THE COVID MONTHS | HARTRIGG OAKS - A PARTNERSHIP

Sarah Clarke has set up an exciting new placement partnership for students.

When the old ghosts come back

To feed on everywhere you felt sure,

Do not strengthen their hunger

By choosing fear;

Rather, decide to call on your heart

That it may grow clear and free

To welcome home your emptiness

An excerpt from "For Loneliness", by John O'Donohue. I find the lonely parts of me are often drawn to the lonely parts in others. I am fascinated by loneliness; of people’s reluctance to name it, to talk about it, to admit to it.

In July of last year Christine Lister-Ford wrote  STAY ALERT – CONTROL THE VIRUS – SAVE LIVES in her ‘True North Therapy’ blog; a piece about how we have perhaps failed at Northern Guild, to develop therapy placements where those in their later years have parity of access to counselling and psychotherapy with adults in other age groups. and I was both moved and inspired by what I heard as her call to arms - This is a group for whom we must rethink what we are doing and find ways to do much, much better. We cannot go on letting this be a marginalised group with poor access to our therapists.

This coincided with a blog written by Sue Hogston who had recently taken over as Head of Residential and Nursing Care at Hartrigg Oaks, a residential community for older people in New Earswick, York where my parents live. In it, Sue described how she and her team had been working around the clock to keep residents in touch with friends, family and each other, knowing the value of connection and the corrosive nature of loneliness in an already vulnerable neighbourhood.

The connection seemed obvious to me – here we were; a team of skilful, experienced therapists, looking to reach out to older clients, and there they were; a community of over 60s, suddenly cut off, isolated and in need of support.

I emailed Sue to suggest a partnership and she grabbed the idea with both hands. We spoke on the phone, each heartened by a glimmer of possibility and that warm fuzzy feeling that we were both doing something good in a bleak and difficult time.

The summer holidays came and went, and autumn saw us each caught up with our own family circumstances and the challenges of juggling those with navigating new ways of working, whilst both still reeling from the wrecking balls of our own bereavements.

The partnership fell into the shadows of winter and became something we both put onto one of those interminable To Do Lists that only ever grew longer as Christmas and a second lockdown drove the country into unparalleled despair.

But just as spring gives birth to new possibility and potential, my own sap began rising in March and prompted me to reconnect with Sue to see if we could resurrect the idea. She was grateful for my perseverance and we each committed to seeing it through this year. Recognising my own need for support with the venture this time around I recruited Simon Gowland, a Year 3 trainee, dual-registered on both the child and adult courses who lived and worked in York and whose infectious energy and enthusiasm I remembered from when I taught him in Year 1.

Simon and I met with Sue and her team over Zoom and then had the real treat of an In-Person meeting together with some of the residents at Hartrigg who acted as our pilot study. Together we drafted a piece for the community Newsletter and then sat back to see the response. Sue was nervous that the demand would outweigh supply, I was worried it would all fall flat, and that shame, hopelessness and fear would silence those most in need and prevent them from coming forward.

In a further Zoom Q&A which included residents and the wider management team of Hartrigg Oaks, we were asked what our “success criteria” looked like. I remember looking at Simon nervously, it was a question we hadn’t prepared for, but then the answer came to me - we were not some corporate business touting for clients to improve a profit and loss account, we were therapists, offering a helping hand, and if one person could be supported through our partnership, that would constitute a ‘success’ for me.

Last week I introduced the partnership to the Tutors in a Training Team Meeting and was heartened by the response. Not one, but two self-referrals have already come through from residents and been allocated to Lesley Calvert and Pen Jacques, supported by Kerry Rundle and Georgia Giannopoulou. I am so grateful for the positivity and enthusiasm with which they, and others, have jumped to support this venture.

I have learned many valuable lessons over the course of the year; the most important feels as though it is to listen to the call of my heart and to be tenacious as it guides me to grow clear and free, acknowledging and accepting my own ghosts by supporting others to sit with theirs.