Pleased to be remembered

Went for a short early morning run today, starting out along Great North Road towards K Road, thinking that I might find a place where I could score an impressive sunrise. Just past the intersection with Pollen Street, I saw Wayne sitting on his belongings and getting ready to start the day. I remembered him from August 2015, when he was in the same place with rather fewer belongings, and looking rather more as if life was hard for him.

I stopped, and went back and said good morning. Followed by saying that I'd seen him here a couple of years ago. He looked uncertain, so I said "You're Wayne, is that right?". Acknowledging that he is, he jumped up and shook my hand whereupon I gave him my name again and we talked.

He told me that he doesn't stay on the streets continuously, taking breaks every now and then with friends. He is going to Raglan in a couple of weeks where he has a friend (the widow of his best mate) who is going to give him somewhere to stay in exchange for some jobs around her property. He's looking forward to it, and thinks that this will be his last year on the streets. 

He told me that it can be hard to be comfortable when sleeping in doorways, and he feels better when he has had a good sleep. A couple of weeks ago, he slept here and had a really sound sleep, not waking at all in the night. But last night was nowhere near as good. He informed me that when you roll onto tiles like these ones its pretty uncomfortable, and hard to stay asleep (last night was a little cooler than it has been also).

In 2015, he was going to an AA meeting as a way of getting a warm drink and a snack. This year he is heading to Raglan to stay with a friend where he can pay for his board by doing some jobs for her. How is it that a rich country like New Zealand cannot provide all its citizens with better options than these.

He asked if he looks any different, and suggested that his beard was longer now. It might well be, but it is far tidier. He looks better than then, and I wish him well for his new life off the streets if he can do that.

I recently came across a paper in the Journal of Political Philosophy (from 2015), in which the author argued that in determining the societal resources that should be distributed according to egalitarian principles if we are to have a just society, we need to add "relational resources". She made an excellent case for society taking steps to enable people to access meaningful social relationships (NOT just work relationships), as this benefits them mentally and physically as well as socially. 

Thinking of the social isolation suffered by so many of the patients I see, and the limited skills they have to change that, and then consider that these are people who before the onset of their illness had potential, had aims and drives and desires like anyone else, and through no fault of thei own have become disabled. 

I do not want to return to a situation where those with severe and long standing illness were detained in psychiatric institutions, usually against their will. But one thing they did give the residents (usually called inmates at the time) was daily contact with people who accepted them for who and what they were. Now, such patients have little contact with anyone other than a monthly appointment with a key worker (fortnightly of they are getting an injection every two weeks). And contact driven by when your medication is due seems not to be the sort of social contact the author of that paper was promoting.