At work:
- Social care engagement project: after much planning and scheduling I finally did the first two sessions of collecting people’s stories of social care (and also a bit health, housing and other services, as people don’t segment services the way services do, obvs). The team is happy with what I have been gathering, and I will be writing up the anonymised narratives as evidence to influence service change; and there are a few cases where improvements could be brought for individuals so I’ll follow this up with them directly next week, see if they’d be happy for the client team to be in touch and advocate on their behalf. Overall while there are some positive experiences, I am also hearing heartbreaking stories of people being failed by overloaded systems, not knowing how to access the support they need and are entitled to, and not wanting to complain because they understand all services are under so much pressure. This project has taken up most of my headspace and energy this week.
Deliverables this week:
- Mentoring of Local Health Board leaders is in its last few weeks – last few sessions.
- Evaluation project: the final evaluation report having been signed off, I have been collating a child-friendly summary version that can be shared with the pupils who took part. I squeezed this in under “deliverables” but I’ve got just a couple more pages to format before sending to the client next week. So not quite delivered yet, but close.
Development this week:
- The Deceleration Assembly took place in Birmingham on Wednesday. I caught up with some lovely people I don’t see often enough, took part in some interesting conversations, and met a few other cool people. I have notebook notes that I haven’t written up yet, I’ll come back and add them in when I have.
At home:
- The Cat who had somewhat stabilised on his high dose of steroids, took a turn for the worse as soon as the dose was reduced (as planned) on Monday. He’s back on the highest dose available, with additional antacids an hour before his first meal to try and stop him vomiting, so there is a 6am alarm to wrap him in a cat burrito (a purrito!) and feed him the antacid tablet, a 7am alarm to purrito him and feed him the first steroid tablet, and same again around 7pm. He’s a very good little purrito, and no trouble at all. But he’s not quite himself through the day, and I can’t remember the last time he actually played. He’s still very cuddly, as he has always been, and the steroids are making him ravenous ALL THE TIME so he’s either yelling at me for food or to be picked up and sometimes both at once. Poor wee dot. I’m pretty shattered.
- What with all the tragedy I’m hearing through the social care engagement project, I have cried a lot this week, and talked at length to my therapist-stroke-supervisor, as well as the client team ofc, and also friends and family as sounding boards, and still my heart is so sore. I can’t see how services can do what they need to do to support people’s lives and meet people’s needs in the ongoing socio / eco / political context. Some personal relationship stuff has also thrown me for six, and I know the cat’s illness can be managed for a while but that he’s not going to recover from it so it’s a matter of (an unknown quantity of) time… so all in all it’s been a really tough week. I’m not holding a lot of hope and resilience on this Sunday evening as I prepare for the new week. It will pass eventually like everything does, but my heart feels very heavy right now.
Photo by Sarah Doffman on Unsplash