Friday 30.10.09
After I said 'Goodbye' to all that, it felt too sad to talk about the good bits. I'm talking about the twenty or so years that I worked with people with learning disabilities. Irrespective of my eventual disenchantment with the profession, I always loved the people. I don't think about it much now, but every so often, something catches my eye, or someone says something, and it gets me remembering. This time, I've been prompted by Richard Herring's blog entry, and more so by the Collings & Herrin podcast (of which I'm mighty fond, you should try it) in which Richard's cinema experience is altered by the presence of a young man with a learning disability.
There are enough years between then and now to put the person in my true story beyond identification, but I'm changing the name anyway.
We were getting the bus and I'd never got the bus before. I was a new support worker when the term 'support worker' was new. Before then there were 'care assistants' and there were 'nurses'. Care assistants were for hospitals, and we were all in the community now, except that home for John was still a health setting. It was universally agreed he was better off though. He lived in The Bungalow which was attached to an NHS Respite Unit for people with learning disabilities in a small town. He had two housemates. They didn't get on, but had been placed together because before they were admitted to hospital as children, they had lived in that small town. In the hospital, John had lived on a ward with upwards of twenty other men. His mother later told me that he had gone in at the age of eight. He was in his forties when he came out in 1993, that's around my age now.
I came into the profession as the hospitals were closing so although I visited plenty, I never worked in one. A nurse I worked with said at the time that it was a shame I would never have the chance as they provided such good experience, by which she meant training experience that would have me toughened up and got my expectations in order. She liked me and meant it kindly.
Some months later, she asked me to gather some of John's history from his parents. John's mother had sent him to the hospital on the advice of her doctor. All of her children had been affected by the same unidentified genetic condition, John was the youngest and most disabled so with no alternative help available, they had to let him go. The family made the difficult sixty mile round trip to see him once a month. Before he was admitted, his mother bought him new shoes. On her first visit, John wasn't wearing his new shoes, he was wearing worn out boots that were the wrong size, also they were odd ones, two lefts. When she asked about it, she was told it couldn't be helped. All of the shoes were put into a box at the end of the day. The more able patients put on shoes for the less able. If they couldn't identify the correct shoes, then they got what they were given. It didn't matter though, they didn't walk far, just to the dining room or around the wards or to the social centre on site. There was no-one to see. All of this is off the point except to say that knowing about it makes the bus trip seem a bit special.
Previous to this job, I had worked with people with learning disabilities in supported employment. I had interviewed well, and was enthusiastic, but I never asked to look around. Induction day was a big shock. I had no experience with people who couldn't speak, or use the toilet, or who collected spoons in their pockets to put under their pillows at night, or who might move quickly to pick up and swallow a discarded cigarette butt.
By the time of the bus trip, I'd been 'on The Bungalow' a month. I liked John. He had ways of entertaining himself that fascinated me. I got him some felt tipped pens, and he would spend a long time drawing dots and short lines from the centre of the paper outwards in different colours so that it looked like a planet exploding. I would take the lids of the pens off for him as he chose the colours from the old chocolates tin. When he was absorbed, he would make a cooing noise through pursed lips. Once he was finished with the drawing, he would press it into my hands with his very strong fingers, then walk away.
Books were John's other thing. He looked at books in a way I had never seen before, not to see words or pictures, but for the exercise of turning the pages. The staff would get Argos catalogues for him, or help him spend his 'pocket money' on magazines (over the years I was to learn that loads of people with learning disabilities are soothed by Argos catalogues, I often wonder if the company is aware of their charitable act in supplying them for free). If he got cross, it was usually because he couldn't understand what was wanted of him. If he couldn't walk away, he would hit out with the palms of his hands, the kind of slaps girls do to each-other when playing clapping rhymes, using both hands at once with little power behind them, no malice intended. On these occasions, he could be distracted and pacified with the offer of a 'book'.
There was one thing he did to entertain himself that I never got my head around. At first I asked a few people about it, but I don't think anyone else was interested, one worker I asked said she found it 'creepy'. I found her scary, so each to their own. John would kiss. He wouldn't kiss people, although he would hug hard if allowed. His love was for cool, smooth, hard surfaces. He would kiss walls and especially windows. For hours on end, his lips would pucker up and he would press them close. No tongues. The bungalow had big patio doors that were ideal for his purposes. He quite liked to run his cheek along them too, but kissing was best. It was a sensory, maybe sensual thing, but not a sexual act.
The bus then. A nice community activity, using public transport, that could be 'written up' later in the 'notes'. I was a bit nervous, not of how John would be, but of the mechanics of getting a bus in the unfamiliar town. The wait at the bus stop went OK, we got on and I was told the meaning of 'please have exact change ready'. We sat down and John was spellbound by the movement and colour of the day. We got off after some other passengers, I was looking ahead, leading John by the arm. I felt him snag on something, and thinking he might have hold of the handrail, I gave a tug. No movement. I turned around.
John had locked the driver in a one armed embrace and was snogging him. He had caught the man half on the mouth, half on the cheek and was cooing softly. Presumably aware that I was asking him to get off the bus, John was dragging the driver over the door that separated him from the passengers, over which only cash and tickets were supposed to pass. 'S'awright mate, awright' the driver said, white faced and trembling, attempting to disengage. I was profuse in my apologies, but ineffective in getting John away. It was a long moment before John got fed up enough with my interference to give me one of his two handed slaps. I took my chance to pull him off the bus quick. The driver slammed the door with what might have been interpreted by the romantic heart as ungrateful haste.
I carried on supporting John for a couple of years, learning many things from him, not least of which was; if you get the chance of a snog, hold on tight and make the best of it.
Richard Herring's blog is here http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=2553
And the excellent Collings & Herrin podcast can be downloaded here (or subscribe to itunes)
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