By Kendall Worth!
As many regular readers of my BLOG are aware, my advocacy work on behalf of the poor and marginalized has tended to focus on the need to increase the Income Assistance rates, improve mental health services and reform the Department of Community Services. (And no, I do NOT consider the recent re-naming of that department to the Dept of Opportunities and Social Development to be a “reform”!)
But I have also been a long-standing advocate for establishing a Social Prescribing Organization here in Halifax, as I have discussed in many BLOGs. Most recently, I have written about how expanding peer support services here in Halifax could be one component of a Social Prescription program.
Today, I want to build on an earlier article in which I discussed the importance of friends and friendship to help vulnerable individuals cope with the challenges of their day to day lives. In that article, I outlined some of the reasons why EVERYONE needs friends. These reasons included:
1. Having someone in your life with whom you can share the regular ups and downs of daily life, through a simple chat over coffee or a kitchen table. The simple act of sharing and listening can be helpful to one’s sense of self and well-being.
2. Having someone who can build on those chats and then support, advise or encourage you to move forward on certain issues, perhaps to take a particular initiative, to register for a course or apply for a job. This sort of personal support can be key to taking action when you yourself are feeling unsure and hesitant.
3. Having someone who has access to resources that you don’t have. This ‘resource’ could be a network of social or professional contacts, or it could be a car. A friend might be able to advise you on who to speak to about a particular issue. Or perhaps they can give you a lift home from the grocery store on a rainy day, or from a clinic after a medical procedure.
Most Peer Support Programs that I know of take the form of peer group based activity in which people in a similar situation (this is what makes them “peers”) talk and listen to one another and provide moral and emotional support as participants share their personal stories. But I think it is important for the people in my Community to EXPAND our social circles and engage with a wider, more diverse group of people, beyond those we meet regularly at Food Banks and Soup-Kitchens.
So, while group based programs are important, at some point, I think we have to help people find a mechanism by which individuals are able to develop friendship-based relations that are not tied to set programs or activities. Or necessarily to their peers.
Personally, I believe that these sorts of support programs – both group based and individual based - could have been hugely helpful in my own journey since I started my work as an advocate and journalist over a decade ago. Here are three examples.
A first illustration is shared in my 2017 article about the experience of being judged and stigmatized due to challenges with inappropriate body language, fidgeting, talking to oneself, etc. This sort of behaviour can result in police and security being called to confront the individual, with the complaint being that the individual is viewed as a mental health risk, - someone who is either not taking their prescribed medications, or alternatively is intoxicated.
This sort of harassment became such a pervasive issue in Halifax’s public spaces, that at one point I felt compelled to write a public letter to the employers of private Security Guards to encourage them to do a better job of training their staff so that Security Guards know how to effectively – and fairly – engage with income assistance recipients in a way that protects the public but does not limit the rights or adversely impacts the mental health of the individual.
It is my view that in such circumstances, the presence of a non-professional friendship support worker could have greatly helped. If one was present at the time of the incident, they could have helped to explain the circumstances and diffuse the situation. Or if they were only informed after the fact, they could at least help the impacted individual talk through the incident and make sense (or not) of what had happened.
What usually happens in such incidents is that the affected individual is traumatised by the engagement with the security guards and this has a significant impact on their mental health. Since they are not likely to get a prompt appointment to see their health-care professional (psychiatrist, social worker, counsellor, whomever) there may well be long-term, negative impacts on their well-being.
Secondly, there may also be scheduled and predictable times when the presence of a friend is important. As I have mentioned before, it is often important to have a friend or family member accompany you to a medical appointment. This may be to provide a needed drive, to guide one in or out of the facility, or simply to be a second set of ears with the doctor, as the patient may be too emotionally overwhelmed or physically unwell to absorb the information being shared. But many Income Assistance recipients have no nearby or available family or friends to provide such support. This is another situation in which a non-professional friendship support worker can be of great help.
Thirdly, - and this is the season - non-professional friendship support workers could be of great help in enabling people in my Community to re-connect with activities in the wider community, including seasonal celebrations such as Christmas. As I have written before, the holiday season can be a particularly lonely and depressing time for Income Assistance recipients, who are more likely alone, without the financial means to celebrate or social networks to reach out. In such circumstances, a non-professional friendship support worker can facilitate the social occasion, - if only by being the accompanying guest at a particular event.
This brings me to two additional issues around the concept of the non-professional friendship support worker. Firstly, I want to highlight the words “non-professional”. For many IA recipients, some of their closest social relations are with their healthcare professionals (doctors, psychologists, social workers, etc) with whom they meet regularly and often discuss deeply personal issues. But these people are professionals, not friends and they are not the people with whom actual friendships can be built through a shared cup of coffee or trip to the movies. Such professions have ethical standards that define clear boundaries with regards to relations with clients and patients.
Secondly, there is also the sensitive issue of how to manage the uncertain line between friend and romantic partner. In many of the examples I have cited, activities like going out to a movie together or accompanying you to a medical appointment, are things that couples do for one another. For those who are not in such partnerships, friends are the ones who usually step up and play those roles. (I have written extensively how the provisions of Income Assistance programs actively discriminate against IA recipients trying to build such relations, for romantic or just practical purposes.)
The reality is that the deep social isolation experienced by most Income Assistance recipients means that those people who most need a network of social contacts and friends are also those who are least likely to have such a network to fall back on. This inevitably leaves them even more vulnerable and more isolated.
That is why I feel that the proposed non-professional friendship support worker could be an appropriate policy response and possible solution, as such workers can be more flexible and creative in their responses than can the professionals discussed above. Let me end by simply saying that we all need to think creatively about how to build the types of social support services needed to help people in my community break out of their social isolation and live full and healthy lives.
A closing note: in a recent BLOG I promised to present in an upcoming blog a business-style pitch for the introduction of a Social Prescription program / organization here in Halifax. Most likely this BLOG will be posted early in the New Year – Stay Tuned!
Kendall Worth is an award-winning anti-poverty activist who lives with disabilities and tries to make ends meet on income assistance.
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