Recently, I heard this quotation on the radio: ‘the obstacle in your path, is your path.’ It has become clearer and clearer over the last six months that this pandemic is a calling to us to be creative and courageous in our response.
I also think that in this time it has become clearer than ever what the mission of Father Hudson’s is, and what it means to be a charity. Our endeavour has been to keep doors open, when so many doors were closing, for those whose need has been exacerbated by the pandemic.
At Father Hudson’s Care we are responsible for providing seventeen different services: for individuals in our St Joseph’s Care Home, many of whom experience dementia, and also our services for adults who have complex needs and disabilities; for refugees and asylum seekers; for individuals who have been homeless on the streets; and for children and young people in foster care. I won’t continue this list of the diverse groups and individuals whom we accompany (this is all on our website). I mention it to try and capture the challenge presented by needing to respond to such diversity and inclusion at the same time.
During this period, our St Joseph’s Care Home experienced the traumatic effect of COVID- 19. For the last three months we have been free of the infection, but it has changed the way we work permanently. Infection control has always been important in care homes and is regularly inspected. However, this has raised the level of caution and precaution in a way that will continue to be massively challenging for our the residents, the families and our staff. The use of PPE, safe distancing, extra hand washing procedures are in place and will remain so in the future.
Nevertheless, we view this as positive. If there are ways we can improve and prevent any outbreak of any infection, to which older people will always be susceptible, through an increased rigour, we know this will benefit our residents.
And the pandemic has helped us realise how we can better use technology to reduce isolation, not just now with the many, many restrictions in place, but in the future. We were able to secure funds from a generous individual to install cameras, microphones, and everything else that was needed to livestream Mass from our small chapel in the Care home. This funding also allowed us to install the same equipment in our large Terrace café where previously we often had musical and other events, which some of the residents were able to attend. Soon we will be in a position to share the Mass and these social events (which are enjoyable and stimulating) to anyone in the Home who wishes to take part in this way. I would also say that our daily communication with our families of what is going on in the Home has developed through the use of private family/staff/residents Facebook groups, and families have loved this. This will continue. It enables families to share in the daily life of their loved ones in a different way.
When it comes to creative responses, what we have witnessed with our involvement with supporting refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in terms of learning to speak, read and write in English as well as their own birth language has been remarkable. At our Brushstrokes and St Chad’s Sanctuary projects, both of which have always worked with a very high number of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, the ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) program has been adapted and re-presented using social media, Zoom and other platforms in a way that the individuals have found really helpful. Even though we have been able to start some small group ESOL classes again in the centres, we intend to carry on delivering ESOL in this way as well - because it works for the individuals. The ability of our older volunteer ESOL teachers to adapt their way of teaching demonstrates their willingness to learn new ways.
Fatima House, a collaborative project we are heavily involved with supporting, which is run on a daily basis by the Columban lay missionaries, usually offers accommodation to nine destitute asylum seeking women who have no recourse to public funds. We have now secured some funds to install a small computer suite to enable these women guests to benefit from the online ESOL learning too, and to communicate with their families in different parts of the world. This is digital inclusion at its best.
And when we talk about digital inclusion I have to speak about our Young at Heart project in North Staffordshire. Previously, through a small paid staff team and a much larger group of volunteer teams, they had established and supported 11 lunch clubs for isolated older people. Clearly when the lockdown came this vulnerable group could not continue coming to the community centres where they met. It would have been tempting to have just put the team on furlough and hoped the pandemic would eventually end. Instead of this, the team of four adapted their way of working, recruited an extra 50 volunteers, agreed to take over 40 new befriending referrals from the Local authority (because so many services were closing down), and continued to support the nearly 300 older people who were already part of the project. The regular telephone calls, the doorstep visits on occasion, Zoom guitar lessons, quizzes, and much more have kept this service vibrant. Such has their openness been to trying new ways that they have recruited interns from the nearby University to research digital inclusion of older people, and are now working with the local authority to find new ways to enhance this digital inclusion.
There’s been so much criticism of the ‘everyone in’ government initiative to ensure there was no rough sleeping during the lockdown (in order to prevent further outbreaks). However, our experience working with Birmingham City Council has been very positive. For the last three years, our collaborative project, Tabor House (part of the iShelter initiative) has provided communal sleeping space for 11 individuals at any one time who had been sleeping rough on the streets of Birmingham. Their strengths-based approach has been so successful that 25 of the more than 50 guests who had stayed there in that period have moved on to their own accommodation, and many into employment. However, because the project relies on a communal sleeping space, when the lockdown came, we took the decision to close this. At the same time, Birmingham City Council asked if our team would lead on the ‘all in’ response in Birmingham because of their expertise. Our manager and several of the staff worked with some BCC staff to support more than 50 guests who were homeless on the streets of Birmingham at that time. Whilst this project ended at the end of July, in that time all of these individuals had been supported to move on, in one way or another. The desire to open Tabor House again was so powerful that the Management Committee agreed to secure funds to turn the communal space for 11 guests into eight individual pods and to make it a 24/7 service. The project opened again in August. Knowing what the need is in Birmingham in even greater detail now, the Management Committees is determined to open Tabor 2 when it can secure the funds. It has already identified and agreed in principle the lease on a Diocesan property once the funds are obtained.
There is so much more I could say about how the New Routes fostering team adapted their way of supporting the Foster carers and young people; or how the Family support in schools team all remained working and were a lifeline for the families whom they had been supporting previously, who felt even more cut-off than ever during the lockdown, and benefitted so much from knowing somebody was there for them. Even our Origins service, which provides post adoption support for adults and also post care support for those who lived in our children’s homes decades ago, has been busier. A time like this can make people reflect even more on their origins and seek support.
On a personal level, knowing that our Care home staff and our Residential staff in our Disability services, and so many of our staff in our community based work, had the courage to turn up every day - because if they didn’t, who would be there for those in their care? - has meant that all of us have shared in that same determination to ensure every service continues somehow; some diminished because of safety restrictions, and some increased because of the level of crisis and destitution.
Andy Quinn is CEO of Father Hudson’s Care, the principle social care agency for the Catholic Archdiocese of Birmingham.