#Health #Care #spreadtheword

Thank you Áine Kelly and the BMJ for sharing this great piece: Growing up in care

The paper contains helpful guidance for practitioners and carers and sets out Áine Kelly’s own experiences of health care during her own childhood as a looked-after child. She describes how she began to access healthcare again after some humiliating childhood experiences:

My first memory of the healthcare system traumatised me for life.

I was only 7 years old when the police arrived at my house to escort my birth mother and me to hospital. They said I had to undergo a medical examination because they had reason to believe that my mother and stepfather were physically abusing me. Several adults dressed in white coats stood around the examination bed where I lay naked, humiliated, and frozen by fear. Time dramatically slowed down as they counted, measured, and photographed every single bruise, cut, burn, and abrasion on my body. The professionals kept asking me how I received my injuries, but I couldn’t tell them with my birth mother in the room. …

Kelly Á. (2016) ‘Growing up in care’. BMJ.

Read Áine Kelly’s story at source: Growing up in care

More about DPhil student Áine Rose Kelly at the Rees Centre for Research in Fostering and Education, based in the Department of Education: here

Twitter feed

I am officially an author!!! read my article on my health experiences while in care https://t.co/5MYP6tf45Sh 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

What is your patient thinking? Áine Kelly talks about growing up in care https://t.co/qbxxTuPh5k #patientexperience pic.twitter.com/PszGKHcvL4

— BMJ (@bmj_company) 17 March 2016