Shooting down dead the arithmetic bird...

DAY 4...

No one told me there would be sums. Not a single mention that arithmetic involved. And they especially didn't say that the sums would come at the end of another long hard day, just at the time when it looked like we were winning. Nobody said a single word about the chart and the tiny little boxes and all the lines connecting the numbers...and the gut-wrenching, head spinning disbelief that accompanied the feeling of being almost there and then being asked to do more and knowing...just knowing that the little bit more might be just the thing that would break you.
It nearly did...
I was OK with the big words and convoluted sentences because language is my thing...but introduce numbers and I'm stuffed...powerless...vulnerable...uncomfortable and just plain cranky and sweary around the numbers!

But now I have a question that is emerging...not properly formed but...

Isn't there an incongruence about the...cleverness...of it all?

I'm not talking about dumbing it down...but I'm thinking more New International Version than King James BIble...

So, I'm going to ponder these things in my heart for a bit and see what comes up for me...

Day 3 of PASSING...in which I remember why I do the work I do...

Early start today and running late...I complained about it but still took the time to buy a coffee en route.

Someone was wittering on today...I tried to change the subject and when that didn't work I just removed myself from the source of the witter...

Hot today...35 degrees...I complained and went indoors...

Really nice dinner today...I enjoyed it and asked the dinner lady for more...

There was something really troubling me today...I talked about it to some colleagues who reassured me  without me feeling as if I had annoyed them or was patronised by them...I was able to let it go and relax for the remainder of the evening...

I met some people today...and none of the choices I made for my day were open to them...

They have to stick to the schedule. They have to not only tolerate but be nice to the person who is annoying them. They have to stay where they are until someone comes to move them...

They wait constantly for the smallest of things...they eat what they are given...they are talked at...they are not allowed to be angry or fed up or worried or sad...they are constantly at the whim of other people's moods and judgements and moral courage...

They are among the most vulnerable people in our communities and they get some of the worst deals around...

It isn't right y'know...

It. Just. Is. Not. Right.

“August: You know some things don't matter that much...like the colour of a      house...But lifting a person's heart--now that matters. The whole problem with people--"

Lily: They don't know what matters and what doesn't...

August: They know what matters, but they don't choose it...The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters.”

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

I should have listened to Brittany Curry...

Day 2 of PASSING...

At 11am I was confronted and inspired in equal measure...by 4.15 I was ready to gnaw my arm off at the shoulder I was so frustrated and bored...8pm saw me elated - we had finished our first rating of a service...fine job all round...

At 8.02pm I started drinking gin because I realised that I have to stay here...in this place with the busted fly wire and the no air-conditioning and the fans that you couldn't find the switches for and the mozzies as big as magpies...and do it all over again for another 2.5 days...

(Brittany Curry was right...I should have brought cigarettes...)

Help me please...somebody...Rick? 
Help me...

“How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, how could we live? If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be as ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

The Hard Yards

OK Australians...what is your fascination with indoor camping? Once again I find myself in a crappy old Brownie Camp of a place where the fly wire is busted and there's no air-conditioning and the mozzies are as big as magpies?
Fair Dinkum!
It all reminds me of a summer several moons ago when, on the hottest weekend of the year a bunch of us headed to Fairbridge to do some training among the busted fly wire, no air-conditioning and mozzies as big as magpies...
Oh, and at night it was difficult to sleep not just because the conditions were less than favourable but because, if you listened in hard at the walls you could hear the sounds of little children crying because they missed their mothers and for the casual cruelty of their new lives....
So, what's the occasion? Well, after about 15years of waiting, I'm doing a PASSING course. It's a bit like intellectual, emotional and physical bootcamp and so it doesn't really help to also be living in a Brownie Camp while I do it............. 
So, the purpose of this whinging blog is to say that the posts may well be a bit light on over the next couple of days but I want you to know that I'm doing some hard yakka here...I yearn for room service...

OK...so maybe a slight exaggeration but...
I'll write when I can...

One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it unless it has all been suffering, nothing but suffering. 

Jane Austen

Viva to the Diva!!

Some of you will have heard about the Bolshy Divas and if you haven't yet then I can't imagine that you'll have to wait too much longer...

The Divas are a group of women (there may be a few Divo with honorary membership...not sure about that...) who are...

'...disability activists in the style of feminist masked avengers, exposing and discussing discrimination, unmet need and issues which affect people with disability and their families. Bolshy Divas use humour, art and passion to talk about the overlooked, the unfair and the subtext behind real issues which affect Australians with disability. There are no requirements to be a Bolshy Diva, just owning a desire to bring about change, a sense of humour and a tonne of 'bolshiness' - enough guts to talk about the issues openly and honestly.  We could be anyone - we are everywhere.  We rank amongst the almost four million people with disability, plus their families.  We are strong.  We are Bolshy Divas.' Check them out at http://bolshydivas.weebly.com I'm a not very bolshy member of the Divas. In fact, the other night I dreamt that my Diva status was revoked because I was too wishy-washy. Remember the scene in Beau Geste where he is thrown out of the Foreign Legion? And had his epaulettes ripped from his uniform? And was completely humiliated? Well...my dream was a bit like that. It made me cry... I told one of the Divas about it the next day (one who had been involved in stripping me of my status)...she counselled me and we decided that it was probably just the effect of the mojitos from the night before She assured me that my pale pink Diva status is still intact. Anyway, this is not to the point... The Divas are extraordinary women. Tireless advocates. Creative, innovative and sometimes just plain rude campaigners. They are funny. The use the 'F' word...a lot... They are not for the faint hearted... Their passion for the cause...an Australia that works for everyone...is visceral...their delight is sparkling and effervescent...their despair howling and raw.  They mostly have some 'skin in the game' and so this is real life for them, not a theoretical or philosophical interest. The work they do is about their real lives or the life of someone in their family.  Sam Connor is the Diva who doesn't sleep. I'd swear that she hangs upside down in a cave for part of the day except that she has such a phenomenal work rate...e.g Starecase magazine...produced in a day... www.starecase.weebly.com... FABULOUS! Sam has her eye on everything. She's been involved in highlighting the abuses of people with disabilities that occur within institutional care. As a society, our tolerance for this sort of abuse is very high.  Reports of people with disabilities being murdered by their parents and the derisory sentences handed down to them fail to move most of us...as if somehow it just doesn't matter so much...the life of a person with a disability is worth less or the strain that families live under is somehow so great as to justify or even excuse the most heinous of crimes.  We KNOW that life in an institution is one of the least safe options for people with disabilities and the tolerance for casual cruelty or neglect is high. People live with other people they are afraid of...with staff who sometimes don't like them very much...in conditions so stripped down bleak and brutal that most of us would find them intolerable.  Some of our most distressed citizens live in places and with people who offer them no comfort at all. Can you imagine that? Today Sam posted some details about an organisation being set up in Queensland, I think, called 'Shouldering the Journey' (put your SRV head on and deconstruct that name!) http://www.shoulderingthejourneyfoundation.org.au Read it and really, feel your blood run cold... Read it and ask yourself questions about how likely it is that a Board can operate objectively when 50% of its membership all seem to be part of the same family? Read it and wonder how it can be that a segregated, farming community - a sanctuary, no less...for people with Autism...can be a 'truly inclusive community'? Y'know what...it doesn't matter how pretty the farm will be...it is an institution. Y'know what...it doesn't matter how much we intend to safeguard or how much care we take...people will, one way or another, be abused. Y'know what...people will know about it for a long time but nothing will be done until A. REALLY. BAD. THING. HAPPENS. Devalued, vulnerable people + 'behaviours' that seem to justify some rigorous form of control + isolated, remote, congregated living conditions = a disaster waiting to happen To quote Dave Hingsburger...'You can't make a chicken sandwich out of chicken shit...no matter how much mayonnaise you add...' All of this despite everything we know about the risks to people from institutional living. All of this despite the rhetoric of the day. Jeez, Australia...what's going on?  Institutional living...PLEASE BE AWARE...the Diva who doesn't sleep has you in her sights...and even the pale pink, wishy washy, scaredy cat diva can feel her brave getting up... 'Somebody around here's got to do something... it's just a bloody shame it has to be us!' Gerry Garcia

Honey, I'm home!

Travelling is tough. I don't mind the arriving or being there but the getting there is hard...and so is the coming back home.

I find the exit from one kind of life...and then the re-entry a few days later particularly trying. We always argue just before I go away and then, when I arrive back I am usually pretty tired and emotional...

There are always reasons for it...I'll have been flying...there's usually a time change involved (the 3 hour difference in NSW has been tricky)...it will have been a LONG day...and if I've been away for more than a couple of days I will be missing Rick something chronic and so I'm just a bit overwhelmed to see him again. It can be an ugly coincidence of experiences and emotions and I never really come out of it looking that good.

I know that when I'm away it is hard for Rick too...

Until we got together in 2008 Rick had a pretty organised life...the people who were in his life knew their routines and responsibilities. Particular things were done on particular days by particular people. The house ran like clockwork...everybody was happy. 

Halcyon days...

It's not like that now...someone lives in the house who cooks...and leaves stuff lying around...who likes cotton dishcloths better than those horrid sponges...who is fanatical about how the washing should be done...and buys flowers...

I arrived back to a house that smelled of dank, fetid water and dead flowers...

I'm imagining that in homes up and down the state, as people arrived in off the 5.30pm from Sydney and were reunited with their families then similar scenarios with similar sensitive spots were being re-enacted. Little scenes of accusation and defence. Boring disputes about domesticity...who cleans what...who remembers to buy...who forgot to do...

I know that this is 'normal' or better, typical...

I don't think that it is more difficult for us than for other families but I do know that it gets a bit complicated because there are at least 14 other players involved in our domestic bliss...more places for me to lay the blame if I'm so inclined...and believe me...I was so inclined that I was almost horizontal...

So...how to find a way to bring the bliss back the domestic...

Aren't relationships just really HARD? Even when you love the bones of someone...

How difficult is it to negotiate a relationship when all that's holding you there is a pressing need for assistance or a ridiculously small amount of money for your time and skill?

I want to encourage love into that space...I think it makes you want to try harder or at least say you're sorry when it doesn't go right...

'Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex.

Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational'

Hugh MacKay

What is it you like about Australia, Heather?

How about this?
This was the scene from the window of the room at the Surf Club in Coffs Harbour...I had to work in that room...
It's hard...

"There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings."

TIM WINTON, A Coastal Memoir

Not waving, but drowning...

Too many words to choose from tonight...
Not everything that's thought should be expressed...

Happy Birthday Niamh!

THe day she was born was a wild and windy October day in the East Neuk of Fife. I had been working in St Andrews with some nurses who wanted to redesign the forms they used.

I had heard that my sister had gone in to labour and had spent most of the day wondering if it would be another boy...

I stopped on my way home and called to see if there was any news... 

Up until then, the men had a clear run at it...4 pregnancies, 4 boys...would this be any different? 

It was...a little girl...and her name was Niamh Helen. How lovely...

Waiting for Niamh to be born was not easy. Her Mum and Dad were no longer together and so the months of her coming in to the world were often sad and stressful. There were many private thoughts that wondered how everything would work out...concerns for the future...uncertainties...anxieties...

At the announcement of her birth these anxieties blew away like the seeds of a dandelion clock...all of them replaced by the trembling bundle of pink and white beautifully named Niamh.

From the very beginning we loved her...she became our family's obsession...what had she done today? Had anyone see her? What was she wearing? 

We loved her and each of us longed to have her love us best. Her most devoted servant was her Grandad who hovered and scooped to make sure that no bad thing happened to her...no wind blew on her from the wrong direction...no draught...no drop of rain...
She grew up knowing that she was loved...grew up loving herself...

Now that trembling bundle of of pink and white is growing into a girl who knows her own mind...knows what she wants and how she wants to be...

I marvel at her confidence and assurance. I wish that I had had a teaspoon of her poise when I was 15...

She thinks for herself...is happy to go against the flow in some things...happy to be different in order to keep on being herself...

At least, that's how it seems for now. 

Life can change quickly...stuff happens that alters forever your view of the world.

I hope that Niamh can hold on to her strength and individuality and not have it squashed or damaged in order to fit in with the crowd

On her birthday...from several thousand miles away I want to wish our Niamh a very Happy birthday...

I want to tell her that I admire her and am proud of the woman she is becoming...

She'd probably prefer money in a card...

We had no idea who we were welcoming into the world on that wild October day, but I for one am delighted that it was Niamh...

Happy Birthday!

'...Right, like a well-done sum.   

A clean slate, with your own face on.'

Sylvia Plath

how one thing leads to another...

Funny how things happen, eh...

The journey towards an idea often has many twists and turns and happy coincidences. Several stories collide and out of the crush and mess of it all one idea seems to crystallise...

So here are the stories that lead up to today...

Story 1... On Saturday, completely out of the blue I get a Facebook message from a woman I've never met or heard of before. It seems that she has seen the little video clip on You Tube about the Values of Inclusion...she likes it...seems to speak to her about her situation with her 23 yr old son and could I come to Melbourne and would I come and hear Michael Kendrick speak in November.

That leads me to Story number 2... in which I think about Michael Kendrick a lot and wonder how he is and recall how much he taught me over the years and how I wish I could think in sentences with A Capital Letter at the Start Of Every Word because, regardless of how annoying I find it and, no matter how difficult it is to read, Clever People With Big Ideas Always Seem To Do It...but asides from a bit of gentle teasing about Michael, the story goes that I have much to be thankful to him for. He has taught me a great deal about some complicated stuff and I appreciate that immensely. 

Story Number 3...As I'm thinking about Michael, I'm realising that, in some respects he pulled me away from the brink of The Biggest Mistake Ever...

Before I understood how really smart and gifted he is I had an opportunity to work with him and with Pete Ritchie who was at that time the CEO of Scottish Human Services (SHS). I was a very junior trainer with SHS so to say that I was working with them is misleading...I was making sure that they and the participants had everything they needed...Michael and Pete were working... I was getting the coffee. But I was listening, listening, listening.  

The course was about leadership. Some fairly scary people were in the room as participants...heads of organisations who were influential in human services in Scotland at that time. It felt like A. Big. Deal.

It was a exciting time to be in Scotland. The work of SHS was beginning to change the human service landscape and different kinds of conversations were happening all over...'What would it take?' kinds of conversations. It was great to hear... 

I had had a couple of very personal and challenging experiences that simply demanded that I change how I thought and acted in my work with people with disabilities or I just got out of the way.  So I made a commitment to change the way I saw things...I was absolutely full of it...a true convert...distressed about the injustice and also delighted to be involved in something that might make a change. 

The something I'd identified was Person Centred Planning...particularly MAP and PATH. I thought that if everyone could have a Person Centred Plan then life would be transformed for people, the problems we encountered in the service system would be sorted...everything would be good...sorted...done...

I said that to Michael. He quietly suggested that he really thought that it was the values that underpinned the planning that made the difference and that the Plan simply made a way for those values to become visible in action.

That made me think...

Story number 4...a colleague is visiting WA and tells me about waiting to meet someone from an organisation she was interested in finding out more about. While she was waiting she's reading the materials that are around the place and alights on the one page profiles of the staff, available for people to read. 

Story number 5 comes flooding in and I remember conversations I've been having for the past 10 years at least that have been concerned with what I'm describing as the standardisation of individuality, particularly in relation to this one person at a time approach called Person Centred Planning. 

Everyone trying to describe their individuality using one particular format is a bit...dissonant...for me.

I'm remembering words that really stung me from 3 or 4 weeks ago when I had felt like someone had dismissed the focus of my work...our work...as being anodyne and formulaic...and I'm wondering how it can be anything other than anodyne or formulaic if everyone has one...don't care what it is...MAP, PATH, Essential Lifestyles Plan, One Page Profile, Personal Futures Plan, Large Group Person Centred Planning...Big Plan...it doesn't matter...

These are all useful processes and, at the right time, in the right way can bring about change that has a big impact on people's lives and circumstances. When we 'roll out Person Centred Planning' we roll everyone up into a great big ball...

OK...last story by way of a conclusion...Story 6...I'm the oldest of a family of 5...if you ask my sister she will tell you that she thinks that I would have liked to have been an only child...if you asked me I will tell you that I think that 5 is too many children (in our house you could also add at various times Grannies and Aunties and cousins who came and went for a whole variety of reasons...) We're by no means the biggest family you can imagine but we're a bit bigger than average.

You could almost always get 'stuff' in our family...shoes, clothes, trips, holidays...we never wanted for any of that...we were treated fairly and kindly...but I'm not sure that any of us ever got what we needed. We never got the time we needed...or the attention we needed or if we did, it hardly ever came in the right way...we got standardised parenting...standardised love...and a kind of standardised understanding...

It wasn't until we got a bit older and then tried to get what we needed in the way that we wanted it...that's when the fun began! 

One thing leads to another...one story builds on another and out of the crush and the mess here's what emerges for me...

Be thankful for your teachers…

Let the values guide you and not the forms or the pictures...however pretty they might be and what ever they might be called...

Wonder about the person standing in front of you...

Be prepared to throw the paper away and concentrate on the conversations about things that matter...purpose...meaning...and work to create that in the shape of the person in front of you...

The bigger the group the more difficult this is...

The values are what makes the difference...

Mind the Gap!

My colleague Kate Fulton just posed an interesting and, I think, shocking question on Facebook.

I know that she's just been at a conference on Supported Decision Making. I have not seen her since the conference but I'm guessing that the question is a quote from someone who was at the conference or it's been some of the prevailing discussion at the conference.


The question posed on FaceBook is, 'Should supported decision making be explored before substitute decision making?' (I'd bet my house on the fact that this isn't a dilemma for Kate...)
I  think  it's asking if we should give people the opportunity and support to make their own decisions before we step in and have someone make the decisions for them?

Kate answers the question with a profoundly right and resounding 'ABSOLUTELY!'

The fact that the question is even on the table is beyond disappointing...with all our rhetoric and assurances and declarations about Person Centred...Self Directed...Self managed...Individualised...Personalised...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...

For all our talk we continue to trip up on the basics. Bringing the power and control (and money) closer to the people - a fundamental principle...

SHOULD we? Of course we should...

Will it be easy?...not always but sometimes more straightforward than others...

What will it take for this to happen?

That's a better question...and Kate's on to thinking about what it will take to influence the system...

Statements and questions like this show the cracks in the veneer of our understanding about Person Centred work. It's what John O'Brien would call our 'Integrity Gap'...the difference between what we say about our work and how we actually live it out. 

It needs a bit of attention, I think.

The fragile ecology of the heart...

When writing yesterday's post I came across a biography of Sara Teasdale whose poem I quoted in the blog. She has written beautifully heart-lifting and affirming poetry...often somewhat poignant but I have always thought that slight air of...sadness...made me warm to her words.  

Her work has such an appreciation of beauty and I am drawn towards it...a bee to a honey pot...I find such consolation and soothing in beautiful things...words, objects, sights and sounds.

In the light of all of the loveliness of yesterday, I was deeply saddened to discover that Sara Teasdale completed suicide on the 29th January 1933. 
I mean no judgement about the manner of her death. I am filled with sadness that the beauty she saw and felt and...sang...was not enough to reach through her sense of desolation and her reaching out for oblivion.

I've wondered all day what would have been enough. To find meaning but see no purpose...To see the loveliness and not be consoled...

This is not unfamiliar territory to me...and questions of meaning and purpose are never too far from my thoughts...

And so my mind and my heart have been very much with those people who struggle to find a sense of meaning and purpose in their life...

With those whose pain runs so deep that nothing seems able to touch it...no drug or drink...no words or works...no love... 

With those people for whom it is increasingly difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other...for whatever reason...

For the families who wait anxiously for a telephone call or hold their breath before turning the handle of the bedroom door each morning, for fear of what they might find...

For those already touched by desolation and loss...

From Michael Leunig, who knows a thing or two about this himself...

We pray for the fragile ecology of the 

heart and the mind. 

The sense of meaning.

So finely assembled and balanced and so

easily overturned. 

The careful, ongoing

construction of LOVE. 

As painful and exhausting as the struggle for truth

and as easily abandoned. 

Hard fought and won

are the shifting sands of this sacred ground, this ecology.

Easy to desecrate and difficult to defend,

this vulnerable joy, this exposed faith,

this precious order. This sanity.

We shall be careful. With others and 

with ourselves.

Amen

Look for a lovely thing...

Today is a day of lovely things...

Laundry dried and neatly folded...smelling of fresh...

Two friends who have loved each other for a long time finally being free to marry and have the life they have made together recognised and celebrated...

Another friend whose eldest daughter marries today...

A note tucked in to my in-box that means the world of love and encouragement to me...

Some of the loveliness is happening a long way from here...but loveliness has a way of stretching out...its tendrils seeking places to wrap around and joyful if it finds a heart...

Here's another lovely thing...from a long way away...my friend Diane Lowrie is a photographer with a gift for seeing things up close and capturing their beauty. I've admired her photographs for a long time but I had not noticed this one before...I hope you are as lifted by the loveliness as I am.

by Diane Lowrie

'...look for a lovely thing and you will find it, 

it is not far.

It will never be far.'

Sara Teasdale

O Captain! My Captain...

I've been thinking a lot about leadership recently...

In my life, I've been incredibly fortunate to have had the experience of working with some people who have inspired and encouraged me. For some of them, the words they have spoken and written have been crucial. They have articulated ideas and illuminated difficult concepts for me. The clarity of their thinking has  made it possible for me to learn and grow. They have planted seeds that have grown over the years and helped me develop my own ideas and occasional insights.

Others have had a more practical style of leadership. They have shown me by their actions how to 'be'...they have demonstrated kindness, generosity and patience and as they did that I felt safe enough to ask the stupid question, make the crass statement. They NEVER made me feel stupid. Never made me feel a bother. They took me seriously, encouraged me to keep going and strive harder.  The way they lived matched the things they said. I've wanted to be like them but often fallen short.

I've been grateful to have such people all the way through my life. These days, they mostly live in a different hemisphere and I miss the closeness of their inspiration and support. Thank goodness for the internet and Facebook.

Recently though I've been feeling a dearth of inspirational leadership here in Perth...you know...the kind of people that you'd join photocopying leaflets at midnight...that you'd dig in the fields for...pass the buckets in a line to put out the fire...man the telephones for hours at a time. The people that inspire you to work for the cause, sweat in the sun, pass out the blankets...do whatever it takes to get the work done and the message out there. People who are that heady mixture of substance and charisma...

I can't help but feel that we're at a critical point in our collective life on this planet. Whether we're thinking about global warming...or debt...or corruption and apathy in government...or the erosion of our communities and our apparently casual indifference towards one another... 
Or whether our immediate concerns are more domestic...we're wondering what the NDIS will mean for us...how will our children turn out and what kind of world will they have to live in...or we're concerned about the recent change of government...or wondering about how to make the money we have stretch out for today and can't bear to think of how it will be in our old age... 

These feel like important times with important issues that could bear some thoughtful, kind consideration...and yes, I wouldn't mind a leader or two...

In a way, it's kind of childish for me to look for this. It's the same sort of feeling that I had when my Mother passed away. With both parents gone almost my first thought when I heard the news was 'Who will look after me now?' - swiftly followed by the realisation that I'd better just learn to look after myself. 

I've read the stuff about leading from wherever you sit. I know that I need to step up and do what I can. But no-one is going to join a revolution because I ask them to or stop acting out their ugly prejudice because I say that it is 
A. BAD. THING...

I hope that maybe something I say or do might encourage someone to think or act differently...but I'd like to have someone stronger to follow.

So...what to do? 

Any volunteers?


P.S - Talking about leadership...Margaret Doherty has done amazing work in the Mental Health Sector. I've worked with her and can testify to her fierce intelligence, wisdom and insight. She is the hardest worker I know and with the organisation she convenes, Mental Health Matters 2, has created a space where the voice of the families of some of our most vulnerable citizens can be heard. She is a gracious and resolute supporter of the individuals and family members who connect with Mental Health Matters 2

She is the State winner in the Pride of Australia (Care and Compassion) Award. She's now up for the People's Choice Award and needs people to vote for her.

This award carries a cash prize that would develop the work of Mental Health Matters 2...Margaret has a plan for it! 
Support her in making that plan a reality by voting for her at 
http://prideofaustralia.com.au

This is a bit of the information carried in the Telegraph about Margaret and her work.

Margaret is a mental health campaigner and the convenor of Mental Health Matters 2, a community action and advocacy group. Having had her own experiences with a family member who had a mental illness, Margaret is tireless in her pursuit to improve mental health services and raise awareness of the social disadvantages faced by those with the illness. She also has a particular interest in advocating for individuals with mental health issues who face criminal charges and provides support and advice to the individuals and their families.

Get voting! All the best to Margaret and Mental Health Matters 2

The substance of things hoped for...

I've just come in from dinner with three good women tonight. We enjoyed a pleasant evening of good food and wine and interesting conversation - we even got to enjoy a public information broadcast by the waitress explaining why they come and  show you the bottle of wine before you open it. It was most informative...

All four of us work in human services...my guess is that there would have been at least 100 years of service and experience sitting around the table. Between us we've experienced the ebb and flow. We know that there are fashions and seasons for even the best of ideas. 

Probably the one constant for us all has been our values. If they've changed, it's because our understanding has deepened and we've been able to hold tight to what's important and sit lightly with the stuff that isn't 'of the substance of the faith'. And it has been a matter of faith...

Much of what we believe about inclusion and being person centred has still to be embedded in the way we work. There are pockets of good things happening all over the world but, despite the best intentions and best efforts of many people, we still struggle to find ways to welcome people in to the richness and challenge of community life. We seem to have settled for gathering information about people rather than building relationships with them. We have reduced them to a set of initials or acronyms and believed that we could capture their beauty and complexity in one page. 

Without faith we would give up.

It's not a mystery that this is the way things are. Person centred working is highly skilled, nuanced work. It is often messy and can feel chaotic. 

People can be like that - and we give up on them when they are too hard...

Organisations on the other hand like to be organised. They value predictability and standardisation. The free-flow of life needs to be tamed and people contained so that the organisation can function - and we invest huge amounts of time energy and money re-structuring them and imagining how to make them better.

We make choices and most often the needs of the system triumph over the needs of the people. 

That can't be right, eh?

It can't be right that people play second fiddle to systems. It can't be right that these wonderfully affirming ideas of inclusion and the value of people - ideas underpinned by social justice and human rights - it just can't be right that after our collective 100 years of experience and work we still have to operate on the basis of faith. 

And yet...we still believe...

Lots of our conversation was about what we've been doing and how we could do it differently or better...and what it will take to keep us going. 

What else would we do?

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen

Hebrews 11:1

A quiet moment of gentle, steady holding...

It's been quite a day today...

Things have not gone as expected and the world has had a wee bit of a shake.

(Thanks to Act on Purpose...a lovely page on Facebook...you saved the day!)

Perhaps you would join me in a quiet moment of gentle, steady holding...

If there's no-one there to hold, hold on to your wee self...

Good night...sleep well...may you enjoy the great blessing of a fresh start tomorrow

“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

Henry Ellis