Belated Update!
Here’s another magnificent photo of us outside the gates of Downing Street. I’m (Cass) the one in lilac.
It has been a few weeks of ups and downs; Sarah is hoping to get on a new treatment, Rachel is hoping to get back to some form of work and I’m in receipt of (checks notes) far too many forms to complete. And surrounded by paperwork, none of which is properly sorted out. I’ve also got to complete two of them by hand and I can’t write properly, so I’m putting in a call to someone who can help. I have formally been told I need to medically return, but if I’m lucky I might be able to do some advocacy related work from home for a couple of hours a day in future.
As you might imagine, that plus the school holidays, as well as the fact a very short trip to London apparently needs a month plus to recover from means we haven’t been as active as we would like. An important thing to remember is that you have to put yourself and your needs first.
The Scottish Government has sent a response to the Long Covid Inquiry in respect of employment and it bears little to no relationship to the actual reality of the lived experience of Keyworkers with Long Covid in Scotland. What we found particularly breathtaking was the assertion in it that the U.K. government doesn’t believe in short term adjustments to work - have they ever heard of crutches for a broken leg? That’s a short term adjustment! Needless to say, we don’t agree, however it takes time and energy to be able to process reports and respond to them.
We have welcomed the lovely S to our team, a teacher in England. We are delighted to welcome more diversity to our keyworker team in respect of professions! As always, we are keen to hear from anyone who might be able to help us out and it can be as little or as much as you want. We don’t, unfortunately, run a peer support group as we don’t have the numbers to facilitate this. There’s also some excellent peer support groups out there, which we recommend people join.
In the coming weeks, we will be getting going again, planning on another meeting soon. If you would like to come on board in terms of social media, campaigning, writing - we would love to hear from you.
The next phase of the campaign is likely to involve approaching minister, MPs and MSPs, as well as other legislators in respect of trying to get meetings to discuss the results of our surgery, the TUC report and so on. What that will look like we don’t know, but it is likely to involve asking you all for your support. Again.
Anyway, thank you all so much for ALL your support. Stay well.