|
|
 |
| |
Rene Mackay, right, with former mayor, Barbara Hughes |
Ex-nurse whose thoughts were for welfare of elderly
IRENE ‘RENE’ Mackay was born in 1919 in St Pancras and spent her life working for the good of the people in her community.
She worked as a nurse and after World War Two moved for a brief time to Sutton in Surrey, where she spent two years helping returning prisoners of war from Japan recuperate.
An active trade unionist and life long member of the Labour Party, she threw herself into community issues and was instrumental in setting up both youth clubs, community centres and working for older people.
And her hobbies and other skills were also put to goods use. She is remembered by her friends for her ability as a cook and her love of sewing and knitting – skills which she used to provide for others in the estates around her home.
She was married to her husband Eddie and the pair of them liked to travel round the country visiting their many nieces and nephews.
Harriet Garland writes: Some readers will remember when, in the 1990s, an older woman was found dead in her flat. She had been there for quite some time.
Her name was Nellie Hutchin. At that time I was involved with the social services committee on Camden Council. It was a tragic and terrible thing to have happened; to realise the council had let down an older person in this way.
We had to do whatever was required to try to ensure nothing like this should happen again. Although, being realistic there are always going to be people who refuse all services and who don’t want anyone to interfere with their independence. And that wish must be respected.
We were very fortunate in that there was a small group of individuals – all older people themselves – prepared to work with us to do whatever was required to try to bring about a change in the delivery of services to older people.
That meant involving as many older people as we could in discussing the situation as it was then, and, later, planning for a fundamental change in the way we worked with them.
The Vulnerable Older People’s Project was born. Initially, it took the form of a meeting, where older people, council officers and a few council members sat around and talked about how things could be improved.
Rene Mackay was a woman after my own heart. She understood that there was no substitute for ‘experiencing’ things for yourself. She’d often wait until the end of a meeting and then ask me if I had a few moments to spare.
She had been a nurse and seemed to believe that the health of all the older people in the Camden Central area was her responsibility. There seemed to be no one she didn’t know.
Mostly, she’d tell me about the holes in social services provision as she’d found them. One day she took me to an address in Somers Town. Rene had a key and let us in to a cold, dark flat. It was late afternoon and, just vaguely, we could see the outline of a body on the bed.
There, still dressed up in her outdoor clothes, her hat more or less in place and her handbag beside her, lay a woman who had been discharged from a big London hospital the day before.
Rene immediately went off into the kitchen where she warmed up some milk and made a cup of Horlicks which she slowly fed to the woman. Social services had got as far as providing a shopping service and there were various bits of food around. Just the basics, bread and butter and milk. Probably not much more. Social services had been informed about her discharge by the hospital but had not been able to ensure that all the services had been laid on.
This episode made a deep impression on me. How was it possible that we could let people down so badly? Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I realise that no system is ever going to be foolproof.
I shrink with despair when I think about the amount of time we spent writing notes for hospitals about the process for discharging older people. About who should be told and so on.
Many years later I was in a big local hospital and noticed a copy of this document – still in its wrapper. Never read.
I know that things are much better now, and such incidents are much less likely to happen. But it took a long time to bring about change and I’d like to pay tribute to the role played by Rene Mackay, who died in her sleep last month.
Dan Carrier
|
 |
|
|
|
