I have not written anything about the time I spent working for the brain injury charity, Headway. For a couple of years, I was an outreach worker, which generally entailed visiting brain-injured people at their own homes and doing stuff with them, stuff being a word when you really can’t think of the right word to use. I might take someone shopping, I might help someone make more sense of their life (which is rich seeing as how I cannot make sense of my own), cook with someone or even play Connect Four. Loads of stuff which was, from time-to-time moderately enjoyable. Eventually, they sacked me – not in so many words, but that’s effectively what had happened – because I declined to wipe someone’s arse in the Headway centre after they’d had a dump. I had never wiped anyone’s arse, apart from nappy changing when my kids were babies, had never been taught how to do this with a disabled adult, although I imagine it was rather obvious, and I’m pretty sure I’d have brought my boots up if I’d tried it. “We’ll pay you your four weeks notice. Don’t come in again.” What a load of shit.
After my sacking, I asked the manager if it would be possible to say goodbye, in my own time, with the service users I had come to know. If I couldn’t visit them, in my own time, could I then write to them, just to say goodbye? I thought it to be a modest request. I had worked hard to build good relationships with my clients. But no, the manager refused outright. “The service users are vulnerable people.” Well, yes. I knew that. I was not sure how telling that I was leaving, that I was grateful to spend time with them and that I hoped I had been useful to them in their lives would make them more or less vulnerable, but I did not labour the point. With Headway, you do as you are told, managers know best, even when they don’t.
My arsewipe refusal happened in the morning and in the afternoon I saw another service user in Southville. He was a very disturbed man who could become extremely fiery at a moment’s notice. I had spent weeks gaining his trust and felt we were making real progress. Just as I got to his flat, I looked out of the window and saw a man lying on the pavement prone on the pavement. From where I stood, I had no idea whether he was dead or alive. I told my client what was going on, left the flat and attended to the man. I called 999 straight away and both the police and ambulance arrived and took him away, thanking me for intervening. I apologised to my service user who understood the day’s priorities. I can’t say I was exactly traumatised, but I was in a minor state of shock when I called in to Headway, who I had already phoned to let them know what was happening, to let them know my outreach work for that day was over. Not pausing for a second, not even mentioning my actions that day, I was told my services were longer required. If they’d literally told me to fuck off, they couldn’t have been more blunt, crass and offensive.
In the time I had been there, I had been in the presence of a number of very angry and disturbed people, whose tempers often spilled over to the point when I was half-expecting them to hit me. One client hit a wall with his fist one day so violently that the whole flat shook. I was the victim of a volley of abuse from a control-freaking friend of another service user. My Southville friend was an unpredictable volcano waiting to explode. “Thanks for your work, Rick. Are you okay? We know you have severe clinical depression because you told us on your job application, at your job interview and on numerous occasions since.” No, nothing like that. Being told, at zero seconds notice, to wipe someone’s arse was all Headway thought about. “Here’s your P45. “Just fuck off and spend more time with your depression,” I wasn’t told, but that was the gist of it.
Wiping arses was, they said, in the small print of my contract, phrased presumably as something like personal care, but having been told on numerous occasions by the manager that we were not in the business of Domiciliary care, it came as a bit of a surprise. They probably had me bang to rights, quite possibly wanted to get rid of me (I have no idea) and had no interest in retaining my services.
I think they sent me a bland note thanking me – I honestly don’t recall: they might not have – but all I could think of was I was glad it was all over. I didn’t take service users to the pub, I didn’t sell drugs to service users and I certainly didn’t fiddle my hours. It would be quite wrong to suggest that anyone ever employed by the charity ever did any of these things. I’m just saying, as a matter of record, that I didn’t.
I’d like to have said goodbye to a few of the staff and a lot of the service users. I was offered the chance to do the former but not the latter. In the end, I just left it. I now know that one of my favourite service users died a few weeks ago and I still get the odd update from a kindly former colleague.
I kind of liked what I did when I worked there, but I am not sure that we were providing much more than an expensive befriending service. We couldn’t cure people, their injuries were often such that the things we did with them could only be done in our presence so it added little in the long term. No one admitted that it was really befriending and anyway it was only my opinion that that’s literally what it was.
Overall, my experience with Headway was infinitely better than the one I had at the British Red Cross. If the managers were of modest ability – and that was on a good day – at least they weren’t bullies, at least not to me. I didn’t go there to wipe arses and it was my fault and mine alone that I never checked the small print because if I had, I’d have never gone there.
Headway was my last proper job and I reckon I was good for them. That they thought they were better off without me is of no interest. I made some people’s lives better, however briefly. Nobody ever says thank you, said Brian Clough. He wasn’t wrong. Headway never did. I am not angry, I am not bitter, I am actually proud of my work. But when it all comes down to it, fuck ’em.
