A Post 2020 Reflection- Reimagining Futures
-Mariam Malik
It has been a life changing summer, in more ways than one. A global pandemic meeting a period of an awakened social consciousness has been a place of growth. The ‘unprecedented circumstances’, facilitated by a global pandemic, alerting us to our own mortality as well as a challenged capitalist economic system, creating or at the very least threatening material instability. All the while meeting existing health and socio-economic inequalities.
My journey of becoming a politicised health care professional has remained on-going. My evolving sense of conscious positionality, in the words of Arundhati Roy acting as a ‘portal’ into being confronted with my racialised presence, has remained on-going. An awakened cognisance of this reality allowed me access to notice systems of oppression and prejudice. Within wider structures as well as the micro systems in which I exist and operate. Biggest point of learning has been to move away from this space of understanding healthcare as this neutral space, separate and removed from structural bias and discrimination. Granted legitimacy through position of relative social power. But rather acknowledging with a newfound consciousness, myself and colleagues across health and education as very human and prone to bias, implicit and explicit. As well as growing in confidence to articulate this learning and reflection, as a moral and social responsibility. With available data for who is accessing SLT services in the UK, for example in the UK more than 1.4 million Children and Young People (CYP), amounting to more than 10% of all CYP are impacted by Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN). In areas of social deprivation this figure increases to 50% (All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)). Without the active acknowledgement of these individuals and their positionality being an intrinsic consideration for the work we do, we are failing them.
The contribution and presence of women in my work and life, personally and professionally, has remained an active one. As a Children’s therapist, what’s especially interesting about thinking about children’s experiences is the parent’s realities which the children’s is a by-product of. This point of reflection highlighted further by COVID-19. The ‘Politics of Austerity’ and something that is often left out of the discussion is the gendered impact of austerity. 95% of the time in my work with children under 5, i.e., the Early Years, mothers, overwhelmingly are the parent that attends therapy sessions. Although an artificial and largely unhelpful grouping, Black, Minority and Ethnic (BME) women are disproportionately affected by the cuts in public expenditure. In the report titled ‘Layers of Inequality’, A Human Rights and Equality Impact Assessment by the Public spending Cuts on Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Women in Coventry by Sandhu, Stephenson and Harrison in 2015, it is coherently outlined, “many of the spending cuts will have a disproportionate impact on BAME women. Taken together, the combined impact of job losses and cuts to spending on welfare benefits, education, health, social care, legal aid and voluntary services will exacerbate existing inequalities between BAME women and other groups and pose a serious risk to some BAME women’s human rights.” COVID-19 has only but exacerbated these serious risks.
In my work I see this every day, the groups most likely to experience childhood poverty including children in households affected by disabilities, lone parent families, children living within BAME households, families with precarious legal status. Happen to be children living in conditions that will make room for impoverished communication skills. It feels as though not enough attention is paid to the potential life changing impact of better communication skills, on life outcomes. It feels fair to say a very specific fertility has been unearthed, one seeking to cultivate awareness and change, it is exciting to consider what this could do for those previously marginalised, as part of this re-imagined future.
