They Died Waiting: The Crisis in Mental Health - Stories of Loss and Stories of Hope: 2 [paperback] Aldridge, Caroline,Corlett, Emma [Nov 30, 2022] (Paperback)

Caroline Aldridge is a social work educator and co-author of They Died Waiting, a collection of lived experience accounts about the crisis in the mental health service. Here, she explains how her latest book manages to contain stories of hope within its covers – and why she’s planning a trilogy I would describe myself as an ordinary woman who has experienced extraordinary things. I could never have imagined the things that have happened to me or where my life path would lead. My career has been varied and a mix of voluntary, employed, and self-employed roles. For over 20 years I worked primarily with children and families in a wide range of settings. I worked with social workers and those who were not so great and those who were excellent, and these were my push and pull into the profession. I had been thinking about becoming a social worker for a while. I made an enquiry just before one Christmas and was interviewed during the holidays and started the degree course on January 4th. It was one of those ‘meant to be’ things. As a social worker I worked mostly with children and their parents or carers in safeguarding, fostering and adoption or children and adolescent mental health teams. I carried on studying and did an MA in Advanced Social Work and became a practice educator (supporting social work students in their placements). Then life took a tragic turn when my eldest son, Tim, died in 2014. I decided to move into move into social work lecturing and I added a Diploma in Education and Training to my qualifications. In 2018, I tripped on the stairs and sustained a head injury. As part of my neurorehabilitation, I joined a creative writing group and started writing about Tim’s life and death and my personal and professional experiences. I ended up writing a book. He Died Waiting: Learning the Lessons – a Bereaved Mother’s View of Mental Health Services was published in late 2020. I had already connected with other bereaved relatives and realised how important it would be for their stories to be told but after I appeared on Woman’s Hour, I received hundreds of messages and emails from people who had lost their loved ones to mental illness.