This is an extract from my family memoir, Outside, the Sky is Blue. My sister, Caroline, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her late teens. My brother, Tom, was an academic and sporty teenager, but later suffered from quite severe anxiety. My mother wanted nothing more than for her children to be healthy, happy and, ideally, employed. My sister was desperate to work, but found it incredibly hard to get jobs and keep them. This extract is about that struggle.

 

After Caroline lost her job at Cornhill Insurance, my mother helped her apply for jobs. She applied to the Department of Transport, Guildway Ltd, St Luke’s Hospital, Surrey Constabulary, the Post Office, Boots, Webster’s bookshop, Bookwise and C & A. I know, because I have a red lever arch file in front of me, saying ‘CAROLINE EMPLOYMENT’, and it’s jam-packed. She was, it’s clear from the applications, willing to do anything.

When the job centre suggested that Caroline apply for a different job at Cornhill Insurance, my mother put a letter in with the application form. The letter is in the file. ‘It may seem impertinent to you to apply for a job with a firm from which she was asked to resign,’ she writes, ‘but whatever happens, I should like to set the record straight.’ She gives details of Caroline’s breakdown and her time at Cornhill. ‘I know she was never very fast,’ she says, ‘but she was accurate and her spelling was good.’ She explains how, under the stress of being moved to the new audio typing pool, Caroline had another breakdown, which she tried to hide. ‘Since Caroline did not want to tell the office,’ she says, ‘she struggled on against all odds.’ My mother explains that Caroline is now registered as disabled but is ‘very well’ and says that ‘several psychiatrists have given her a good prognosis and been impressed by her courage and ability to hold down a job.’ She says that she has been told about a ‘job introduction scheme’ for people who are registered disabled, ‘in which the job centre pays most of the first six weeks’ salary and the employer is under no obligation to keep the candidate on if not satisfied’. If the Cornhill were willing, she says, ‘to try Caroline again, even on a temporary basis, we would be most grateful’.

Unfortunately, the Cornhill was not willing. It was eighteen months before an employer was. Caroline was thrilled to be offered a job in Milwards shoe shop. In the file, there’s a handwritten letter from her new boss. ‘Dear Miss Patterson, I am very pleased to welcome you to our shop and hope you will be very happy with us.’ Caroline was certainly happy to have the job, but she wrote a letter to Tom, who was then helping out at a summer camp for disabled people in America. ‘I am finding work at Milwards shoe shop very difficult,’ she says, ‘especially finding the shoes. The manageress has been very kind to me. She is very nice but she told me on Friday very nicely that I was too slow. I enjoy dealing with the public and am good at it, it is just that I don’t think I’m very good at the job. I am on a six-week trial. If I don’t pass it, I mustn’t worry too much.’

She didn’t pass it. It took six months for her to get another job, this time as a part-time assistant in the home furnishings department in Marks & Spencer. She loved the job. She loved the uniform. I have a photograph of her smiling in it, framed on my desk. I also have a Post-it note which I think she must have stuck on the till. ‘Sale,’ she has written. ‘Read card / amount – key in / Press enter twice / customer to sign printed paper /check customer’s signature’. I can hardly bear to look at it. Press enter twice.

The job was a work experience scheme for people with disabilities. When Caroline finished her stint, my mother wrote to the manager, praising the scheme and begging him to keep her on. He thanked her for her kind words, but said it was important for Caroline ‘to seek permanent employment’.

In the file, there’s a green form for the job centre. It’s filled out in capital letters, but the handwriting is my mother’s. In response to the question ‘What limits does your health place on the work you can do?’, she has written: ‘I HAVE TO BE ON PERMANENT MEDICATION (LARGACTIC/LITHIUM) SINCE MY FIRST BREAKDOWN IN 1973 BUT I DO NOT WANT TO BE REGISTERED DISABLED.’ On the final page, the applicant is asked to give details which ‘may affect your availability for work’. Underneath it, my mother has written: ‘SINCE I WAS ASKED TO RESIGN FROM THE CORNHILL INSURANCE AND FROM MILWARDS SHOE SHOP I HAVE FOUND IT VERY DIFFICULT TO FIND PAID EMPLOYMENT. I HAVE SPENT SIX YEARS TRYING TO FIND ANOTHER JOB.’

Six and a half years after Caroline left Cornhill Insurance, she was offered a job as a part-time cleaner in the kitchens at the University of Surrey. The wage was £2.57 an hour.

When she passed her six-month probationary period, we all went out for a Thai meal. Now she was coming up to her first year.

Four days after Tom told me he couldn’t cope any more, and on the day my mother woke me to say he shouldn’t be left on his own and I sat with him, as he told me, again and again and again, that he thought he would lose his job and didn’t know what to do, Caroline rang my mother from the university. She said that she had been called in by the personnel officer. She had been told that her work wasn’t up to scratch and asked to resign.

When my father got home from work, I overheard him telling my mother that he wished, for her sake, that she’d never met him.

Excerpt from Outside, the Sky is Blue by Christina Patterson (Tinder Press, £10.99).