More exceptional people at
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ld fat bloke retires; so what? Happens
every day, why does it matter? It matters
when people like Pat Lamdin retire,
because we’re not making them like that
any more.
When the careers of people devoted to
public service come to an end there is
something of a bias towards publicly honouring the
accomplishments of people who have long since ‘progressed’
and moved on from their original vocation: typically, to a series
of successively better paid, higher status leadership roles.
Other exceptional careers, however, are based on deliberate
and sustained efforts to avoid promotion (despite regular
encouragement) because promotion would inevitably be a
distraction from a calling and particular talent for working with
people experiencing problems with alcohol or other drugs.
Pat Lamdin’s practice warrants celebration in these pages
for this reason. He worked directly with this population until
he retired – not because he was someone who lacked
ambition, but because his simple yet worthy desire was to
continue doing the work he had chosen to do many years
earlier. Doubtless this was one of the reasons he always
seemed so bloody good at it.
It takes an unusually dedicated person to choose to do this
and spend pretty much their entire working life in counselling
rooms decorated in the bland ‘shabby magnolia and
woodchip chic’ historically favoured by the voluntary sector. If
you doubt this, just ask yourself how many retirement parties
you have attended for people who have worked more or less
continuously in such ill-paid positions.
Regarding which, Pat never had much time for the
treatment sector’s seemingly endless enthusiasm for
semantic navel gazing about what to call its workforce or the
people it aims to help. He seemed less bothered than most
about whether his job title said he was a psychiatric nurse,
counsellor or prescribing or recovery worker. Or whether the
people with whom he spent most of his time were now called
patients, clients or service users. Probably this was because,
whatever terminology was used to describe it, he always had
an unswerving sense of what his work entailed – meeting
people on their terms and helping them as best he could.
As numerous colleagues from across the years would
attest, Pat was an exceptional colleague who had as much
time for the administrators as for the chief executive. When
practitioners and the occasional researcher sought his advice,
this would frequently be as wise as it was blunt.
What special qualities does Pat have? This is an important
question. When talents like Pat’s leave the workforce due to
retirement (or other causes) it is vital that they are replaced
by new practitioners with the skills necessary to those who
need help. All that can be done here is to refer to a couple of
aspects of how Pat worked.
You know those rare people you meet who immediately
engage with you fully and often leave you feeling curiously
better about yourself? Well Pat is one of those. Perhaps the
capacity to do this is that thing known as ‘unconditional
positive regard’ (UPR), which many aspiring counsellors first
learn about in An introduction to counselling skills? But
establishing the therapeutic alliance is a profoundly important
skill that a good practitioner develops throughout their
working life. Pat would cheerfully tell anyone who would listen
that no care plan ever saved a life, but skilled workers could do.
And, he would say, if you were still listening, you don't give
workers skills by just giving them a manual to work from.
The treatment field has a mountain of controlled trials
O
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comparing ‘this therapeutic model’ versus ‘that therapeutic
model’ and the only consistent finding is that interventions
tend to be much of a muchness. As it turns out, the variable
that explains the largest difference in outcomes is ‘therapist
factors’, ie what that person is like and how they treat you.
This is why people with this remarkable talent for UPR are
so valuable in the workforce. After all, it isn’t a giant leap of
logic to suppose that, if a practitioner immediately enables a
client to feel genuinely valued, safe, and perhaps a bit better
about themselves, then perhaps they’ll feel more ready to talk
about something they find incredibly difficult for the very first
time, or stick with doing something that is very difficult to do,
or go away and attempt something they didn’t believe they
could do?
He was walking proof that being a corpulent, 6’1” bloke
with a pink Mohican and an ear expander big enough to pass
your granny through (plus her handbag) is no barrier to
engaging with people at any stage of their life, if forming the
therapeutic alliance is uppermost in your mind.
There seemed something about this combination that
almost instantly reassured people who were nervously
attending their appointment. It says, this is someone who
seems unlikely to be judgemental, or shocked by any
revelations, however shameful. On the contrary, it’s easy to
imagine his own past might contain a few