Interviewer:

Good afternoon. Could we start by asking your names?

Steve:

My name is Stephen Redman.

Interviewer:

And could I ask how old you are Steve?

Steve:

I’m 65 years old.

Interviewer:

Thank you.

Pauline:

My name is Pauline Redman, and I’m 61 years old.

Interviewer:

And what friends group are we talking about today?

Steve:

The Friends of Amarna House.

Interviewer:

Excellent. So could you tell me a bit about your life in the community around York?

Steve:

My day job is, I’m a minister. We got involved in church planting coming up for 22 years ago. And fairly quickly we decided we would like to have a connection with a care home, and we sort of just put out feelers. Amazingly, someone from Amarna rang us up, and that started our connection with them. But obviously, as a minister I have lots of other thumbs in other pies in the community, so it’s one of the things that I do.

Interviewer:

And Pauline, can you tell me a bit about your career?

Pauline:

Basically what I do is support Stephen in all the things that he does in the community in a different kind of way. So Stephen’s very good at organising things, very good at getting people involved in things. And I just kind of go along with that. Full time I am a teacher in a secondary school. That’s what I spend a lot of my time doing. And I kind of fit in with some of the projects that Stephen has in ways that more sort of an ordinary person would, someone who had other priorities in their life, other things to juggle, finding time to do things that they believed were meaningful, and helpful to people, and doing the kind of things that you would hope someone perhaps one day might do for you. So I’m kind of a more supportive role.

Interviewer:

So this is channeled through the church?

Steve:

Yes

Interviewer:

And could you tell us a bit about the church, what the church is all about?

Steve:

Well, the church that we’re involved in leadership in is called the Ark Church, we’re one of them.  People say “well, what brand are you?” You know, “what’s your pedigree?”  We’re what people call a new church in that, in the eighties there was this huge wave of church planting in the UK, one of a brand of church that has littered itself all over the place called Ichthus, which is very strong in London, but, has got feelers all over the world really. And we’re one of the more northern outposts for Ichthus. So that’s who we are. You might say that we’re a more contemporary church, in our style we have a more broad spectrum of ages, and genders within our church. So we are not particularly missing generations. The church isn’t full of women, for example. It’s very fifty-fifty.

Interviewer:

And you talked about, you had fingers in a number of pies, one of which is care homes.

Steve:

Yes

Interviewer:

Could you tell me about some of the other projects that you do in the community?

Steve:

Well, we’ve got a strong link with children, and families of children with cancer, which is through another charity called Candlelighters. And that’s because of our own experience of having a child with cancer. And I’ve been working in that sphere now since 1998 on, and off really. So that’s quite a while. I’m also involved in a big city project across the denominational spheres called One Voice, where we have probably 30 to 40, church leaders or Christian charity leaders who meet together to pray for the City of York every Wednesday morning. And I’m very much involved in that.

Interviewer:

Could you tell me a bit about Halves?

Steve:

So we have this project called Halves, which is something we sort of inherited from a Methodist church that were closing down. We sort of took it, and cleaned it up, and made it a weekly thing. It used to be a monthly thing. And what we do is we meet every Tuesday lunchtime in a nearby hotel, and we have a lunch together where we talk around a big table, and the staff love us because they say there’s more laughter comes from our table than in the hotel in the whole week. And so they think we’re fantastic, but this is a group which people join because they’re struggling with dealing with the loss of their other half. Sometimes we have people who just stay, and other times we have people who are with us for six months or a year, and then say “oh, thank you. I think I’m okay now”. And we’re obviously ridiculously happy when that happens. But next week I’m doing the funeral of someone who’s been a member for 10 years, which is quite a commitment.

Pauline:

And that’s not, a counseling type of group.  That’s just a social get together just to encourage people to feel confident about interacting socially without the support of their partner being there, and helping them to make new friends, perhaps other people that have had that same experience. And they really just talk to each other. So that’s not something that we do in an attempt to counsel people or anything like that. It’s really just something where you literally just sit, and have a meal with other people that have experienced that same situation as you, and know how you might be feeling. And so it’s kind of just a friendly thing that’s very supportive, and very helpful, but it’s not intense. And I think a lot of the things that we try to do are things that are not really intense. They’re just about getting people together, and creating environments for people to help each other, and understand each other, and show compassion towards each other. So it’s about facilitating other people to help each other really. And that’s a lot of what we do in terms of the projects, and community things that we’re involved in.

Steve:

And right now in York, there is a move to set up a union of like-minded people who want to help the bereaved, which is being put together by a social worker in the local hospice. And I’m part of that, and we’re trying to work with that. But I think when you look at the enormous number of people that are part of this, there really only is us that are doing this weekly lunch, getting people together for friendship. And what I always say is I got on a bus one day, and I saw a lady at the back of the bus that I thought I knew. So I went up to her, and I realised it was her. And I said, “do you mind if I sit with you?”  And she says “oh, I’d really appreciate it”. She said “you know, it’s six months since Gerald died, and this is my first time out of the house, so I’m really glad someone who knows me has come to sit with me”. And it’s very hard to comprehend that people don’t leave the house all of a sudden because someone has died, and they just need a helping hand to sort of rebuild some sort of social interaction in their lives.

Pauline:

But what is really lovely about Halves, and like a lot of volunteering things that people get involved with, is that sometimes you think you don’t have anything to give to others or to share with others, or you are not capable of supporting other people. But in initiatives like Halves, and the things that we do with Friends of Amarna, it’s just about sometimes being there for people, and being yourself. And as you share your life with other people, and other people share their life with you, you’re actually mutually benefiting, and mutually supporting each other. And it’s not necessarily “oh, I have to sit with you, and give you some advice, and make you feel better”. And, you know, “I have to have a hobby that I can share,” or “I have to have something really active that I can show you or that I can do with you.” Volunteering, so much of it, it’s just about sitting with someone, and listening to them, and being willing to share a little bit about yourself with them. And just in doing that, that sense of community between two people, and compassion, and sharing just becomes that wonderful opportunity to put your arms, you know, you’re kind of like putting your arms around someone aren’t you? And giving them a hug. Well, you’re not really giving them a hug because you might get into trouble in some places for doing that. But you’re just sharing who you are, and you are saying that I accept who you are. And even though we might be different or the same, we can support each other, and we can be here for each other. So I think that initiatives like Halves, things that we do at Friends of Amarna, they’re just about being there for someone, and sharing time with someone, sharing yourself with someone, sharing your own experiences with someone, and just having that open heart towards other people. And you often find that when you are prepared to just share that bit of time, and have an open heart towards other people, they open their hearts towards you. And just in that,  is that wonderful moment of what volunteering is about, that we are there for each other, and we can help each other. So it’s, you know, whenever we get involved in these things, you set out thinking, “oh, I’m going to help this part of the community. Oh, I’m going to support this part of the community”. But actually as you get involved in all these things, you realise, “do you know what, they’re actually helping me. They’re supporting me, and they’re helping me to understand these things”. You know, when I speak to old people, they’re helping me to understand what it’s like to get old, and to manage my own life as I age. So I think that’s what’s really exciting about getting involved in these things. And so we’ve just seen some wonderful things happen in these environments, which has been really exciting, and really encouraging.

Interviewer:

Good. So thinking about those lovely words, and they really are great values that you’ve shared, if I was in leadership in a church, and I’d never thought about getting involved in a local care home, can you tell us what your experience has been? What have been the challenges, what have been the joys that have come out of that care home relationship?

Steve:

Well, I think that in church leadership, you always meet different challenges. And I would be foolish to say there are none working with a care home, but actually you’re dealing with people who are safeguarding the interests of their residents just as we as church leaders are safeguarding the interests of our regular attenders. And as long as you understand that, everything becomes quite simple. I think also in an age in which we live, which is largely secular, people sometimes have suspicions. And in any circumstance that you’re working in as church leaders, you have to try, and allay people’s suspicions. And I think that’s something that we’ve been reasonably successful at. And I have to say that I feel very welcome as a church leader in Amarna House. Staff will ring me up sometimes, and say, “we’ve got this person, they’ve got a little issue. Do you think you could come, and listen to them, talk to them?” And I go in for one-on-one visits, with the doors open. And it’s very successful. I go in, and do take communion to a couple of people regularly. But what we simply do is once a month we have a full service, and we get as many people in a room as you can get in a room there. And it works very well indeed. In addition to that, we all do special things like Harvest Festival, Remembrance Sunday, all the things that are important to people. And what’s very special is that people, even people that are quite challenged with their memories can remember hymns that they sang at school. And even though in our tradition we don’t use traditional hymns as part of worship, we tend to sing contemporary songs. We go in with a batch of good old hymns, and people engage. Can I give you an example of one? We sometimes go into different units, and there is one unit which is extremely challenging. And we went in there one day, and there was a chap who has since died, and he was sat there – and I can only describe this as it was – he was sat there drooling, and he was non-communicative. And in this particular room, they would never dream of leaving us alone without a member of staff, which is, I would suggest very positive. And all of a sudden I said, “we’re going to sing an old hymn,  ‘And can it be that I should gain an interest in the Saviour’s love?’”  And this guy stood bolt upright, and sang it in perfect tune without any words, because on that unit we don’t give them hymn sheets because they don’t really engage. And, he sang it all the way through, word perfect. And the member of staff ran out screaming for other members of staff. I was sort of, “what’s this about?” And she comes back in bringing three other members of staff, and they’re all stood there looking. And I carried on, finished the service, and then she came up to me, she says, “don’t you realise what happened?” I said, “well, I don’t normally get any communication from him”. She said, “he’s been in here two years, and has never spoken a word to anybody. And for you, he stood up and sang an entire hymn from memory”. I think that’s remarkable. And she said, “I’m telling you now: that’s going in his record”. And I went away sort of thinking, “oh, that’s probably quite good, isn’t it?” And you know, it is quite good that somebody can latch onto a hymn that they maybe learned 30, 40, 50 years ago, and they can sing it word perfect from memory. And they have proven to their carers that actually they do have the ability to speak.

Interviewer:

Now, Pauline, I remember that in the past you did a bit of a project to try and improve people’s Christmases. Can you tell me a bit about that?

Pauline:

That’s right. That was a Silver Santa project, and that was funded by the National Lottery. Someone had this brilliant idea that we could go out into the community, and ask members of the community to pack a shoebox full of gifts for an older person that could then be given out in the old people’s home, as a reminder from the community that these people, though they might be in an old people’s home or resident in one of these facilities, that the community hadn’t forgotten them. We went into secondary schools, we went in, and did some presentations, and talked to them about old people in the community, what places like Amarna House were like, how it would be lovely if they could pack a box, they could put a photograph of themselves in, write a letter, put a little personal message in, something like that. Lots of the schools got involved. We got the University involved because we put that in the University newsletters. So lots of adults got involved with this as well. And, we had enough boxes to give every person in the home a box. And it was a really wonderful experience. And what was really lovely was the way that it brought people together of all different ages. For example, I went to pick up a box from a lady and she said, “I’ve put this together because it made me think of my own Mum.”  And so she had an opportunity to do something for somebody else’s Mum. And I think it was part of her healing process in losing her Mum, the fact that she could do this with somebody else’s Mum. And she’d really gone to town in the gifting that she provided, and she put a little letter in, and that was really lovely. We had then a couple of students from one of the schools that actually came on Christmas Day to help hand out the parcels. And that was just wonderful for them to be part of that. So these projects, it brought everyone together. So that was a wonderful project to do, and very fruitful.

Interviewer:

Now, when you knew I was coming to see you today, was there anything potentially you wanted to say to me you haven’t had the chance to say yet?

Steve:

I think the one thing that I would say is that we often look at our wider communities as church leaders and say, “how can we reach out to people,  and offer them spiritual care?” But often we don’t even realise that care homes are there and we don’t realise there are people who are at a late stage in their lives who often want more spiritual care now than they did when they were younger. And they’re also in a confined space where it’s the one thing that would really bring them a lot of joy. And so over the years working with Amarna House, I have to say, I have seen loads of what I would call ministry opportunities. We have had wonderful relationships with many of the residents over the years, and some of them, that relationship has ended when I’ve been asked to do their funeral. And some of the stories I’ve heard from the families, how that they would tell the families, “oh, we do look forward to when Stephen comes in, and leads a service, and he reads. He’ll read to us from the Bible, and it’s not the old King James that I was used to. Could you find me a copy?” And people are bringing in Bibles for their relatives. And I just think that that’s wonderful. And I would suggest to anybody involved in church leadership that looking how you might support the spiritual care of older people in a care home might be incredibly productive.

Pauline:

Yes, I would like to say that sometimes volunteering can be challenging. I think sometimes you see things, and hear things, and participate in things that can be emotionally challenging because you might not see, hear, or be involved in that other than volunteering. But the message, and the thing that I always remind myself of is that you really get so much more out of volunteering than you ever, ever give. I think that just puts it in a nutshell, however much you give, you get far more back. And so it just is a really wonderful thing to be a part of these projects, and to be healthy enough, and strong enough, and fit enough, and able enough to be a part of all of it.

Interviewer:

Can I say thank you ever so much for your time today? I’ve known you both now for more than 10 years, and I’ve seen the impact that you individually have made at Amarna House, the fact that the residents, the staff, the managers, the leadership of the home care provider are so impressed with the work that you do, the difference that you make. And it’s a privilege for us as a national body to say that we know you two. So thank you.

Steve:

Thank you very much.