We pick ourselves up and we carry on…
I’m not going to lie. It’s been a tough week.
As if returning from the Christmas break to learn of the deaths of two of our service users wasn’t enough, we then lost a further service user in Huddersfield this week, and then came the news that someone I had worked with for a long time in a previous job had been found dead too.
As weeks go, it’s not been one of my best, and I’ve struggled; I’ve struggled to smile, I’ve struggled to support the fantastic staff at SotS who work so tirelessly to build relationships with the people they support, struggled to reconcile the deaths of young men with an attitude of “it’s just part of your job” and struggled to get my frustration that this can happen in 2014 under control without hurling my shoes at the wall and shouting.
People ask me all the time how we cope when this happens. My answer is always the same “we pick ourselves up and we carry on” because actually, I don’t like to talk about it. But today I decided to unpick just “how we cope” and share it with you.
You have to grieve. You have to be allowed to grieve and you have to allow yourself to grieve. The relationships we build with people are always professional, but when you work with someone for a long period of time, and you learn so much about them and they trust you, it’s inevitable that you develop a closeness and a mutual respect. They form part of your weekly if not daily life professionally, and they leave a hole when they are no longer there. It’s the holes in the diary over the coming weeks that someone has left that one of our workers has found the hardest to get to grips with this week. It’s OK to feel bad about it, and it’s OK to cry with sadness and frustration, indeed it’s healthy.
You have to share. The great thing about working as part of the SotS team is that we all experience the same highs and lows as part of our jobs. We celebrate together, we laugh together, we get angry together and sometimes we cry together too, about the big stuff and the small stuff. I’m proud of the way we pick each other up when we need it, proud of the way we know each other so well that we can recognise when someone needs it, and proud of the way each and every member of the team takes a share of the responsibility for doing it. We talk when it’s right to talk, and we’re quiet when that’s what’s needed too. But we’re there for each other regardless of role or seniority.
It’s OK to get angry. What we do is incredibly frustrating at times. Every day we encounter a system that lets down the people that need it most, we meet barriers that we don’t understand the need for, and we meet fantastic people who want to do a great job for the people who need their support, but who can’t because they are bound by the restrictions of the way they are funded. We see people being spat on and being told to “pull themselves together and get a job”, we see ghosts of people that are invisible to many and we know people who are intelligent and articulate but whose value is overlooked. Our office is a safe place where we can shout, swear, rant and rave. Then we get a game face back on and go back out and carry on.
We laugh. We share the humorous tales and escapades of the people we have lost, and boy do we have some funny stories. It’s really not all doom and gloom with our service users!
We channel what we feel. I’m good at this, it’s what keeps me going and stops me hurling shoes at walls. We take the anger and the frustration we feel and we turn it around and use it to drive us on to support the people that everyone else has forgotten. We recognise that if we weren’t doing what we are doing across West Yorkshire, there would likely be more deaths each year. We’re not there to save people, we’re there to offer them endless opportunities to change, to support them both emotionally and practically, and to help them to learn how to help and support themselves. We can’t do this FOR people, but we can, and do, make a commitment to never give up on them.
So yes, it’s been a tough week. One of the toughest. But we’re OK. They day we stop feeling it when we lose someone, is the day we should pack up and go home. We’re positive about the future, we are proud to know some of the most fantastically rich people across West Yorkshire (and just for once, I’m not talking about money!) and we’re moving forward in every way. With a new worker having started in Leeds last week, and another due to start in Bradford next week, the future for SotS is looking and feeling bright and we’re in a position to support more people than ever. This week has been a blip, and there will undoubtedly be others. But we’ll use them to feed our drive and determination to make a difference and we’ll pick ourselves up and carry on.