Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 11th February 2024

This week sees the launch of Test Five for Gloriously Ordinary Lives.

It was prompted by the wonderful Angela Catley who rightly challenged me last October at the Social Care Future Big Gathering that the four tests I was sharing were great, but what about purpose?

So, Test Five is:

What gets you out of bed in the morning? Do you have a job to get to? Kids to get up and out, a dog to walk, a group to go to? Maybe you’re a driver at the food bank or volunteer at your local primary school. We might think about these things as our purpose, our being part of something. Doing the things that matter to us and that make us matter.

Purpose is an interesting concept. Hard to define, but most of us would agree that we know when we don’t have it or that it’s missing from our lives. It’s not about being a Chief Executive of a successful organisation or being a doctor or a lawyer, and it’s not even just about paid employment. It’s that sense, that knowledge, that confidence that we have something to offer. That we’re part of something bigger than just us.

I remember quite viscerally in my twenties and thirties when I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, that I often felt lacking in purpose – and I was in paid work for much of that time. I remember my identity being very much tied up in being a ‘mental health service user’ and that being a very limiting identity for me and for the professionals who supported me (and sometimes even for my friends and family). I remember the huge impact it had on my life and my relationships. There are clear links here to aspiration, but I’ll save that for another blog.

One thing that being someone who draws on health or social care support can do is to make you feel like someone who only needs support and has nothing to offer in terms of supporting others. Test Five reminds us that great paid support that pays attention to some of the things that we love to do isn’t enough if it doesn’t also help us have a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

A slightly crass analogy is that when I go to Kefalonia, I get out of bed in the morning to do things that I love – swimming, hanging out with people I love but don’t see very often, reading, sitting in the sun or going for a walk. But towards the end of my holiday, I notice that I’m missing the things that give me purpose, make me feel needed and help me feel human. I want to get back to my work, to my cats, my kids, my book group and my broader support roles. What purpose looks like might change at different points in our lives, but the need for it doesn’t.

The trouble is that a reason to get out of bed in the morning doesn’t fit neatly into the Care Act Assessment or support planning boxes. I imagine it might feel pretty scary for a social worker to get into a conversation with somebody about what might help them want to get out of bed in the morning, as that somehow implies that the system might be responsible for making it happen.

Social care can get you up, but not give you a reason to get up. We’re interested in fixing problems, and in what keeps people alive, not what makes them thrive. I would challenge that the many things we offer people in the form of day services often do not meet this test. They are time fillers, not about purpose.

The irony is if we’re clear about someone’s purpose and what does help them want to get out of bed in the morning, then we might just untap things that are not about paid support. Or at least we can make sure that the paid support someone gets actually works for them and helps them find reasons to get out of bed in the morning.

What gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning?

PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast is here! Come and listen to episode one where I catch up with the wonderful Anna Severwright from ⁠Social Care Future⁠!