Care Conversations

The Workhouse Network is proud to present ​

Care Conversations 2021

During the pandemic, we have been all working with so many of the issues that are raised in the history of the workhouse system including segregation, categorisation, public health, social care systems, impacts of poverty and homelessness on health, and inequality of access to health support, including mental health.

The pre-existing contemporary inequalities and poverty that Covid 19 has revealed have deep resonance in the history of the workhouse system, the Poor Law Commission and Local Government Board and early social/welfare care systems.

Care Conversations brings together volunteer researchers from The Workhouse Network with people who are involved in the social care system today either as workers, carers, parents, or managers.

In the first session of Conversations Jessica Turtle from The Museum of Homelessness will begin our first session, followed by Belinda May and Jim Mortram talking about their own experience of caring for family and how the historic record reflects that experience.

In the second session of Conversations the Workhouse Network Chair, Jan Overfield-Shaw chats with Rachel Sharpe and Julie Kirk about learning disability and attitudes and experiences of working and parenting with the current system.

In the third session of Conversations Laura Drysdale and Richard Johnson of the Restoration Trust and Change Minds project speak about mental health and the healing properties of historic research.