SOME OF MY WORK WITH THE MENTAL WELFARE COMMISSION.

SOME OF MY WORK WITH THE MENTAL WELFARE COMMISSION.

Yesterday I got up before dawn, while everyone else in the house was sleeping, even the dog! I drove for two and half hours, grateful that it had stopped raining, mainly listening to music on the radio and getting irritated at the cars that had lights so bright they dazzled me.

When, two and half hours later, I turned onto a small road, the dawn had broken and the sky was rosy. I wanted to just sit and watch the clouds and see the sun rise but instead I wandered off into the old hospital I was meant to be visiting as part of my work with the Mental Welfare Commission.

We visit most wards about once a year to check how patients and families are finding them and to make suggestions for how they can be improved. It is valuable, guards against some of the worst things that have happened in the past and hopefully helps guide staff to better services.

I am a tiny part of the team that visit such places, on this occasion there were four of us in total. I tend to speak with patients and relatives, theoretically I could look at the notes too but I know too many people personally and also trust people who know about such things to look and judge notes more than I am capable of.

I am always shocked when people in some of the older hospitals say they like the ward. There are some places I would not want to spend a day on let alone months and months living there but it is a reminder that I need to remember, that if the atmosphere is ok and the people you live with ok, that sometimes the environment is less important.

We are strangers when we arrive, the staff can be very apprehensive and the patients suspicious of us but it is such an honour when people agree to talk to us and end up glad that they have been listened to and feel that their experience might make a positive difference. Sometimes when patients or family members find out I have been in hospital too they are delighted, at other times they wish they had seen one of the ‘real’ professionals.

Whilst I cannot highlight specific individuals, there are some situations which stand out; one is when I meet people who are not so happy with their stay and to be honest who would ever feel happy if you are being treated for an illness against your will that you don’t think you have? I am so moved at their stories which made me realise that after years of treatment, the seemingly small mistakes and negative attitudes from the past can add up so that we stop trusting or even wanting to speak to those who are meant to be helping us and they can act in response to our unhappiness at them. It brought the contents of a book by Caroline Aldridge and Emma Corlett called “They Died Waiting” vividly to mind. I think it should be compulsory reading for people like me.

Another relates to parents of adult children who come in specially to say how delighted they are with their loved ones care and that they had never dared believe that they would see their children in such a positive place again. That was lovely to hear.

When we met the staff at the end of the day, you can sometimes see some tension about what we would say. I hope they found our words constructive and will find our final report which will be published on our website useful.

By the time I left it was pouring with rain and getting dark. I didn’t like my journey home; huge puddles across the road that you could only see at the last minute, sheets of spray, the windscreen wipers frantic and noisy.

It was lovely to get home; to warmth and family and Dash the dog and the chance to sit down and slowly unwind before the next day.

(first published in Jeans Bothy, Bothy Blether.)