The Little cat will come round to the back door ( a tale :) of two perspectives)

I wanted to tell you a story of a women I met.? Works as a care assistant on minimum wage.? Single parent, 2 children at primary school.

On Monday she needs to get some milk.? The shop opens at 8am and you cannot be early, you have to arrive at 8am.

She gets the kids ready early and drops them at a friend’s to go to school and goes to the shop for 8am.? Somehow there are 42 people in the queue before her.? She queues for 16 minutes and is then told the shop has to shut.

On Tuesday she tries again, despite knowing she shouldn’t go early she does, she gets to the front of the queue.? She doesn’t get into the shop, she is told that the shop keeper will call her back sometime that day.? She does get a call but misses it as she isn’t allowed her phone at work other than at breaks. She can’t call back.

On Wednesday her friend can’t take the kids to school so she can’t go to the shop.

On Thursday she gets to the front of the shop, she takes time off work at work to wait for the call and she speaks to the shopkeeper.? Unfortunately he doesn’t have what she wants but says he will ask another shop to get in touch.

3 weeks on Friday she gets a letter from the other shop to say they are sorry she has had to wait.? They are also sorry but they don’t have the item stock and they do not know when they will be able to get it to her.? They will keep her on a list.

As its only milk she decides not to bother and decides she can manage without.

Milk, if you use it is a basic, like blood pressure checks or reviewing your medication or blood tests or dermatology or a mental health issue but so often now people in my community are simply not bothering because it is too difficult to navigate the systems we currently have in place.

Talking to anyone and especially the people in the community I work in we all agree it is true ‘in theory’ that you can get a GP appointment.? As we know however theory and practice can be at odds with each other, take anyone who has put a tomato in a fruit salad.

How long before our maxims of ‘prevention is better than cure’, ‘a stitch in time saves 9’, ‘better to be safe than sorry’ are just some old quaint sayings that used to be believed.

Fairness in accessing GP appointments is great in theory but in practice where we do not all share the same privileges of the ability to phone at 8am, the ability to hear well, the ability to drive or walk, the ability to take a call from your GP at any time, the ability to have someone watch your children or the ability to get to a referral appointment mean that for those people it is not fair.??

The consequences of this are people placing their physical and mental health further and further down the priority ladder.? Another old maxim I like (I think it’s Croatian) is probably apt here, the little cat will come round to the back door – I think you can work out what this means!!