Wednesday, 28 September 2022
Coffee and Persuasion
Granddaughter’s school intends to hold a Macmillan coffee morning. Seems iffy to me, holding one in a junior school, but they seem to hold them all over the place.
This is merely an anecdote I know, but some years ago, we had our only contact with Macmillan services and that turned out to be entirely negative. Second-rate people and second-rate facilities. The only advice we received turned out to be almost catastrophic. A much smaller, local charity was far more effective.
Perhaps our experience was atypical - it would have to be, or they would struggle to survive. Yet it is easy to be suspicious of large charities which have grown to be more like businesses than charities. Macmillan seems to spend heavily on promotion and fund raising, but after our dire experience I’d never contribute.
And I still think it’s iffy to hold that coffee morning in a junior school.
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9 comments:
My first port of call with charities is the contact details. If they have an office in central Londonistan, their erse is oot the windae.
Macmillan nurses are specially trained in palliative and respite care of the terminally ill.
I found them really helpful and considerate when my wife was dying.
Jannie - it is London I believe.
Ed - our Macmillan experience was when my wife's mother was dying. It was such a poor experience that it has permanently soured our view of them. It's probably down to people. Get the right people and things go well but get the wrong ones and they don't.
Not sure about atypical; we had two brushes with Macmillan and came away feeling more than a little bruised on both occasions by their arrogance, lack of courtesy and grudging unwillingness to do more than a bare minimum.
We contacted Macmillan when father was diagnosed with cancer, but this turned out to be a complete waste of time. They didn't seem geared up to offer help at short notice - as it happened he died just 10 days after getting the bad news. Whether they would have been more use with an earlier diagnosis I don't know, but I was rather blunt (recently) with a museum who asked if I would be willing to make a donation to Macmillan as part of the admission fee!
Macheath - interesting - "arrogance, lack of courtesy and grudging unwillingness to do more than a bare minimum" sounds much like our experience. Unpleasant and incompetent.
microdave - maybe that's one of the problems, not being geared up to offer help at short notice. By way of contrast, a volunteer nurse from a local charity came straight round and was sorting things out almost as soon as she was through the door. Made the local GP jump too.
Hmmm, never heard of them.
" arrogance, lack of courtesy and grudging unwillingness to do more than a bare minimum"
Hmmm.What well known health service does that sound like?
Coincidentally also one that the recipients of care don't pay for, and the staff get paid regardless of how they behave..............
James - an advantage of not having a TV.
Sobers - in our experience there wasn't much of a dividing line, if at all.
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