I recently watched 'State of the Union' - essentially a two-hander (with a couple of short cameos) with Rosamund Pike and Chris O'Dowd dissecting their marriage in ten episodes, each lasting about ten minutes, all set in a trendy pub over the road from their therapist's house. So a film-length piece, in essence, although much better for being divided into these chunks, especially as it was so pithy. It was sharp, bittersweet and funny. The only thing that bugged me - and it's a tiny thing, but I'm pedantic like that :-) - was in one episode he handed over a ten pound note for their drinks and received some coins in change. I THINK it was a tenner anyway, I rewound it to watch. Now, we imagine this drama to be set in London - it's either that or some other urban, expensive patch, what with the stripped pine, vases of single, tasteful flower on the tables and all. Are you telling me you'd have ANY change left from a tenner when buying a pint and a very large glass of wine?! I don't think so. You'd be looking at around £12 for that I reckon. There, feel better for that now. How nice to be nit-picky on the page rather than in my head. Something else I did was go to the People's Parliament event in Brighton at the weekend. Some gammons got over-excited on Twitter, claiming there were only enough people to fit in a phone box attending. Maybe they've got access to the Tardis. There were about 120 there, I reckon. Admittedly the venue holds more, so there were empty seats, but it wasn't supposed to be a rally or demonstration - more a chance for citizens to ask questions of the 3 MPs (Lucas, Russell-Moyle, Kyle) and engage in debate. As it was, only a proportion of those who wanted to raise a point got the chance to do so. No surprises that Brexit took up most of the debate, much to Caroline's irritation. Others too, including mine, when the question we were asked to address was: 'How do communities come together after it?' rather than an endless back and forth about 'will of the people' and 'democracy' and 'who's right' and so on. I did manage to raise a point about the need for smaller, third sector organisations, especially those that are peer-led, to have more support and funding in order to rebuild communities. I have seen many companies having to close recently because their funding has been completely stripped away by the CCG and given to large providers, who then scratch their heads on how they are going to implement peer support, missing the point that peer support comes from the bottom up. From one David and Goliath incident to another. I noticed the NSPCC has started an initiative, calling for greater perinatal support. All well and good, you might think, especially for organisations such as Mothers Uncovered - I've been campaigning for this cause for years now. However, as the NSPCC's remit is about preventing cruelty to children, and the campaign is called 'Fight for a Fair Start', I'm wondering whose cause it's championing? Who is fighting exactly, given that the NSPCC might often be getting directly involved in families' lives to protect the child from abuse? I feel organisations that are predominantly about mothers' wellbeing should be leading this charge. But I'm the sidelined David in this scenario. No hope of Louis Theroux (who was promoting it) tweeting out this hashtag #letmumspeak or this link. www.change.org/p/public-health-england-nhs-mothers-need-more-support-help-them-now?just_created=true
0 Comments
Small trumpet allowed occasionally, i think :-) I was very pleased to be included in a list of 10 women with an association to Sussex in Strike a Light's Trailblazers project. One of the team, Nicola Benge, explained the idea behind it. We spent a good deal of time at Strike a Light thinking about the Trailblazers project we were working on with the funders (The Big Ideas Company) to look at courageous and groundbreaking Sussex women during WWI and their roles in making changes for women from 1918 onwards. Following this, we then looked at contemporary Sussex women whom we like and admire, but who have forged perhaps a slightly less usual path. We looked at parallels between the historical figures we'd explored as part of this project and modern day trailblazers who we thought fit this mould. We had originally planned to have eight women for our digital downloads but couldn't stick to eight so the funders allowed us ten women of which you are one. It was so hard to whittle it down but as a major criteria was finding contemporary local women with whom we could find links to the past, that was a big factor. We then thought about groundbreaking local projects, community focus, inspiring women and you fell into all these categories. We do hope you're pleased with the result. You can see the full downloads here: https://strikealight.org/projects/current-projects/trailblazers-posters/ Since starting Mothers Uncovered, funding has always been one of our struggles. If you’ve not had to apply for grants, imagine it as a job application. A Groundhog Day of a job application because you always have to be looking to the next one, mostly to pay for what you are currently doing that you claimed for on a form last year. Confusing huh? When filling out these forms, you have to cram all your square pegs into round holes in order to be in with a chance of success. Each time you need to sound as if you’re doing something new and different, rather than the same thing that you know works, with a new set of service users. Funders are not known for wanting to pay core costs, merely project costs. Yet companies still need to have insurance, file accounts and pay for their web presence – who pays for these? The service users should pay, I hear you say. Yes, but as charities, we have a moral duty not to set fees for activities too high to exclude people. Indeed, most of the forms you see are exhorting groups to cater for deprived users.
If an organisation gets bigger, it has more chance of sustainability. I have become more vocal on the topic of maternal mental health in the last few years, not only because I believe in it, but to attempt to raise our profile to give us more security. I set up a petition some time back, which sits quietly on Change.org, not doing very much because the subject is not of great interest to the population at large and is not click-baity enough, despite my inclusion of the fact inadequate care is costing the country £8bn p.a. You can see it here https://www.change.org/p/public-health-england-nhs-mothers-need-more-support-help-them-now?just_created=true Interestingly, I met Duncan Selbie (CEO, Public Health England), one of those petitioned, at an event in November who exhorted me to keep going – ‘we need you more than ever.’ An initiative was set up a year or so back called 1001 Critical Days, i.e. from conception until the baby turns two, because research had shown this is one of most significant times in a person’s life. The focus is still on the baby, rather than the mother, but hell, we’ll take it, if it means investment in the perinatal stage. It is, of course, an investment for everyone, not just because it creates a healthier, happier society, but because those children grow up and become tax-paying citizens. About two years back I heard about potential funding for ‘prevention rather than cure’ coming from government. I have yet to see any sign of this. I have been to many, many meetings and consultations with the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) down here. There is always much talk of change and investment in the third sector. What then happens is that some of the promised money seems to get siphoned off, away from mental health. Then large and unwieldy contracts are put out to tender which are only eligible (or manageable) for the large providers. Smaller organisations don’t stand a chance. Then the process is repeated every few months with a new set of faces. The smaller organisations still don’t get a look in and many face collapse because of it. The women that attend our Mothers Uncovered groups have often attended NHS run support groups carried out by health professionals, but what they really value is the peer support we offer. Several say we quite literally have saved their lives. Additionally, since we have published both a book and a couple of articles on the topic, I receive regular emails from women around the country, either asking if something like Mothers Uncovered exists in their area or can they create it, if not. We are looking to expand, but we don’t want to bulldozer Mothers Uncovered into an area when there is a group already operating. There are many small groups operating nationwide, geared to the needs of those communities, but they struggle to survive because they often can’t afford to publicise, and peer support normally gets lumped in with volunteering, therefore it is not valued or supported and is often not sustainable. I can see why peer support creates a problem for those in charge – how can it be monitored, assessed, held accountable? But we know the NHS is creaking at the seams and something I think, needs to change. The NHS Perinatal team in Brighton, for example, is completely swamped and overworked and cannot see all the women that need help, unless they are deemed high risk. I often hear from mothers saying that they wished they’d heard about our services. In fact, I quite often hear from those in higher up positions that they have ‘never heard of us.’ It is said almost triumphantly, which is slightly galling and I’m not sure what purpose it serves. We do our best to put the word out – we have flyers, social media, Mailchimp. What we critically need is signposting from GPs, midwives and health visitors, which they are not currently allowed to do because they can only recommend NHS services. I attended an event on maternal mental wellbeing in Parliament on Dec 10 last year. Yes, another of the ‘Days of Brexit’. It was chaired by a male obstetrician and sponsored by 3 male MPs, but luckily there were also some women on hand to discuss their experiences [eyeroll emoji]. I raised a point with Tim Loughton MP, and asked for his reassurance that smaller peer-led groups would in fact be championed. I’m not sure he entirely welcomed it (!), but it got a cheer from several of the women in the room 😉. He did say that the Brighton CCG had been somewhat obstructive in collaborating on initiatives, so perhaps we are just unlucky. The biggest problem peer support groups have (and this is true across the board for all social care, not just maternity) is that while the route to mental health care remains through the NHS, nothing will change. The system is too large and unwieldy. I’m no medic, but from my observations (which are shared by many other groups working in the field of peer support), a considerable majority of people’s problems can be better managed by attending peer support groups and initiatives than by being referred (usually after a wait of several months) to a clinician who will provide the ‘expert’ treatment and possibly medication, but not the empathy and sense of community that is more useful long-term. Peer support is also much cheaper. One of our Mothers Uncovered five week groups, for example, costs about £1000 to run and provides care for up to eight women and their babies. If any one of those women had not attended and spiralled into PND (and several past participants say attending is the DIRECT reason this has not happened), necessitating a hospital stay, the cost of her care, not to mention the emotional fallout for her family and friends, would be way in excess of that. The CCGS are somewhat suspicious of peer support groups – the charitable reason you might ascribe is because they feel they are untested. Getting fed up of that attitude, and also knowing that we might stand more of a chance if we had an official report, about four years ago, Mothers Uncovered jointly commissioned a report into the effectiveness of peer support services. The report has been published in two academic journals, you can see links on our site http://www.mothersuncovered.com/sussex-peer-support-network-support.html . Here is the evidence, you would think, but still nothing changes, leading you to wonder if it is the wresting away of control from large providers they are more concerned about. Following the report, I founded the Sussex Peer Support Network (SPSN) to represent some thirty organisations across Sussex. I had a meeting with Caroline Lucas, who wrote to Alistair Burt (then at the Dept of Health) about creating a pilot to prove the effectiveness of peer support groups. He batted it back to say she should contact the local CCG, which she duly did, then the matter was sidestepped and eventually fell apart. SPSN has pretty much fallen apart as well, as none of the groups have the spare time or money to manage it, and funding for it proved impossible to find. We are trying again with a different funding stream, so maybe this time we’ll strike lucky. It seems that the best way to get action is to reach to the decision-makers, i.e. government. Sadly, the nightmare that is Brexit means that none of them have much time and who knows will even be in office in a few months anyway! At the event I mentioned earlier, the excellent Luciana Berger spoke about exactly all of the things I have mentioned. Obviously, she’s had a spot of personal bother herself recently and is shortly off on maternity leave anyway. I am hoping to have a meeting with Jess Philips at some point in the next few months. What is needed is a cross-party group of MPs who could push for the introduction of a peer support national database of services. I’d like for it to be for all services, but because I only have a certain number of hours, I’ll concentrate on maternal mental health. I’ll also be in two magazines banging this particular drum – Sussex Life in April and a new magazine being launched at the end of March by Anna Ceesay, who I met at another event. I will keep on trucking. Women’s lives depend on it….. It's been a busy half term. The usual flurry of admin surrounding the Mothers Uncovered courses; including a new one called The Teen Years, for those navigating the later years of their offspring. The continual quest to make our work more sustainable, involving attending meetings and conferences. Livestock’s separate project SoulFood, currently going down a storm in food banks, and our forthcoming M/others Uncorked immersive show about school curriculums. And of course our book launch of The Secret Life of Mothers.
I am so proud of our book - and of course, major props to Silverdart, our publisher, for their hand in making it the lovely thing that it is. To my knowledge, there's not another book exactly like it. There's been lots of books about mothers, mostly written by mothers, but generally it's the overview of one person, citing examples of others. This is truly the work of those 50+ mothers whose stories appear in it. All proceeds from the book go back to our charity to run more peer support activities at low cost, should you be wondering whether to purchase. (Please do! Also available on Amazon!) We were fortunate to have Caroline Lucas both write a foreword for the book and attend the launch. Seeing as she is so much in demand, I could tell people were surprised that she had found the time. It probably helped that she has been a supporter of Mothers Uncovered for some time. We had first met at the end of 2009, completely by chance. I was attending a focus group set up by a friend’s husband. I was going because it paid £30 (!). I think it was to do with local services and potentially voting Green. Caroline, then an MEP and still with time to answer her own correspondence, came along to hear the opinions. I subsequently invited her to a performance of the work from our 'Your Stories' course at The Tarner Children’s Centre. Many of those writings appear in the book. Since then, she has been a staunch supporter: attending a couple more of our events and occasional meetings about various projects. The book idea came up in 2011 and she’d agreed to write the foreword then, but the idea had to be shelved due to lack of funding. This year, partly as a result of some personal reasons, I thought stuff it, we’re doing it anyway, even without funding. Luckily, she’s a woman of her word 😉. Of course, in order to garner maximum interest in our event, I had promised Waterstones and all our social media channels that she would be present at the launch. Until the moment she walked in the door though, I wasn't entirely convinced she'd make it. Not because of any lack of willing on her part, but because her timetable is so fiendishly busy I'm surprised she finds time to sleep. When speaking to her office about options two months earlier, the date we chose was the only one out of about six that she was available and even then there was no guarantee: a major parliamentary incident might arise. I happened to bump into Caroline a few weeks earlier in North Street and said that her presence would be excellent, but of course, if there was a last minute vote to overturn Brexit for example, we'd take one for the team, which made her laugh. God knows there's not much else to laugh at in the whole debacle. More a Munch-style scream at the unfolding horrors. By the time she had completed her earlier commitment in conversation with Helena Kennedy QC and reached us, the night was quite well advanced. I was a little giddy by this point and can’t remember exactly what was said. Other than she thinks Mothers Uncovered is a unique, amazing service and should be protected. And that she’d like a group to deal with the empty nest syndrome. (I’m sure one will come when I’ve reached that stage). There is a clip here detailing some of her speech from the Q & A https://vimeo.com/300061521. The full version was less guarded, but that's her story. Eloquent, engaged and with more integrity than certain others with far more power in Westminster. If only that could be bottled. Eau de Lucas. We were both interviewed by the somewhat idiosyncratic Latest TV (link below). I make an inappropriate quip about people‘s extended coffee breaks; I actually meant that the work culture isn’t particularly conducive to enabling those with limited time to partake, being riddled with bureaucracy, long hours and endless meetings. But if there’s ever a chance to put my foot in it, I do, rest assured. Thank God I’m not an MP. (Although my grandfather, who was an MP, had a similar tendency and it didn't do him any harm. He did fall foul of the racists in the 1964 election, but that's a different story). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6J8oKPU2Ko Yes, we all are. I'm not laying especial claim. The busyness I have been particularly embroiled in recently is the putting together of the Mothers Uncovered book, The Secret Life of Mothers, created from writing and interviews of our participants over the last ten years.
It is a compilation of over 50 women's first-hand experiences and stories of their motherhood journey, from expectations through to the reality, thoughts about their own mothers, relationships with family and partners, their struggles with identity. Its is, I hope, something that will appeal to many and not just mothers. At the beginning and end are quite political pieces by myself and one of my contributors, Claire Robinson, in which I lay down a small call to arms in a desire for the language and treatment of women in pregnancy and birth to be overhauled. I hope I don't come across as too strident, or worse, not in possession of a GSOH. I've written funnier pieces at other times, mostly about Natwest or Ryanair. I like a laugh, I am frequently not PC, which is one reason why I couldn't go into politics, along with the lack of patience I know I would have as they all start braying and 'hear-hearing' their mates in the House. Anyway, it IS a serious subject. But there are laughs within. And joy, hope and tears too. AND a foreword by powerhouse Caroline Lucas. Please buy - it's on Amazon. Or get in touch with me and I'll send you a copy. |
My Diary
I've been reading one of Alan Bennett's diaries (very slowly. Not because I don't enjoy it, but because it's in the bathroom, reserved for my post-shower sit in towel to dry off). It made me realise I would LOVE my own 'What I've been up to this week!' type column in a paper/magazine. So would many thousands of others, I'd imagine. So, I've created my own additional section here. Less ranty, reflectiony or reviewy than the other bits. Archives
February 2022
Categories
All
|