A dear friend, who has suffered from neurological damage since her teens, is now almost housebound. She has just called me in distress. A short while ago she had a bad fall, and her doctors recommended she has house visits from “carers”. These are employed by the local authority, and allegedly work with the NHS. Apparently, in the management-speak of our bureaucracy, they are called “The Caring Services.”
She’s just had her seventh visit, and although not as frenetic as the day she had six different carers arrive, it contained the same absurd situation: another form. “Why should I undergo what now feels like an intense grilling each time one of these people arrives?” she asks me.
“What’s my name? What’s my address? What’s my date of birth? Who is my doctor? When did I last see him? And on, and on it goes. Every time they want to know all about my medical history. That takes up far more than they’ve space for on their bloody form.”
She asks, “What are they playing at? They have all this information stored on computers. They must have filed these paper details somewhere too, so why do they not look them up before they come? How come they are quite unable to coordinate between the departments? Why should I go through this each time, and why do I never see the same carers twice?”
Like far too much of our 21st Century public “service” it’s the capturing of data that’s important, not actually supplying the services required. The people involved are not given the opportunity to work with the same “clients” each time. Isn’t this stupid obsession with pretendie-marketing just sick? We are now undoubtedly in the world of Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ where the meaning of words is distorted into that which some Higher Being decides is politically correct.
“Caring Services” should be just that. “Caring” according to my OED is “involving the care of the sick, elderly, or disabled.“ Whilst “Services,” mean “assistance or benefit given to someone“. But the dictionary has a second, with a hint of a something more sinister, definition… “Services: “a public or Crown department or organisation employing officials working for the state (civil) service; secret service and employment in this.”
Tragically, my friend’s local authority and Health Board have gone for the second definition. “Services” are about a local government department’s importance, the obsession with finding out irrelevancies about individuals, the meticulous recording of these details, and not much about the delivery of “Caring”.
And who cares anyway, if that’s their attitude? It’s only about a group of ill, often lonely, and mainly helpless people who will do as we say, and who will answer our questions. Is there any MP or MSP prepared to take this unpleasant nonsense on? Is there a Health Minister lurking behind the filing cabinets, who has the guts to sort out this awful system? Will anybody in council chambers ask how they propose to change these chronic disablist attitudes in their local so-called “services”?
Please, dear reader, don’t get me wrong. I have a massive respect for the six million carers who look after their unfortunate relatives or friends. I know too that there are many thousands of decent people who work in this field. It is the dreadful system that is disablist…and it has been allowed to grow like an insidious cancer. This disablism has invaded attitudes, until the principal objective of its organisation’s very existence has almost vanished.
Remember those words “Caring Services“, and beware in case they get their hands on you, and start asking the questions. Life’s rotten enough being fragile and unable to do everyday things, without such treatment from the State. Please, Take Care! You could be next.
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