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It Shouldn't be a Broom Cupboard

It takes around 3 minutes to walk from the entrance of the Royal Free Hospital, to the CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) offices. Even by NHS standards, the Royal Free is not exactly swish, but by the time you reach the CAMHS corridor you’ve passed the wide main vestibule, with the touch screen check-ins, bright lighting, clear signposting and gleaming floors, and you’re in what I like to call broom cupboard territory. Inside the CAMHS waiting room there are a few tired looking plastic chairs squashed together in a small space, some battered picture books, and a valiant attempt by the overworked staff to put together an interesting wall display. In short, the distinctly underwhelming experience that is a visit to the CAMHS quarters in the Royal Free, is a sad reflection of the chronic underfunding and undervaluing that characterises mental health treatment in this country. And I know it – because for the past three years, my wonderful daughter has been a CAMHS cli...
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International Women-know-your-worth Day

Last week one of my colleagues invited me to attend a simcha (family celebration) he was making. I was seated at a table with several of his relatives – and this being a strictly Orthodox affair, the event was segregated seating so everyone around me was female. One of his cousins asked me how I knew the host, so I explained that we worked at the same organisation.  “That’s nice,” she smiled. “Are you a receptionist?”  “No,” I replied, “I work in the upstairs office.”  “Ah,” she said knowingly, “you’re a secretary.”  Without wishing for one minute to diminish the important work carried out by legions of receptionists and ‘secretaries’ (does that even still exist as a job title?!) across the land, as it happens, that’s not my job. But this is not the first time – very much not the first time – that I’ve got into conversation with both women and men from the Charedi (strictly Orthodox) community and they’ve immediately assumed, on learning that I work, that I must be i...
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