‘God has been guiding me’

“I HEARD about parish nursing in 2006 and did the course in 2007. I began developing the parish nursing programme here in Dundee in 2008.

“Parish nursing has been around for many years, but I don’t think it’s ever faced the kind of challenges we’ve had in the past 18 months.”

Barbara MacFarlane has been working with the Steeple Church in Dundee for 13 years and still finds it hard to grasp the way 2020 affected people.

After travelling around the world and working in a variety of countries, Barbara has come back to, and found home, in the town where she was born.

“I was born and bred in Dundee, and my Mum had her hands full raising my older sister and my twin (non-identical). We were a church-going family and I have fond memories of my Sunday school teachers, and the missionary we supported in Bangladesh.

“My Dad was a GP in Dundee, and from an early age I said I was going to be a doctor like him. But achieving a single half mark out of fifteen for a physics test finally drew a line under that aspiration. Perhaps there was some parental disappointment then, but my choice of a career in nursing was encouraged and I did one of the earliest nursing degree programmes at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the City University in London,” she explains.

“I loved the nursing component of my student days, but was never quite so happy at University. I settled very quickly into a local church, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, where the Rev Dick Lucas was vicar. During second year a classmate and I won a university scholarship and went to Uganda for four months over the summer, where we travelled widely, staying with missionaries and exploring the role that unqualified nursing auxiliaries played in supporting health care. However, the time we went was just weeks after General Idi Amin took power, and much of Uganda’s infrastructure began to collapse as he expelled the Asian community just after we got home.”

It was her first real taste of community nursing – taking her skills out where they were needed – and she loved it.

“Back home and down to earth, I graduated a year late, but then worked in the haematological oncology ward at Bart’s. I loved that ward. I felt that genuine whole-person care was given, and the staff worked so well as a team. The Consultant was Professor Sir Gordon Hamilton-Fairley. Our whole team was devastated when he was mistakenly murdered by an IRA bomb planted on the wrong car outside his home. As a team we had to pull together and support the patients as well as one another. It was a tragic loss.

“I returned to Dundee eventually and staffed at Ninewells – it was so new and shiny, bright sunny wards with fabulous views, such a change from central London.”

She adds: “I do feel, all my life, that God has been guiding me – opening doors and closing others – until all my life skills and interests began to merge.

“I was Sister in charge of a medical ward, work that I really loved and felt was my calling. By then I was a member of the Steeple Church, with the Rev Jock Stein as minister, and was involved in a range of activities. I used to love teaching the student nurses on my ward and sometimes did lectures in the college of nursing, relating to the specialities of my ward. That was stimulating and then I was invited to join the staff of the college, which became the School of Nursing as part of Dundee University, and Tutors became Lecturers!

“It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I met my husband, Bob. There had been a few romances through the years. We met on a ‘blind date’ organised by one of my student nurses. We were married in the Steeple in 1995, honeymooned near Lochinver, and returned and set up home with Bob’s teenagers, Robert and Claire, and my stepdog Ralphie. That was a big change for me, but my new family liked my cooking, and we all got on really well. Robert and Claire now have their own homes in the city but we see them a lot. Ralphie went to Noah’s Ark at the ripe old age of nineteen.

“Nursing was the career I felt God was calling me into, right from my schooldays.

Although it was difficult to understand why I did not go abroad, I learned that wherever I am working is where God has placed me, wants me to be, and that’s why I am there.

I never felt the urge to ‘preach’ to people, rather to live a life and work in ways that reflect God’s love, compassion, wholeness and peace into the lives of others,” she says.

Barbara MacFarlane

The significance of being a Parish Nurse is the ability to integrate our faith into our work, identifying that spirituality is an integral part of human existence and well-being, and cannot be excluded unless the person so chooses.

“In 2006 I heard about Parish Nursing and began to explore how this might be a relevant form of ministry within the Steeple. Friends in a house group prayed and when I very tentatively asked the Kirk Session for their thoughts, I was overwhelmed with their support for the very unstructured plan that I had. I had no idea how it might develop. So off I went to Birmingham to do the Parish Nursing course in August 2007. It was an excellent programme, and I came back, still uncertain when to start, how to start, and what to do. I thought I might wait a few years until I retired from University, but God’s plans were to start then, so in 2008 I went part-time at Uni and had some time to start to develop the Parish Nursing service. My minister at that time, the Rev David Clark, was very supportive and in his supervisory role advised that I should seek funding to develop the work, employing another Parish Nurse and developing the ministry of reaching out to people with experience of homelessness, addictions, poor mental and physical health and generally very poor quality of life and a feeling of hopelessness.

“Parish Nursing enables us to provide very whole-person care. We don’t do invasive procedures, or dispense any medicines at all. We seek to identify unmet health and related needs and to support people to get the support they are need, by using statutory and voluntary agency support more effectively. But the significance of being a Parish Nurse is the ability to integrate our faith into our work, identifying that spirituality is an integral part of human existence and well-being, and cannot be excluded unless the person so chooses. Our PN training in the theology of health and health care lets us assess spiritual need as part of the whole person, and to respond, not necessarily by preaching, but by demonstrating in practical ways that God is alongside people in their lives, in the dark and bewildering places of despair as much as when times are good,” she says enthusiastically.

“The Parish Nursing service was adopted as a core mission function of the Steeple, but funding was essential for the service to grow and achieve sustainability. Our first funding came from the Parish Development Fund, which later became Go for It. I will always be grateful to the teams in those organisations who awarded the early

The launch of the Dundee Recovery Road Map

Barbara and Kirsty

Volunteers ‘crisp and ready to serve’ funding that gave our work credibility in the eyes of other funders from the beginning.

Our first salaried PN was Davina Dickson, followed by Rachel McReady who developed the Dundee Recovery Roadmap.

“Now we’ve been able to employ Kirsty Nelson, a full-time PN for the first time and myself working part-time.

“We have built up excellent relationships with a huge range of statutory and voluntary service across the city. In the early days we and Eagles Wings set up the Dundee Drop-in Network to help us all to work together more effectively – that’s now run by Faith in Communities Dundee (FiCD). We’ve contributed to the findings of the Dundee Drugs Commission and are involved in part of the Alcohol and Drug Partnership in Dundee.”

These already developed relationships became crucial last year when the

Covid-19 pandemic hit. “In March, as the pandemic hit, and the Steeple had to close completely, we knew at once that we needed to continue to serve.

We teamed up right away with Eagles Wings, a local Christian charity doing very similar work, the charity which co-founded the drop-in network with us back in 2011.

Working from their premises in central Dundee we were able to combine our teams and hand out food and necessities to people at the door of their premises.

Volunteers from both organisations were more senior, and some had health conditions that necessitated shielding, so we kept our team small to reduce risks.

Our combined team became known locally as ‘Parish Wings’, and was officially classified as a ‘key service provider’ in the city.

“It was not easy at first, but our folk have been so grateful that we carried on and were face-to-face accessible, for four days of the week. We were still able to assess health and related needs, and to connect people with some vital services throughout both lockdowns and periods of restricted access to services. We have had some new people coming along, just because they were desperately lonely and needed a caring, friendly person to listen with them, and very often to pray with them. We feel we have in some ways been ‘set free’ to do what we are passionate about. An enabling factor has been various grants that we could access and some generous donations as well.

“We had grants that helped to purchase additional foodstuffs and some household essentials. We were able to help some people to pay for utilities, particularly during the second lockdown when it was cold and dark a lot of the time. Many people were terribly isolated because they did not have access to a mobile phone: with one grant we were able to buy and distribute around 70 basic mobile phones to help people to stay connected to families and essential services.

“This ensured that vast amounts of foodstuffs that were being donated and purchased by the Council and others could be distributed fairly across the city, among the services that were handing out food bags to individuals and families. Some companies were donating ready-meals.

It has been important to maintain strict environmental health controls to ensure the safety of this operation, and it has worked brilliantly.

“We’ve worked very closely with housing and other support agencies, both statutory and voluntary through this time, particularly when there have been concerns for the safety of individuals. Mental health concerns have been heightened throughout the pandemic and this will remain a major area needing support for a long time to come. The levels of isolation, actual or perceived have not benefitted the mental wellbeing of the folk with whom we work. The profound sense of loneliness that pervades their lives has in many cases got worse, but folk have been telling us that if we had not been there for them and with them throughout the pandemic, they might not be here by now.”

“Looking to how God is leading our service in the coming days, Kirsty is working to develop the Recovery Road Map into a more digitally interactive tool that will help people in a totally person-centred, individualised way, that also recognises spiritual needs. There is a huge range of services and facilities across our city and we all want to work together to enable people to have healthier, happier lives, the life in all its fullness that Jesus promises.”

Guests enjoying food and fellowship in the Steeple

The levels of isolation, actual or perceived have not benefitted the mental wellbeing of the folk with whom wework. The profound sense of loneliness that pervades their lives has in many cases got worse, but folk have been telling us that if we had not been there for them and with them throughout the pandemic, they might not be here by now.