A DECADE WORKING IN CARE
Phil Penfold
A lot of the problem with many care homes is that they don’t treat the people as real human beings. They are regarded as somehow being lobotomised creatures, or livestock, or an object. Stand-up comic Pope Lonergan, who is at York Festival of Ideas.
IT IS clear that the Lonergan family are not given to obfuscation. Confronted with a spade, they will call it a spade, rather than dancing around the subject, and calling it a “tool for digging, comprising a blade and a long handle”. In cinematic terms, they prefer to cut to the chase, and to be direct, and open.
It’s a trait, reckons Pope Lonergan, that he inherited from his mother, who worked for many years in the health care sector. “She’d tell it precisely as it was” he recalls with wry laugh.
“Say for example you were headed off out wearing something that was out of the ordinary, something unusual. She’d come up with something like ‘That hat looks ruddy ridiculous – do you want to make people laugh?’ There was no pussyfooting about. No way. It was pathological honesty, and she shared that environment with us all.”
She was a lady who, at five feet two, was “always there for you in a crisis, available no matter what, and very forthright”. Pope follows by example, in a new book with the intriguing title of I’ll die after Bingo.
If you want to know where that line comes from, then you’ll have to get yourself a copy, and read all the way through. And it will, I can promise you, be very much worth your while, and the £16.99 you’ll be spending.
It has the sub-title of “The unlikely story of my decade as a care home assistant”, but this is no carefree canter, a collection of endearing anecdotes. This is a warts and all (and then some) account of the trials, tribulations and (occasionally) terrors of the nation’s care homes.
Yes, there are some endearing sections, but Lonergan never pulls his punches, and exposes the fragility of a highly flawed system, and the many vulnerable people within it, both the carers and the cared-for. He is painfully open, unerringly direct.
Pope is not his real Christian name. It turns out to be the more conventional Liam. “I wanted to find a name that was that bit different”, he admits, “and Pope just popped into my mind. I really must sit down sometime, and invent a good story about why I chose it, something that you journalists will find intriguing.”
The sub-title is spot-on. He’s produced a multi-layered work which reveals everything that you would want to know about how the elderly are treated when they move from their own homes into a completely different environment. Many have full-blown dementia, or are in its early stages.
It’s a book about hope, about despair, about wonderful people who have dedication and a sense of true compassion, and also about an equal measure of those who see people in the last years of their lives as mere commodities, objects from which a profit can be made.
Pope has seen the lot. And it rings true because throughout his (near) decade, he kept a journal of what he saw, and what he experienced.
“I pulled them all together”, he says, “and then I started to write, in longhand. It wasn’t until later that I transferred it all to a laptop, and edited on that. You should see my desk-space – organised clutter. There’s a picture of Vic and Bob (Reeves and Mortimer), a photo of my Grandad in a toga, trading cards pinned on the walls, stacks of books everywhere, covering everything from the economics of the health sector to all its rules and regulations and what they require you to wear. The bureaucracy is quite incredible.”
What emerges is his own personal experiences. A blend of the happy and the harrowing. “I never wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings” he says, “which is why a lot of the names have been changed. But I promise you that nothing has been made up. It’s all fact – OK, perhaps it might all be some sort of confessional from me, but I’ve been scrupulously honest. Never cruel, I hope, that’s not for me, and yes, perhaps it did help me with issues that I had, about self-doubt and self-esteem.
“A lot of the problem with many care homes is that they don’t treat the people as real human beings. They are regarded as somehow being lobotomised creatures, or livestock, or an object. Maybe on a par with a potted plant, which only needs an occasional splash of water and a bit of sunlight. I loathed that side of the job, the ‘doing it by all the rules and regulations’ side.”
In the book, there’s one chilling story about the day that he snapped – an elderly patient was reluctant to get out of bed when they were ordered to do so. The manager in charge whipped the duvet away. It was a cold morning, and Pope threw a nearby jug of water over the manager. “I said to them ‘Now you know what it feels like’.”
He chuckles. “I’ve always been deeply idiosyncratic, slightly out of step, on a different wavelength, and in a care home environment, in a way I felt that I was with my kind of people, seeing things from a different angle and perspective.
“Care homes are regimented, and controlled, dependent on circuited behaviour. Meals at rigid times, that sort of thing. Nearly all independence is removed, sometimes for good reason, and sometimes not. The daily mess of being a human being isn’t factored in.”
He also warms to a theory that dementia can be, in a small way, be likened to a reliable old clock, just about to chime midnight when, for no explicable reason, it pauses, and begins to tick backwards. For many years sufferers were urged to “snap out of it”, and there was little sympathy with someone who was (for example) aged eighty, but whose memory ended when they were just twenty-two.
“What on earth was served by telling someone that the person who had come to see them was their husband or wife, when in fact, in their mind, they’d never met them – or married them? I remember one old lady who was convinced that I was Cliff – her late husband – and who one day got very put out because I didn’t want to make love to her. All you can do is to be patient, and kind, and understanding.”
He is scathing about the on-going privatisation of the care system, and about the wages of many carers, “most of whom aren’t even earning what they will need to care for themselves in their impending old age. Who, ultimately, is going to care for the carers? It is such a stressful job, both emotionally and physically demanding.”
He thinks that “If I had to re-write some of the book, I’d also examine the guilt that visitors feel when they come in to see their partners, relations, friends. They think ‘If they don’t even recognise me, what good am I doing’. Many want to say ‘Snap out of it’. There is deep frustration there, but you do provide comfort. Don’t beat yourself up – it’s normal. And understandable.”
What might “discombobulate” (his word) a lot of people is that Lonergan – just 30 - is also a stand-up comic, and that he incorporates much of his experience into his act. He has a theory that laughing at reality is a stress-reliever for many. “Making a joke about things can be a very positive experience,” he says, “and laughing at yourself, and one’s own personal absurdities, is even better.”
Stand-up comic Pope Lonergan has written a book about his ten years of experience as a care home assistant. speaks to him ahead of an appearance in York.