Over the past few weeks I’ve watched and listened to a number of video stories from all sorts of different people who are supported by social care and health organisations in the UK or who are working in social care organisations. Many of these voices are not the ones that we normally hear from on social media, in print or over the airwaves. They are people making their way through life, often under exceptional and difficult circumstances.
Each of the stories is a humbling and honest exploration. People explain the challenges they have faced and are still facing and explain how they have managed those challenges with humility, honesty and grace.
Michael was admitted to a high security unit and thought that it was the place that was going to help him to put his life back on track. But when he first arrived and didn’t want to take the ‘bucket of drugs’ he was being offered, he was restrained and forced to take the medication anyway. Reflecting on his time in the high security unit he calmly described the staff team as ‘corrupt’ and ‘just there to make money’. Despite his awful experience, Michael knew that he had been in a very dark place and that now he was no longer in that dark place or in the high security unit, he was slowly making his way back into society. His aim now was to work out what he could give back to a society that hadn’t abandoned him at a time that he needed people to support him the most.
I watched and listened to Mary and her son John discussing John‘s experience of eleven to sixteen education. He’d been bullied because he was different and he reacted to the bullying by going deeper and deeper into himself. Looking back on his experience, he knew that he still had a long way to go but he was able to eloquently explain what had happened to him and how it had impacted him on his journey into adulthood.
Diane explained the perils of raising a concern about her son’s continuing healthcare support with her local healthcare team. She was expecting to attend a one-to-one meeting to discuss the concern and instead found herself confronted by four defensive health care professionals in a meeting that seemed to be more about intimidating her into withdrawing her concern than about listening with curiosity to what had led to the concern being raised (or about how the concern could be addressed and learned from). This was a health care response completely out of proportion to the original concern that had been raised. Additionally When Diane’s son left education, he got lost in the system for four years before Social Services got in touch because someone had realised that they should have been offering support and updating his assessed needs on a regular basis.
In each of these videos I was struck not just by the honesty of those telling their stories but also their lack of anger and distress and the humility with which every individual told their story. Even though often the outcomes from their experiences weren’t exactly what they would have wanted, all of them were still getting on with their lives without bitterness or regret.
I think it’s a very British thing that generally people don’t like to complain but also it seems to be human response that those drawing on health care and social care support may not feel able to complain for fear of losing the support that they are getting, even when they know that the social care and health care workers and organisations are not supporting them well, are very fallible or corrupt and ‘only there for the money’ (or what they can get for themselves out of working with vulnerable people).
I have always thought that it is important to be honest about my own abilities and inabilities with those I am supporting or working with. There is no point in being a professional who is obsessed with their own heroic status, or one that believes in themself so passionately that they are unable to be human and accept that everyone (even the most senior people) have made and will continue to make a lot of mistakes. People don’t live long enough to learn from their mistakes and to stop repeating the same ones generation after generation. Making mistakes and learning from them is an essential part of life.
Whether you are a person with lived experience, a family member, a newly qualified health or social care practitioner, a senior leader, or an old dog like me, behaving with humility is something that we should bring to all of our interactions with each other. We all have a story to tell and creating the space in particular for those who aren’t usually heard to tell their stories, is essential. I have found that it is often from these less noticed people that we can learn the most.
Jim Thomas
May 2025
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