At the Anglicare panel, we were asked advice about supporting people with lived experience to participate in awareness, activism, PR and so forth. I referred to a couple of concepts borrowed from other spheres – looking after your “talent” and “Aftercare”.
As the tellers of our stories, we own them, we are the ones that went through the childhood, the illness, the trauma, racism, that a not-for-profit, or a politician, or other person or group promising to do good with this is looking to use to push forward their agenda. Of course it’s often not nefarious – some people are genuinely doing good or at least believing they are. And so, like you would if you were using a famous child star, puppy or washed up celeb to promote your brand of toilet paper, you need to treat the talent right.
The talent also needs to know they are the talent. They can’t be being talked into doing promotion for your cause out of guilt or sense of obligation because they have received some help in their time of need. It needs to be mutually beneficial, that might be a simple as paying your talent – giving them payment for the photo shoot, paying them for the article written about how awesome being supported by your organisation was. Because they are giving over more of themselves in this instance. They are selling their image, their story, their trauma, for you to promote your cause or service or product or scheme.
Us talent understand that different places have different budgets, but there are too many out there making way more from us than we’ll ever feel or be helped by them. Be the bigger party and start offering it. Start offerings stipends upfront for your clients to speak at your events about how awesome your are. This isn’t just for their time, it’s for their skill, and for them giving their story over to the audience and any trauma that comes from reliving that for your morning tea fundraiser.
The other concept I brought up, with a giggle, was Aftercare. A concept from kink communities, but very relevant when someone with lived experience is engaged for that lived experience. Not to say all kink is traumatic, but the kink side at least brings up discussing boundaries, setting limits, hell even safe words. On the panel I was on, I knew the other panelist and the facilitator and could tap out of the conversation if it got too tricky at the moment. But it’s discussing that before hand. Running through boundaries and questions and topics beforehand. What if you freeze in the kink play scene or speaking onstage. Who knows the signs to look out for. Is your talent someone with known mental health difficulties, diagnosed anxiety, or not diagnosed, and may know when they are getting past what they’re comfortable with. Ask if they need a support person with them, or who to call on.
After the event, what does your talent need? Are they able to stay on and chat with others or will they need time to regroup, duck to the loo, have a cold drink and then get back to it. Or is that it for the day, call them tomorrow to check in?
I’m still new to all this, but just know that your person with their lived experience, the talent, is vulnerable. You often have a lot of power in their relationship, particularly if you are or have been a service provider for them. People may not feel safe to back out if the situation goes beyond their comfort, but you need to make sure it doesn’t. You need to look after your talent, and make sure they are safe before, during and after. You want them having a great experience, and wanting to come back to do more, to let their peers know you’re safe to work with. That you’re one of the good ones.
Had a few good conversations this morning about *waves hands around* all of this. Cost of living, Centrelink, gatekeeping and waste from charities, attitudes towards addicts and more. A couple were in the line for the Ozharvest bag, where the inaccessible nature of the whole process came up because they make us wait outside the gate until 9am, and getting down the driveway or foot or in wheelchairs is hairy at best and they just don’t seem willing to make exceptions. I mean, they don’t even have a designated disabled park on site, and the other parks are up a slope from the doors.
Apparently the woolies beef is only 20c cheaper than retail…
I exchanged pleasantries with the volunteers, asking if it was fine to take a fruit and veg bag as well as the pies this week, and yeah there was plenty this week, but I remarked that I didn’t want to get in trouble because if I take one and get told no that was wrong it feels like I’m being told off, and sometimes I think I actually am. Like the time I asked “Hey is it okay is I take a bag of pies” and Sandra was “Please?” ugh. Yes ma’am please mam, I was being pleasant til you got school principal on me. Apparently she also put a guy’s daughter through questioning, which he felt was because “she’s an addict and looks like an addict” and left her feeling like never coming back. He and I talked about playing the meek and grateful role when it’s for ourselves but sometimes getting more than a little protective and defensive of others.
Bread was also in abundance today, which is good because I wound up buying the $8 fancy eggs from Woolies after Aldi was out and Woolies only had the Lake Macquarie local ones left. Good thing it’s pension day!
Two point something percent indexation in not next fortnight’s but the fortnight after. Plus that 10% rent assistance cash splash that Albo was touting that will do SFA, but seems to appease some of the numbers guys. I’ll be on a whole $1061.60 a fortnight from October 4. I’ll be getting paid for my 3 hours a week work too, let’s see how that affects things!
Birds of a feather? Catherine Caine and Fiona Moore
So the Anglicare panel went well, just wended up being me and Catherine from AUWU (my boss) as Nathan from Hunter Jobs Alliance was unwell, so more intimate, but yeah, I’m exhausted but it was good and I think we got some great messages across.
Much of the discussion was around supporting people with lived experience – whether poverty, mental illness, disability, trauma and so on – to use our experiences to drive change and how that could work better and be better for all involved. Catherine reflected on how AUWU have pulled back from getting unemployed people to give testimony at Senate and related hearings as going through that trauma or telling their stories in such as forum, while cathartic for some, is re-traumatising for others and, like I’ve previously discussed, the limited lip-service paid and feeling otherwise ignored is starting to get to even the most experienced advocates. It doesn’t mean we won’t support each other and anyone who wants to tell their story to do so, but it’s about being more selective about where and when and how that occurs. AUWU and the Antipoverty Centre being able to pay people to write their stories when we get editorials weeks at Power to Persuade is one. Connecting welfare recipients with journalists and publications we know have been sensitive and accommodating is another.
Another is getting marginalised people into the roles where the changes are being made. And not just to be consulted, to be asked questions and hope your thoughts are included in the end product. Yesterday we called for marginalised people to be included from start to end, and treated (and paid) as equals. We may not have the skills or experience or qualifications in policy writing, in media, in being CEOs, in stats, but those are all things that can be taught. Unlike, as I argued, lived experience.
You can’t, ethically, give people genuine lived experience of poverty, disability, trauma and so on. You could cosplay it for a few weeks for a tv show, or be blindfolded for the day, or be a carer of someone who’s lived the experience, but you won’t genuinely have lived experience, as it always comes to an end.
So, identify talent within the community you support and look at how that enthusiastic person can be supported to develop the skills necessary to work with you on that project, to take your job, to be your boss. Invest in people.
I am one of those people who builds their ideas by talking.
So I think I’ve move past my despair and disheartenedess from last week, ready for the pollies to go back for another sitting week and try to make some announce-ables on cost-of-living stick in the lead up to the Federal election, which I’m still feeling is gonna be may not December but who knows yet?
So, for me that’s $21.40 a fortnight on the pension, and $3.54 a fortnight up on rent assistance (going from $177.20 $180.74 a fortnight, $90.37 a week). Of course that’s already gone, so it’s a good thing I’m signing a contract with AUWU to become the first actual employee of the Unemployed Works Union to further their Nobody Deserves Poverty campaign. If I’m good enough at my job it won’t exist soon, which should be the aim for most of the charities circling the slush fund that is the welfare industry.
We’re still sick in this house, I’ve just got the tail end cold which is fine until I talk and then I cough like crazy. The boys are ploughing through the tissues, good thing I have a delivery of essentials coming from Amazon this week. If anyone wants to send a care package there’s some boring things on our household wishlist. We’re still down a car which means my opportunities to do my shopping around have been limited and we’ve had to actually buy bread this week (the horror!). Even though Bruce won’t be up to fixing his car, since he’s sick and will be doing minimum work this week I can hit up our locals for breads and fruit and veg tomorrow 🙂 Til then, the guy at the servo this morning gave me this pumpkin so I’ll chop it up and roast it and add it to tonight’s meal. Score!
Mother knows best, they say. But sometimes mother takes too much time considering Father’s feelings and need for things to remain the same forever and bites her tongue at the key moment to keep the peace, and nothing changes, or, it gets worse.
Why yes, I am a well-meaning white woman. And *gasp* I used to be a lady who lunched, flying to different capital cities, but mostly Melbourne, to discuss the future of that well know white woman profession, Speech Pathology. (I was ACT Branch president of Speech Pathology Australia for 4 years, and there were many white woman lunches). I’m white, university educated and if I didn’t have all this anxiety I’d probably exude a little more authority on topics I may speak on, even if I speak over someone with better ideas and more experience. But does this actually help the situation? Do we achieve the incremental change that was probably coming anyway, thank the bread givers for the crumbs and wait for the next convenient time to ask for a little more? Or do we push harder, and make people uncomfortable, and make them question their priorities. Is my priority the seat at the table or making sure there’s more diversity at the table, or is it flipping the kitchen table and finding a new way to have this conversation?
Well meaning student speech pathologists
Well-meaning white women are well skilled in trying to achieve what is important FOR the people they advocate for. I’ll go back to speech pathology because it’s where I’ve been for an example. It’s important that Grandad doesn’t aspirate on liquids after his stroke right, because this might lead to a chest infection and aspiration pneumonia can lead to death. So it’s important FOR Grandpa that, since there’s evidence he aspirates on his beer with his mates (some goes into his lungs rather than being swallowed cleanly), he is advised that he mustn’t drink beer any more, or perhaps have it thickened to a safer consistency. Grandpa smiles and nods at the young lady offering this advice and thickener samples, but then has a beer anyway, dealing with the coughing and the risk this yeasty treat might cause him.
But what’s important TO Grandpa here is the ritual of having his beer. It’s being able to have that normality after other aspects of his life have been taken away from him after the stroke. He may not have his license any more so has lost that independence, or he takes his other beverages thickened when at home – his wife thickens his tea and he reluctantly sips from a thickened bottle of cordial to stay hydrated in summer. But he knows the risks he takes, he’s read the brochures from the health service, he’s discussed it with his wife. So there’s duty of care and dignity of risk.
Another classic well meaning white woman is the child protection worker, who of course has a myriad of factors to take into account for a child’s safety, but may not consider that cultural safety is just as important as not being exposed to certain dangers. It’s a fine line that the well-meaning white woman walks, with policies and procedures, her own experiences and ideas of what’s right, and the threats to the status quo of trying things a different way. I don’t envy those roles, I probably could work in them and then find myself burnt out so fast from trying to just get it right.
But it’s when there’s not an imminent danger when the well-meaning white woman’s reluctance to ask for, or to DEMAND more, from those running the show or holding the purse strings needs to be examined, picked apart and thrown out. She needs to be willing to stop playing nice, stop upholding her place at the table, stop being so deferent and polite about it all. You need to start pulling your support when they just keep pretending to listen to you but then give nothing.
Lidia Thorpe at the Midwinter Ball
I’m referring here to all the committees and consultations that have come and gone over the first two years of Labor in the disability and welfare spheres. The Voice referendum and how quickly nothing came of that once the no vote was clear. How Lidia Thorpe and other Blak women who pointed out the obvious flaws of the Voice as it stood were thrown under the bus to keep things nice within their parties and organisations. How the Economic Inclusion Committee, run by well meaning white woman Jenny Macklin, put their evidence based arguments for significant increases to welfare to the Labor party that neat two weeks before budgets TWICE, in order to there be nothing done, and for ACOSS and other saying Thank you for $20 here and there, and more money for Commonwealth Rent Assistance that just pushes rents along their merry way and doesn’t achieve change in the lives of people who don’t have a roof over their head or if they do can’t afford the other necessities in life.
How you can have another post-budget lunch with the treasurer and listen to his spiel on “responsible” measures that don’t impact inflation, but don’t impact anything else really. Jim Chalmers refers to the conversations Australian families are having around their kitchen tables, about what he thinks they are talking about anyway. If you have a kitchen table, what are your conversations about? The people who are left behind are still left behind, and fall even further behind if you don’t even let them catch up.
Julian Hill was in my dreams last night, I was remembering before the start of the most recent Workforce Australia enquiry he had a video call with some of use from AUWU and the Antipoverty Centre, telling us how much he looked forward to our input and how much he valued our lived experience. And then he proceeded to reaffirm the myth of the dole bludger and the value of work for the dole at any chance he got. And what did we get from that? More reassurance that better things aren’t possible and that the status quo must be maintained. And there’s still silence on what the government will do about the recommendations from the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People With Disability. So we see more puff pieces about scented candles being made for sub-minimum wage while their employers make money off their labour and have expenses covered by the NDIS but crickets on raising the wages of disabled people to the same level as everyone else. They’re supposed to go to half the minimum wage this year and to minimum wage by 2034, in case you were wondering what was recommended.
Julian Hill is asked why Labor outsources employment services & isn't rebuilding a public service
"You couldn't do it" because "all of the service provision is sitting outside in privates & not for profits"
So, while these little committees and organisations may look nice, if you’re not working to include the voices of “others” – those actually affected by the policies you make you crust discussing day in day out, to actually listen to them, to amplify them, to give them prominence about your own, are you actually going to achieve change, or are you working to maintain the status quo, to ensure your organisation keeps getting a seat at the big boys table, the funding grant, because you tell them what they want to hear and let them make the bare minimum change. You get your car lease renewed for another year, your seat in parliament, and they system keeps ticking along while nothing really changes and people continue to suffer.
Palestinians don’t have ten years for nice little motions that maintain the status quo, that uphold apartheid Israel. Homeless people are dying in the cold, but, sure, worry about how raising welfare to the poverty line might affect inflation (when your committees say it won’t) and continue to cosplay homelessness in CEO sleepouts in secure underground carparks, while you have the power to legislate meaningful, immediate change.
So, as a well meaning white woman, I need to step back and reflect on how I’m enabling the status quo by allowing other voices to be silenced because they don’t use the right words or have the right educational background. Am I just paying lip service to lived experience or am I amplifying the knowledge and strengths of people whose voice may not be so polite and tidy, but have the knowledge and the experience to express the need for real reform.
Even if you think you can say it better, stand back, give someone else a chance. They may very well be better than you. Isn’t that scary?
