The difference
between inability and disability is that the inability to find the
cube root of one million does not change your life. Disability makes
a normal life impossible.
In Victorian England the Blind, the Deaf and the
Lame slept on the streets. The churches and the charities addressed
their immediate needs with soup, sandwiches and shelters. Then two
world wars produced so many disabled people that this was no longer
feasible. So they addressed the disability instead of immediate
need. They empowered and enabled the disabled. They got the visibly
disabled off the streets and helped them to overcome their disabilities.
They taught the entire world to yield to the white stick, and to
stand forward and offer to help. And that was good.
The down side of this happy event is that they left
those of us who have Hidden Disabilities out here in the rain, on
the streets. The churches and the charities still give us soup,
sandwiches and shelters, thus addressing immediate need rather than
disability. The real problem is that my patently obvious homelessness
obscures my Hidden Disability. For most people, the emotional response
to homelessness comes more easily than the intellectual response
to disability, especially when disability is hidden. I ask you to
think about Hidden Disability, don't feel for me.
We, who have Hidden Disabilities, are only a half
a century behind the others. Don't worry, we can still catch up!
The Challenge.
As long as David Blaine remains inside his box, I sleep outside,
below him.
I do not protest.
I promote Hidden Disability. Please help me raise awareness of
Hidden Disability.
David does his own thing for his own reasons, as I do. David and
I have no alliance, and I have no ties with him, nor with the TV
guys that film him. I speak for myself only. I represent no other
person nor organisation. I wish him luck, but I also hope that he
gets bored and 'goes home' before I do.
A letter (August 2003) to:
Shaks Ghosh
Crisis
64 Commercial Street
London
E1 6LT
Dear Shaks,
I do not respectfully request your help. I tell you what is going
to happen, not because I am going to make you do it, but because
common sense will make you do it.
I write to tell you that the theme for this year’s Christmas
shelter will be:
HIDDEN DISABILITY, HOMELESSNESS AND FREEDOM PASSES.
In Victorian England the Blind, the Deaf and the Lame slept on
the streets. The churches and the charities gave them bread and
blankets, and tried to organize homes and jobs for them, but soon
they would choose to return to the streets, to beg and to steal.
Then God, in his infinite mercy, sent us two world wars. The great
joy of these wars was that, suddenly, we saw that it was not right
to have the visibly disabled begging on the streets. So we got the
visibly disabled off the streets and helped them to overcome their
disabilities. We taught the entire world to yield to the white stick,
and to stand forward and offer to help.
The down side of this happy event is that those of us who have
Hidden Disabilities are still out there. The churches and the charities
still give us bread and blankets, and try to organize homes and
jobs for us.
I argue that clinical depression is an illness that is recognized
as a major disability. At its worst it renders the patient disable
to speak, disable to walk, incapable of working and incapable of
any semblance of normal life. It is a symptom of clinical depression
that the patient has an abnormally low self image. Self harm is
another symptom of this disability. The ultimate self harm, suicide,
is achieved by one in five who have bipolar disorder, if untreated.
Ernest Hemingway, his father, brother, sister and granddaughter
Mariel died of bipolar disorder, as did Virginia Woolf and Sylvia
Plath. All of them succumbed to the ultimate self-harm.
Penultimate self harm is very much worse:
Some of us burn ourselves with cigarettes
Some of us cut ourselves with blades
Some of us inject ourselves with harmful and addictive substances
Some of us enter into prostitution
We beggar ourselves, and we stop washing
Some of our behaviour is anti-social.
As Sylvia Plath slept in the coal cellar, so I sleep in the rain
on the pavement.
Do you see that people with Hidden Disabilities are not being helped?
Instead, the self-harm that is symptomatic of their disability causes
our society to condemn and abuse the disabled. Disability is criminalised.
What is your own personal attitude to whores and druggies? How
does it differ from your own attitude to those who have a First
Class Disability, like the Blind? If you want a close-up of your
own attitude, go watch a couple of policemen round up a bunch of
drug addicts, and then watch them ‘bring in for questioning’
a blind man. Chalk, old Shaks, and cheese. All we see is the drug
addict, and we ignore the depression and the disability that causes
his addiction .
New Subject:
Crisis had, on its website, a report on the homeless elderly, by
Maureen Crane. In that report she said that 60% of the sample had
some mental illness. Then, on the same page of a 52 page report,
she says that their homelessness was caused by the dissolution of
family, the loss of jobs and so on. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? The
mere fact that A immediately precedes B does not mean that A causes
B.
I am telling you bluntly: Hidden Disability causes the dissolution
of family, the loss of jobs and so on. And it causes homelessness.
That is a fact.
If it takes another World War to get those with Hidden Disability
off the streets, then it has just started. From here on it’s
me against the rest of the world.
If you gave a blind man a six bedroom house with two bathrooms
and a Ten Thousand Pound a month job, it would be naïve to
expect him to be able to make tea with boiling water, walk to a
shop he cannot see, or read his bills. Soon he would lose his home
and his job, just like a man who has a Hidden Disability. Soon you
find him again, and set him up again, and he blows it. Every time,
he blows it. You look as good as God, and he looks like trash because
he can’t even keep a job when you hand it to him on a plate.
When we see you, we see disaster coming. We opt out. We avoid you
and the bloody charity that makes you the hero at my expense. I’d
rather cope with a cardboard box in the rain on the streets than
not cope with a nice house that makes you the hero and me the villain.
The digression shows that it is inappropriate to help the blind
by giving them jobs and homes. The trick is to address the disability,
and then joblessness and homelessness disappear by themselves. Ask
David Blunkett, he knows.
New Subject:
The plan for the future is to find and identify those with Hidden
Disability. Our first task is to audit the numbers. Friday the 13th
(June 2003)was the best day of my life. My greatest lifetime achievement
was achieved on that day. I persuaded the Government’s Rough
Sleeper’s Unit to do a sample audit into Hidden Disability
among the homeless. I am very proud of myself.Spurred by that success
I now move forward and I call for other organizations to ask two
questions of the homeless with whom they work:
1. Do you have a disability Freedom Pass?
2. Do you receive any kind of Disability Benefit?
Answer Yes, No, or 'I used to'.
These two questions reveal the tip of the iceberg, and they prove
the existence of the iceberg. That is the start.The next part is
to find those who should have Freedom Passes or Disability Benefits,
but don’t, and get them organized. A very large percentage
of the homeless in London will end up sleeping at the bottleneck
that is ‘Crisis at Christmas’, and that is a good
time to identify those with Hidden Disability. This year, 2003,
we will build that Christmas shelter around the Freedom Pass. We
will set up a mobile Freedom Pass office so that we can issue a
Freedom Pass there and then. We can set this up with the central
Freedom Pass office who will bill the appropriate borough for the
ticket.‘Crisis at Christmas’ is an enormous circus,
with sideshows and stalls all over the place. Up to, and including,
tinkers and tailors who fixed my suit last year. This year, The
European Year of the Disabled, the main arena will consist of three
functions: A mental Health clinic full of psychiatrists, the Mobile
Freedom Pass Office and a mobile Disability Benefits Office, full
of its own kind of experts. The idea is to find those who have Hidden
Disability and to match them to the marginal services that will
not yet help them overcome disability, but will get them counted
as disabled. The Freedom Pass will be a bribe to get those with
Hidden Disability to come out of the closet. This whole exercise
is about audit. The Freedom Pass makes an audit of the numbers possible.
Then, in 2004, we tackle the Royal National Institute for the Blind
, and we get them to help those who are Blind To Us.I remain, as
always,Your Most Humble Savant,Francois Greeff
Volunteer to help change Hidden Disability
Don't just stand there - do something!
I have a disability that is so severe that it renders me homeless.
Think about it - those who have visible disabilities have carers,
but we who have hidden disabilities have no one. Do we have to
poke our eyes out before anything is done to help us?
We are on the streets because our disability inhibits our ability
to organise. The blind lived on the streets until they learned
to read - then they educated themsleves and now they're running
the Home Office; David Blunket does.
We CANNOT organize ourselves - so why don't you come and help
us please. If you think yourself unsuitable and unable to help,
incompetent and unskilled, then phone me. I will show you how
we, the disabled, have special skills, just as you do.
All we need is some very ordinary, normal people to make phone
calls and write letters. I really do need your help, and I am
asking for it please.
When a homeless person has a disability, eg a mental illness,
that person is moved to the front of the bread queue, and to the
front of the queue for houses and jobs, so that immediate need
is addressed, but nobody addresses the disability! In other words,
we do not get the equivalent of a white stick.
I want to change that default to: Address the disability!
To do that we need to establish that there are more like me who
are homeless because of disability, and we need to find out how
many of us there are. I will see to it that this audit is done
at the Crisis at Christmas winter shelter. I have committed myself
to making the theme of the 2003 shelter "Hidden Disability,
Homelessness, and Freedom Passes".
We will set up a mobile Freedom Pass office at the shelter, and
have a medical team on hand to assess disability. Between the
two of them they will give each disabled and homeless person a
Freedom Pass and say "Happy Christmas!"
