Chapter 21 : The Hostelfrom Barbara Taylor ‘The Last Asylum’

*Pine Street provided community care of a kind that is nearly extinct today*. At Pine Street and Whittingdon Day Hospital patients and staff collaborated to cure or mitigate mental illness. Some people were chronically ill but others changed, moved forward. MH officials tried to close the place down, Barbara was told * ‘People just stagnated there.’ The care from the hostel was in the mould of Henry Hawkins and The Aftercare Association for Poor and Friendless Female Convalescents on Leaving Asylums for the Insane. Circle 33 is today like Together in providing aftercare. She says today there are many different hostels and these are mainly available only to S117’s as non-ex-detainees are means tested and have to pay high fees. Barbara notes that even at the peak of asylum care, most MH people were looked after by their families. She was not ‘friendless’ but took public health care for granted (cf Israel.) She was an old hand at shared living, having had a house share, but she found housemates impinged on her. Her old house share was set up in 1982 and she was asked to leave. She was the mad woman with the drink in the attic and sometimes she refused to do her share of household chores. When she got into the Circle 33 hostel she had a wave of freedom, overwhelming. The rooms were small but her possessions were being looked after by others, and when she got her own flat 2 ½ years later all her belongings were returned to her. There was an antisocial resident who ate everything and played loud stereo. She got on well with anorexic Polly. She heard Polly vomiting sometimes and both Polly and her were hospitalised twice while at the hostel. Polly may have tried to upset her friends with her dangerous eating, which even led to A&E due to her frailty. She had a friendly social worker, and Florence did not throw her out as she feared might happen. Her analyst said she was now making use of what was available to her.