Three women pitch up for a job. They mostly wear smart clothes and ingratiating smiles, but it makes no difference. No one shakes their hands or even looks them in the eye. The supervisor offers everyone coffee, without mentioning that they must pay for it. The women will come to this factory at night to clean, on zero-hours contracts. Some hurried training follows. But what they’re really being inducted into is an entire way of life: marginal, insecure, cut loose from the usual bonds of family and friends and workmates.
The theme of this year’s Mental Health Awareness Week is mindfulness, and my local authority has piloted training in meditation techniques for its social workers
Not sure about mindfulness? Neither was Abigail Bryning.
While I was growing up my mum practised meditation and recently suggested I try mindfulness as a way to deal with stress in my job as a social worker, but I was a bit sceptical. She often listened to pan pipe music and I couldn’t imagine how that sort of thing could help with serious issues and be useful in my work.
