Page 18 - Community Living Magazine 34-1

in conversation
Meeting our friend in the Lords

Psychiatrist, campaigner, mother, publisher and activist – Then, she had a son who has learning
Baroness Sheila Hollins is an influential political voice and ally disabilities and autism. As a medical
for people with learning disabilities. She talks to Seán Kelly student, she had learnt nothing about
learning disabilities; however, she had
some limited personal knowledge from
her childhood. The matron of the local
aroness Sheila Hollins is chairing an mental handicap hospital was a family
independent government panel that friend and, as a child, she had often
Bwill oversee case reviews of people visited the hospital.
with learning disabilities detained in She trained in child psychiatry and
mental health hospitals and assessment discovered that child guidance clinic staff
and treatment units. This is to support would not see a family with a disabled
their speedier discharge back into child “because you couldn’t cure the
the community. disability so what was the point?” We
Before discussing her current work, we shake our heads in disbelief.
looked back over her life and achievements. Hollins decided to specialise in families
When Hollins was two years old, her that had a child with a disability, and
family moved from Wimbledon to began consultation sessions with local
Sheffield. She says wryly that her family clinics, schools and hospitals. She was
always sounded “too posh” for Sheffield then headhunted by Joan Bicknell
but they never had quite the right accent (Britain’s first female psychiatry professor
for other family members down south. and the first professor in psychiatry of
She feels that in her youth she mental handicap), who wanted to employ
developed a bit of “Yorkshire grit” and a senior lecturer at St George’s Hospital
resilience which sustained her in later Medical School to help set up
times of adversity. Baroness Hollins: “As soon as you start seeing community services.
An early plan to be a nurse was people as numbers, it becomes problematic” To attract Hollins, the job included one
overturned by her biology teacher who day a week of child psychiatry. It also
suggested she became a doctor instead. to talk to the Sixth Form Society about his included responsibility for 350 patients in
“I thought ‘that’s a bit over the top’,” year with VSO in Asia and was inspired: two hospitals, a community clinic and
she laughs. Nevertheless, at the age of 16, “It just sounded magical.” undergraduate medical education, plus
she applied to St Thomas’ Hospital So Hollins went to work for a year in the university wanted research as well. It
Medical School in London, which back South Eastern Nigeria in a village in the was hardly, she says, a “doable job”.
then in the mid 1960s had a maximum middle of the rainforest, in what was to Of her child psychiatry day, she says:
quota of just 12% for women students. become Biafra. Despite being only 18 “I ran a transitions service for the
The general expectation was that female years old, she became head of science in a 13-plus group before people really used
doctors would soon marry (usually to a girls’ secondary school. And she loved it. that word.”
male doctor from St Thomas’) then work On her return, she went to St Thomas’. She also involved theatre groups with
part time in general practice, she says. But, instead of marrying a GP, she married actors with learning disabilities to teach
Martin Hollins, another returned VSO communication skills. “It led to some nice
volunteer. Hollins worked 108 hours a things like the actors saying about the
We didn’t need medication; week as a house officer after qualifying medical students during feedback: ‘Well,
we needed to be able to until two days before her first daughter they are quite like normal people, aren’t
was born. She then took a part-time GP
they?’ And the student group were saying
explain to John that his father trainee position in south London for a year. the same about the actors.”
has died One day, she was asked to see a man
Routine mental ill-health who she calls John. John was about
It was there she became clearer about the 40 years old and had Down’s syndrome.
importance of psychiatry. He had no speech. Staff were worried
She told the interviewers that was her “I was working in Balham and Tooting because he had stayed in bed for a month
plan – and it must have been the right and about 70% of my patients had social or and was not eating. They wanted
answer. Despite needing to resit physics emotional problems. Patients had 5-minute medication for him.
– “Science teaching at girls’ schools was appointments. The notion that you could Hollins said: “Oh, poor John. I wonder
appalling. My whole year failed physics. I actually try and get to the bottom of what what’s happened?” It turned out that
still hate it!” – she was offered an somebody is feeling was ridiculous.” John’s father, who used to visit every
unconditional place. So, after three years, she began training week, had died. We did not need
But first she took a year out with in psychiatry: “I intended to just do it for a medication for him – we needed to be
Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO). She bit and go back to general practice, but I able to explain to John that his father
had invited a former Sheffield schoolboy loved it.” had died.

18 Vol 34 No 1 | Autumn 2020 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk