Sue Carmichael’s Recollections of Liz Perkins in Nursing School
A Post Script
Well, Liz getting in touch after all this time, thanks to the internet, was a great and wonderful surprise. I’d left the post at Lea Castle soon after she started as a student nurse. Someone had told me that she had qualified and gone to the states so all well and good. The recent emails from Liz got me remembering. I still work to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities and so am usually wrestling with what are the barriers to inclusion and how can we remove them. So I come back to this story with that angle. The initial thing that worked for Liz in her path to qualification as a nurse was her letter to me. I can’t remember the detail now but I know it left me clear that I had to see her and interview her. I know I still had some of the concerns and issues she describes about disability and nursing, but decided to suspend them.
However, I was still worried how we could move her through the recruitment process, particularly occupation health, successfully. Liz describes in her piece how we did this: we gave her an on-the-job interview so she had the chance to prove to us what she was capable of, and she certainly did prove herself to us. As Liz says, in a standard interview setting, most employers will focus on the disability instead of the person. We needed to get past that.
I think it’s important to know that throughout this I was still not sure if Liz would be successful but did not tell anyone this until it was all finalised. My apparent confidence carried the day with others and this was good learning for so many other things in life and work. Liz always knew that she could do the job, she just needed us to give her a chance to prove it, and I’m so glad that we did.
One evening while Liz was on her two-week placement, I saw a woman looking anxious in the car park not far from my office. I went out and spoke to her. It was Liz’s mum and after a little conversation, we confessed that we both felt anxious for Liz and of course really wanted her to succeed. Liz’s mum swore me to secrecy but I think its OK to break that now.
My final reflections are that it’s really good to hear how things turn out for people in your life and the internet makes this so much more possible. Now I’m looking forward to meeting Liz after all these years. More worryingly I wonder how much easier the workplace had become for people with disabilities I know that in England less that 10% of people with learning disabilities are in paid employment – we have just launched a strategy to support more people into work. The numbers are better for people with physical disabilities but still with room for improvement. There are many reasons why people don’t get jobs, but this story is a great example of the power of the individual and how they can overcome all the barriers and our society and systems throw up. Let’s hope this piece by Liz will inspire others to follow their dreams, that some potential employers can see what is possible.
Sue Carmichael September 2009