflective time when one needs privacy and some kind of social, domestic, or familial ‘womb’ in which new parts of oneself may incubate and develop in a protective atmosphere.”

With Saturn conjuncting my Moon (I’ll be glad when that one’s finished, the last pass is in early July, hurrah!) over the last year too, all this makes perfect sense. I feel like I have been living in a “womb” since I moved into my tiny flat, and even all my care work is now about supported housing and hostels for the homeless i.e. also 4th house issues. Family stuff has been around in the background for me too. I am looking forward to the Moon through my 5th house from roughly November, much more fun!

Tim Burness music and interview

Time for a bit of blatant self-promotion folks. I am featured in a recently uploaded podcast at http://www.epilepticgibbon.co.uk.

Mr. Gibbon and myself had a great time doing the interview, thanks to Ian and his assistant for giving me the opportunity to mumble about myself and my music, amongst other things. Most of the best music I’ve done over the last 25 years is in there. There is some progrock, punk, ambient stuff (including a track from Tuu), a track from one of my musical influences (not what you might expect?) and also some er… comedy!

Some topics covered in the interview include: ex-Pendragon drummer Fudge Smith’s contribution to my last two albums, how I met my keyboard man Monty Oxy Moron from The Damned and how his classical style (comparisons have been made with Tony Banks and Keith Emerson) fits with being in a punk band, and how I have spirituality coming out of my bottom.

Barack Obama’s books

Yeah okay, who isn’t writing about him right now?! All I can say is, anyone who thinks he is just another hype might want to read his two books “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity Of Hope”. In particular, the first one originally published in 1995 about his early life is amazing. It would be a fascinating piece of autobiographical writing by anyone, let alone who he is just about to become. Genuinely extraordinary.

Happy New Year!

It was nice to be asked, but I declined the offer of a visit to the pub and went to bed early on New Year’s Eve. Instead I saw the New Year in from my bed, watching spectacular fireworks just outside my window and swapping a few text messages.

Having got up very late I went for a run along Brighton seafront. In this freezing weather that certainly woke me up a bit, which is the idea of course. I have got back into running again over the last month or so. One of the joys of living in Brighton is running along the seafront between the two piers and beyond. I guess I’ve been doing this on and off for nearly twenty years.

Soon after that was a visit to one of my favourite cafes in Brighton (and my usual Fair Trade soya latte), where I found The Independent had published my latest letter to them, an edited version under the heading “Scandal of caring for the elderly”. It was triggered by an article by their writer Johann Hari which brought back my time spent working in nursing residential homes for the elderly. Here’s an even more edited version:-

“Dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s is a physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually demanding job. Carers earn roughly £7 per hour. Bad pay, exhausting long hours in overheated and smelly conditions, inadequate training, staff shortages, complaining and grieving relatives, all are often the norm. In nursing homes and geriatric wards, I have known more than one excellent carer leave to work at a supermarket checkout for money and more self-respect, although they basically loved the job. Of course the managers and owners of nursing homes tend to do rather better financially. The treatment of many of our grandparents and parents (and eventually all of us) is likely to remain a national disgrace for years.”

There’s a jolly thought for 2009! But I shall post some more positive blogs soon… after a very difficult first half, 2008 finished on a pretty good note for me. Love and world peace to all.

Underworld in Brighton

Last Friday night, Brighton Centre, Underworld. Absolutely bloody marvellous, even if the show did stop rather suddenly. I’ve followed Underworld on and off for a long time, one of the best acts to come out of the nineties rave dance culture. Fab!

Thoughts on death

A dear friend of mine has very recently passed away at the age of 65 after a long battle with cancer. Today I heard that Rick Wright, the Pink Floyd keyboard player, has also just died of cancer. Both of these people made many positive contributions to the lives of others, one can’t help feeling they moved on a little prematurely.

Working in nursing and care work for over ten years, death and dying has never been far away and I’ve been the first person to find a recently deceased individual on several occasions. If they are lucky, they go peacefully in bed. On one occasion I found a man sat upright in a chair in a dignified fashion, having announced just a few hours earlier that he’d “had enough of this”. On another occasion I discovered one elderly lady in a not so dignified situation – on the toilet. As you can imagine, dealing with these situations certainly wakes you up a bit.

A few months ago I helped a Filipino nurse wash and generally clear up the body of a lady who had just passed away on a general ward in a Sussex hospital. She died with her loving family (well they seemed to be, you never know, funny things families…) all around her, a pretty good way to go I think. I had never met the nurse before, and we found ourselves immediately discussing the most profound questions about life and what exactly makes us human. Although I have a long-standing passionate interest in all things “spiritual”, my experience of these situations has not made me any clearer as to whether I believe there is some form of life after death, or whether death is a full stop, so to speak. The person’s life energy has obviously gone somewhere in some form, but this energy might just dissipate back into the general energy of the universe? Or there might be a soul that travels on, as many accounts of near-death experiences suggest. I have no idea whatsoever!

What I do know is that we don’t seem to be very good at dealing with death and dying in our culture. Odd really, when it’s one of the few certainties of life, perhaps the only certainty of life. Many years ago, a chapter in an Aldous Huxley novel (I think it was called “Island”) made a big impression on me. In it, schoolchildren were taken to visit the dying, including members of their own family, as part of their general education. Death was completely accepted and embraced as part of the human experience. Love and peace to all who have passed away, especially my friend Jayne.