Ever considered what someone who’s homeless wears to a job interview?
If you’re trying to get back on your feet and into work or training, whether you’re homeless, long-term unemployed or disadvantaged, what you need is smart clothes, but what you make do with is mis-matched separates in the wrong size or style.
Charities, night shelters and hostels receive donations – from food to clothing and practical kit like sleeping bags – and there are plenty of great schemes that support people into volunteering, training or work (that’s if there are jobs to come by and employers willing to hire). But while someone might have the skills and experience for employment, what’s often missing is the confidence-boosting garb to help them look and feel the part.
So I was interested to hear that the second annual Suit Amnesty launches next month and lasts throughout May. The aim is to help homeless jobseekers back into work by encouraging people to gift their unwanted suits.
More than 2,000 suits were collected in last year’s campaign, going to 22 different charities. Sian Thomas, marketing officer at Newcastle charity The Cyrenians describes last year’s donated suits as “perfect for our back-to-work projects which are all about getting people off the streets and preparing them for working life”. She adds: “Owning a suit makes a massive difference and will help our service users achieve their full potential.”
The scheme works with charities like The Cyrenians and Manchester’s Booth Centre that run back to work schemes.
Businesses can take part, acting as drop off points, and boosting their social responsibility profile in the process (apparently some of the firms that took part last year reported up to 14% increase in web hits during the campaign).
Accessible drop-off points include a variety of businesses including The Marketers’ Forum in London, the Malmaison hotel in Newcastle,retailer T.M. Lewin in London and various health clubs, hotels, bars and banks. More information on the Suit Amnesty website.
By coincidence, as I was reading about the project, I also came across a great scheme, Undergarments for Everyone, started by University of the West of England student Ed Tolkien to distribute new underwear and socks to homeless people in the Bristol area.
Last December, Tolkien collected and redistributed hats, scarves and gloves to local people on the streets, but he says many told him the hardest thing to come by was underwear.
Cash donated via collection boxes at the university and at two Salvation Army charity shops in Bristol, will be spent on new pants and socks and given to two Bristol homelessness charities, St Mungo’s and the Julian Trust night shelter.
Sometimes the simplest of ideas can have a big impact.
It’s an uphill struggle for those with so-called invisible difficulties (people with conditions on the autistic spectrum, for example,) to achieve mainstream representation or indeed capture the attention of broadcasters, newspaper editors, politicians and the public.
So imagine the challenge for those with more visible differences.
If you see facial disfigurement in movies, its usually a handy hint just in case you have trouble figuring out the baddie (think Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Kreuger and just about every Bond villain). Trying to see if I could disprove this theory, I randomly remembered Liam Neeson in Darkman – scarred, with a grudge, ultimately fighting for justice – but then looked up the tagline” “hideously scarred and mentally unstable scientist seeks revenge against the crooks who made him like that”. Ouch.
Movie memo to kids (they might not know Freddie Kreuger but you can be sure they know Batman’s The Joker or Harry Potter’s Voldemort): look bad on the outside, and you’re bad inside.
Today, Changing Faces, the charity for people and families whose lives are affected by appearance-altering conditions, marks or scars, launches a nationwide film campaign. Please watch it, it’s powerful, elegantly produced and only a minute long.
You might already have spotted the charity’s poster campaign not so long ago which aimed to stop people in their tracks long enough to make them think (instead of simply staring). Today’s Face Equality on Film campaign, it is hoped, will go some way towards tackling the prejudice and crass assumptions experienced by people with facial disfigurement.
The campaign calls for balanced portrayals of people with disfigurements on screen and the film, which will be shown in 750 Odeon cinemas, invites audiences to challenge their assumptions about Leo Gormley, a man with burn scars. It also stars Downton Abbey actor Michelle Dockery.
As a teenager in the ’80s, my first foray into the mind-boggling world of skincare and “beauty” products involved a desperate desire to cover barely perceptible blemishes, inspired by the seemingly zit-free stars on my Smash Hits front cover. But since, then the concept of “beauty” has become even more extreme, and digital wizardry can clear imperfections in the blink of a heavily-made-up eye.
I’m conscious that my seven-year-old daughter, for example, is growing up in a media environment dominated by images of identikit, airbrushed, photoshopped lovelies projecting an unobtainable and flawless version of “looking good”.
In a world where older women are elbowed off the television news because their faces, rather than their news judgement, start to sag, what hope for those whose features even further removed from what is deemed be aesthetically pleasing? Changing Faces has already worked with Channel Five news to shatter such stereotypes.
But if women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities are under-represented in television, then people whose differences are more obvious are, ironically, even more invisible.
And if facial differences feature on television, they do so in a medical capacity, in documentaries that present abnormality as something to be gawped at or “put right”. While the concept behind The Undateables might have been well-intentioned, it was the title of the show that put me off.
As Changing Faces’ chief executive James Partridge said in response to that Channel 4 series: “TV series with derisory titles makes life just that bit more difficult – it’s so unnecessary and it’s unfair. Very good factual and sensitive documentaries on disfigurement-related topics are frequently spoiled by offensive titles such as ‘Freak show family’, ‘The man with tree trunks for legs’ and ‘Bodyshock’. They are contrived to attract audiences but actually label the human being in the film in a sensationalist and voyeuristic way, treating him or her as an object rather than a person.”
At the risk of getting sidetracked down this road, I remember gritting my teeth a few years ago to get past the utterly ludicrous title of The Strangest Village in Britain. It was, was in fact a sensitive portrayal of life at Camphill’s Botton village which featured much of the good support that has made a difference to my family’s life – not that you’d know that from the objectionable title.
Back to today’s campaign launch; a YouGov survey of 1,741 adults commissioned by the charity last month found that bad teeth, scars, burns and other conditions affecting the face are viewed as the most common indicators of an evil film character. According to the poll, ethnic minorities, bald and disabled people are all thought to be portrayed in more diverse ways than those with disfigurements.
Responding to the poll, 66% said people with bad teeth mainly play evil characters and 48% said that people with conditions altering their appearance mainly play evil characters. Meanwhile, 30% said that bald people mainly play evil such roles compared to 13% who felt those from ethnic minorities mainly portrayed bad characters. Interestingly, 6% said that people with physical disabilities (in a wheelchair or have missing limbs) mainly play evil characters.
Partridge adds of today’s campaign: “It would seem as if all the film industry has to do to depict evil and villainy is apply a scar or a prosthetic eye socket or remove a limb and every movie goer knows that it’s time to be suspicious, scared or repulsed…Freddie Krueger, Scarface and Two-Face are just some of the names that our clients get called at school, on the street and at work. They have to put up with people laughing at them, recoiling, running away or staring in disbelief that they can and do live a normal life.”
* You can sign the charity’s online petition demanding an end to the stigma reinforced on screen.
Netbuddy's Emma Sterland and her brother, Ben (pic: Netbuddy)When Emma Sterland’s older brother Ben, who has Down’s syndrome, was three, their mother saw another child with Down’s walking past their Surrey house. Back then, in the late 1950s, learning disabled people were hidden away in institutional care, and it was the first time June had seen another child like Ben; she ran into the street to shouting: “I’ve got a son like that!”
In the absence of today’s official support networks, a lasting friendship began between the two mothers.
June could have done with Netbuddy, the self-styled “special needs Mumsnet” managed by her daughter, Emma. Just 18 months old, it crowdsources tips, attracting 6,000 new visitors a month and reaching 4,000 people a month via Facebook. Continue reading the rest of my piece on the Guardian’s social care network.
Netbuddy founder Deborah Gundle and son, Zach (pic: Netbuddy)
Had to share these images from a forthcoming exhibition created with people who have learning disabilities.
The show, The Girl With The Heart Shaped Hands, opens on Tuesday March 20th and has been organised by learning disability charity Outreach 3Way. The aim is to improve the mainstream representation of the 1m or so people in the UK with learning disabilities and reflect the personalities of each participant.
The eponymous girl of the show’s title is 38-year-old Samantha Wheeler who lives in Crawley and uses Outreach 3Way’s day centre.
Samantha Wheeler , whose pose lends itself to the title of the art exhibition
The images were taken by photographer Maria-Aurelia Riese who says she hopes the pieces “act as a gentle way of building understanding”: “There is a natural human reaction to feel awkward around those who look and behave differently from what we are used to. Once you really see someone for who they are that melts away. I very much hope this exhibition has that effect.”
Tom Ogle, also featured in the new art show
Participants in the exhibition submitted mini-profiles of themselves, to show the person behind the photo. Tom, 43, above, for example, enjoys “sports, drama, swimming, bicycle riding, listening to my music, walking into town and eating out” and is proud of his drama work. His dream for the future is to do more drama and “get married to my girlfriend.”
Portait of Matthew Dawson
The girl with the heart-shaped hands runs from 20th March to 1st April at Chichester’s Oxmarket Centre Of Arts. You can find out more about the free exhibition here or on the website for learning disability charity Dimensions, which Outreach 3 Way is part of.
The poster for the London anti-knife crime campaign designed by young people “We see 12-year-olds holding knives. They are doing it in daylight.” That’s the shocking reality of gang membership on south London’s Rockingham estate, as witnessed by 18-year-old Tanvir Hussain.
On my way to meet Tanvir and his friends, I pick up the Evening Standard. It carries a couple of stories on gang-related crime, including a heart-wrenching plea for an end to the violence from the mother of a 15-year-old boy stabbed to death while out on his bike. It’s a reminder, if any were needed, of the terrible impact of knife crime in our capital city.
Last year, more than 2,000 young people were injured by a knife in London and south of the river the problem is particularly bad, with Lambeth and Southwark last year recording the highest number of knife crimes in the capital. Earlier this month the Met launched a new drive to target gang crime.
For youngsters on the Rockingham, a spate of nine knife assaults three years ago was the final straw. They decided to come together to warn others about the grim consequences of gang culture and have since produced two films and, most recently, a hard-hitting poster campaign on knife crime.
“We’ve been affected by knife crime – we are telling a true story, it comes from the heart and it’s not like something you see on TV,” says 18-year-old Shabir Ali. “We just really felt enough was enough and we wanted to get the message out.” What’s so impressive about the youngsters’ work, through their Faces in Focus Boys’ Group, is that they have led the project every step of the way, inspired by their own experiences – and in some cases their own brushes with the law.
They are aiming their message at the youngsters, often only just at secondary school, who get involved with gangs to try and look cool. They’ve run sessions in schools to discuss gang violence and significantly have also opened a dialogue with the police about how policing methods such as stop and search can fuel community tensions.
But although the project is very much young person-led, it’s brought together a range of partners across local government, housing, voluntary organisations and the private sector. They include the Southwark-based charity Faces in Focus, Peabody Housing Trust, which has supported the work as part of its cross-London Staying Safe anti-crime project and Poached Creative, the social enterprise which brought its design skills to the table. The launch of the drive was hosted by campaigning charity Art Against Knives last month.
Khalis Miah, who helped the youngsters get their ideas off the ground after approaching them through the Connexions service three years ago, says their experience is a positive one on many levels. “Some were in court themselves,” he says. “But they have turned their lives around – they have been doing something positive for the community instead of getting into trouble.” The pay-off projects like these can have in terms of building confidence, leadership and employment skills is important too.
But with young people’s services hit hard by the cuts, support is crucial from social landlords like Peabody, which is currently supporting nine different anti-crime campaigns under the Staying Safe banner.
“Our approach is working with young people, not patronising them but working with them on a professional level,” says Lajaune Lincoln, Peabody’s Staying Safe and special projects manager. “Not only are they putting out an important message on crime, but it is also productive for them, improving their skills and helping with employers.” The members of the Faces in Focus Boys’ Group are continuing to work hard to get their message across – including to London Mayor Boris Johnson, who, they say, has not yet responded to their offer to discuss ways of tackling knife crime.
“We just want to get the word out,” says Shabir. “Knife crime is still going up and we want people to know it does have consequences.”
Guest post by Alison Bradley, youth charity MosaicThe world is changing rapidly for young people who have to learn to survive and perform in a competitive global environment. Now, more than ever, is the time for young people to take the lead in developing themselves and in having a positive impact on the individuals and communities around them.
The question is, how?
Despite their best attempts, with the current economic climate, a growing number of young people in the UK and abroad face unemployment. In addition, in the last year we have seen the disenchantment of young people culminate in large scale events, both in the UK riots in the summer, and in the ongoing protests for regime change across the Middle East.
I work for Mosaic, a charitable initiative of HRH The Prince of Wales, creating opportunities for young people of every background. We aim to have a positive effect on confidence, employability and self efficacy. By showing young people what inspirational leadership looks like, introducing them to role models who they can relate to, and persuading them that they too can be leaders who make a positive impact on the people around them – we aim to turn frustration and inertia into action and responsibility.
A Mosaic secondary school mentoring session
We have found some key factors to encouraging young people to discover their leadership skills. First is the definition of what is successful and inspiring leadership. For many young people, they do not consider themselves leadership material because they are not famous enough or wealthy enough or old enough.
However, through examining the character traits of effective leaders, using real life examples, we identify that the skills of a good leader are those which can be trained and developed – they are not simply based on an individual’s position or celebrity or charisma but instead are focused on serving others and behaving responsibly and consistently. A good example is that of listening skills. Every leader needs to demonstrate that they can fully attend to a colleague’s concerns, reflecting back on what they have heard, and asking clarifying questions to help reach a solution. This is a skill which can be taught and honed amongst young people.
Mosaic runs mentoring programmes for primary schools
Second is the recognition of personal emotional resilience. It is critical to understand that all leaders face difficulties on a daily basis, and that the ability to navigate these with a positive outlook and bounce back from disappointments, brings strength rather than demonstrates failure. We ask young people to recall a time when they have felt particularly under pressure, and to consider how they endured this and who supported them. This has as much relevance for school aged students as it does for those in the work environment, and is certainly a skill that can be developed.
Third, and related to resilience, is the need for leaders to have a network in which they can share resources, continue learning and be open to feedback. The Mosaic International Summit, our international leadership development programme is a great example of this; by bringing together leaders from different backgrounds and perspectives, invaluable exchange of ideas takes place and also, many cross cultural stereotypes and fears are shattered. As one of our alumni said, “there is no source of inspiration greater than a person who has been in the same place you are, yet has surmounted the odds. “
* Alison Bradley is the international director at Mosaic, a charitable initiative of HRH The Prince of Wales. She oversees the leadership development programme, which aims to grow leadership ability in young people and equip them to be a positive part of their communities. Alison has previously worked in a number of organisations which support young people, in the UK and abroad.
Season’s greetings from The Social Issue – to mark the jollities, here’s a snapshot of some of the upbeat posts and pictures about people, projects and places featured over the last 12 months. This festive pick is by no means the best of the bunch – the inspiring stories below are included as they’re accompanied by some interestin and images and almost fit with a festive carol, if you allow for a little the poetic and numerical licence…
Very huge thanks to the Social Issue’s small band of regular and guest bloggers, all contributors, supporters, readers and everyone who’s got in touch with story ideas and feedback. See you in January.
On the first day of Christmas, the blogosphere brought to me:
A tiger in an art show Batik Tiger created by a student at specialist autism college, Beechwood
Two JCBs The Miller Road project, Banbury, where agencies are tackling youth housing and training. Pic: John Alexander
Three fab grans Hermi, 85: “I don’t really feel like an older woman.”
Four working teens From antisocial behaviour to force for social good; Buzz Bikes, Wales.
Five(ish) eco tips Eco hero Phil uses a “smart plug” to monitor domestic energy use
Lol Butterfield, mental health campaignerOver 30 years ago as a young man I first set foot in a psychiatric hospital. It was an old Victorian “asylum” in the rolling countryside of Bedfordshire. I had travelled to the south of England from my native north east to find work, and here I found myself.
I wandered down the endless dimly lit corridors and found myself surrounded by staring, pain-etched faces with wild curious eyes. It felt like I had stumbled onto the set of the film One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. There was a sense of unreality to it all, but also of mystique. It was so stereotypical of all I had previously read in books and seen on television about asylums – those places others and never ourselves, of course, will be sent to for being “mad”.
Next year, it will be 50 years since the first steps towards community care for mental health (see this useful mental health timeline on the Mind website) this “anniversary” has made me revisit my early experiences as a mental health care professional and look afresh at the history of mental health care.
After 1962’s Hospital plan for England and Wales, large psychiatric hospitals closed and local authorities developed community services. That was, of course, the theory – not all local areas had adequate community services as we know, so there were still long-stay patients in hospitals up and down the country.
So it was more than three decades ago in that psychiatric hospital that my understanding and awareness of mental illness grew. I came to realise that the staring faces and wild eyes were ordinary people who had found themselves in extraordinary circumstances. They had been incarcerated many years before.
As a consequence of the debilitating illnesses they had, such as schizophrenia, and the horrendous medication side effects, they were displaying mannerisms that drew unwanted attention. Mannerisms that perpetuated the stigmatising process further. They had lost their self confidence, their motivation, and probably more importantly their daily living skills to function independently outside of the hospital confines. They had become institutionalised. The hospital was their home and they would eventually die there. Within the walls of the hospital the behaviour became normalised, the wandering up and down corridors, the staring at strangers and the shuffling gait. Outside in the local town it was polarised.
In the early 1990s many of the old asylums were closed. They had become anachronistic. More people were now being rehabilitated with the government’s proposal for care in the community, a radical shift in policy and approach essentially moving most of the care emphasis from the hospitals into the communities. People were discharged from the hospitals back into their communities with follow up planned support and care (in most cases).
Sadly some slipped through the safety net of care. And in the years that followed the medication improved and the stigmatising side effects became less. There was an increased acknowledgement of the importance of social inclusion, of recovery from illness, and of empowerment – treating people as individuals with informed choice and promoting equality.
Flashforward to 2011 and yet we still have stigma. We still have misunderstanding and we still have inequality in many sections of society for those 1 in 4 of the population who experience mental illhealth.
What is my long term vision of stigma and discrimination and where we will be in the next 50 years? I believe that stigma will have been eradicated completely following the success of campaigns such as Time To Change. I hope for a realisation that both our physical and mental wellbeing work in correlation and, as such, cannot and must not be split. I believe the strength and vision of those who have fought so hard will be acknowledged one day and in schools across the country their stories will be lesson material. Leading figures in the anti-stigma movement will be seen more positively as vehicles for social change. Mental health stigma will be seen in the same unacceptable light as racism and homophobia.
I have campaigned for many years, most of my adult life even, and no doubt ruffled a few feathers in the process. But I would rather stand up and be counted for saying something I passionately believe in than silently watch and do nothing. This I cannot do alone and I am always motivated by the support I get from others, more so from the victims of stigma and discrimination themselves.
As Philip Larkin wrote in The Mower, “We should be kind while there is still time”. In the case of mental health and tackling stigma and discrimination this kindness will hopefully continue through campaigning. We have come a long way, but we are not there yet.
Last Christmas was the first time in 14 years that Alex (not his real name) had spent the season with his family. It was the first time his parents had come to his house for Christmas dinner, the first time the 46-year-old had shopped for the meal, prepared it, laid the table and chosen the wine.
The event would have been inconceivable just a year before when, Alex, who has a severe learning disability, was living in a care home in Kent. He had already spent many years in a long-stay hospital ward. His challenging behaviour ranged from kicking to spitting and usually resulted in him being restrained by four members of staff, one pinning down each of his limbs, for up to 45 minutes.
Alex’s story, which outlines his path to appropriate social care, is among the powerful testimonies published in a report today by the Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG). I was involved in producing the report for the VODG, which brings together more than 50 voluntary sector disability organisations, and I also manage the group’s blog.
Gavin Harding, who co-chairs the National Forum for People with Learning Disabilities and chairs self-help advocacy group Voices for People, writes in the foreword to the publication: “There is another way, which is presented in this report. It’s about putting people with learning disabilities and their families at the centre of planning and delivery of care.” Harding adds: “Care is about people, it’s not just a process.”
The VODG report outlines the key elements that can contribute to high quality, cost-effective care.
You can read more about the report via this blogpost.
William Wright left his Somerset school with a handful of GCSEs. Confused about what to do after school, he felt his teachers had “given up” on him. Wright found temporary work as a plasterer but lacked the qualifications for a permanent job. Unemployed and uncertain, he fell into a vicious circle; being jobless destroyed his confidence and made him feel depressed, which made it difficult to find work. Now 26, he says: “I felt like a failure. Unemployment knocked my self-esteem and made me feel like I wasn’t good enough at anything.”
One million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in education, employment or training, just as William was. Read more here in my piece from the Guardian on Saturday.
And in the same youth supplement this piece by Kate Murray, who also blogs on this site, explores how to restore young people’s faith and involvement in politics with comments from MPs – including children’s minister, Tim Loughton – youth workers and community activists.
