I was on a routine visit yesterday. Mr R suffers from depression. He’s getting a lot better now and has had a significant amount of support from our psychologists. When I visit though, it’s as much to support his wife as him. She has gone through stages of feeling very isolated and trapped. In some ways, it was always determined that working with Mr and Mrs R would be something of a joint venture between myself and a psychologist.
Currently though, we are riding a wave. Things are looking up. We aren’t near discharge but maybe closer to slightly less frequent visits.
So I arrived yesterday knowing that it was one of the ‘gentler’ visits. Often it is a matter of providing reassurance.
It was when I arrived that Mrs R took me over to the window of their living room and pointed to the park below.
‘Someone was killed there over the weekend’ she said
‘Stabbed’ interjected Mr R
‘I was on the phone to my mother’ Mrs R replied, her voice soft but determined ‘looking out of the window – it was dark though, so I didn’t see anything – but I heard… ‘.
To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to say at that point. I expressed surprise and shock.
‘We had the police round over the weekend’.
It’s hard to know where to go with a conversation sometimes. Partly I was surprised because I had heard nothing on the local news about someone being stabbed in that area.
‘It wasn’t anyone from round here,’ she said ’someone must have come into the area’.
I look at the dank local park. I can’t imagine anyone actually travelling there with a purpose.
‘See the kiddies playground’ she pointed to a small communal playground by the park. I nodded thinking I knew where this was going.
‘It was full of children – they’d all have seen or heard it’.
We thought about this for a moment. The doorbell rang while I was there and the police were back to talk again. She told them to leave while I was there but it brought things back a little.
I was surprised to see no coverage though in any local press. Had the police not actually arrived when I was there, I might even have been vaguely sceptical. Perhaps it has become too common to even comment on.
Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like to work in the suburbs.
Filed under: carers, elderly, local authority, social issues, work | Tagged: depression, health, statement, witness
Yeesh. It’s quite worrying what doesn’t make it into the local press these days. I always joke about the area I live in being rough, but this sort of thing happens quite a lot, and frequently doesn’t get into the papers. There is apparently no honour amongst thieves these days,
However the word “Stabbed” has numerous different connotations. Sure it’s still violence, but there is a difference between being stabbed in the arm with a penknife and actually being murdered.
Rereading that comment above, I am now wondering for my own sanity, that i am able to just write off someones stab injury because they didn’t die….
that must have made them all the more frightened to go outside and thus even more isolated.
Man….I’ve heard some stories in my day, but nothing like that! And I agree with Prin, I’m sure it helped matters not at all.
But in my experience, council housing officers often place the most bulnerable clients in places where they will become more vulnerable and mentally unhealthy housing.
Also some clients now receive ‘Introductory Tenancies’ which are used in Darlington to ‘root out’ the mentally ill if they become ill or distressed before their first 6 months is up?!!!
There is often no joining up of any work done by different parts of the same Council and indeed one officer told me last week when we left our current building after being evicted for raising some of the issues previously raised about poor care in Homes, that my mistake was
“thinking we all work for the same Council” (!!!!!)
Well there you go, deluded old me!!
Lola – he did die.. that’s the thing that baffled me.. Prin and Reas – exactly, it doesn’t really assist someone who already feels isolated.
Chris – Housing Officers, in my very humble experience, may occupy some kind of parallel universe to the one I live in for the most part. Those Introductory Tenancies sound awful though. And I absolutely agree about the council having no kind of joined up process – even within the same department (as we have now merged with Housing). In this case though, the couple had actually lived in the same property for decades..
And that’s scandalous that you have been pulled up for raising issues about poor care in Homes – it is essential that those issues are raised with people who have the power to actually do something about it.
Chris, my housing association must really hate me! They moved me into a block which is riddled with damp and black mould- terrible conditions. Every single one of the other residents have either mental health problems, are elderly and frail or are from BME groups with very poor English language skills, so have either the motivation, courage or knowledge to complain about conditions. Then the association unknowingly places me in there- a social work student with a background in welfare and housing advice work! I must be their worst nightmare!!! So far we have forced them to move one extremely anti-social tenant, and have got environmental health onto the damp case after the association have refused to sort out conditions.
It’s no accident which tenants the councils and associations choose to house in which properties!
more power to your elbow, Meg.
I see this type of behaviour every day and what is worst people are left to fend for themselves without adequate resource and then when they ‘fail’ Councils and HAs say ‘we knew this would happen’(!)