Despite the pandemic, the inaugural year of our training partnership with Christian Medical Fellowship went swimmingly and the 2021-2022 intake of the Health & Justice Track will be starting on 14th September. However, as we have doubled the number of places this year, we still have room for twelve more trackers! So, if you’re a CMF member with a passion for serving the marginalised, why not send us an application form as soon as possible? But don’t delay because we expect these last few places to be filled fast and it’s first come, first served until 10th October when applications finally close.
A Fond Farewell
We are sad to be saying goodbye to Ate Gerlie Narandan, Personal Assistant to our Chief Operations Officer in the Philippines, Mam Loy.
Thank you Gerlie for all your hard work over the last six months. You will be missed. We wish you the best of success in all your future endeavours.
Please keep an eye out for personnel adverts as we look to fill the position of PA.
An Injection of Information
In February we announced our exciting news that we had been awarded a £2000 grant by the British Medical Association’s Information Fund to stock our emerging resources centre at Integritas House, Olongapo in the Philippines.
Update on the resources
This week we are pleased to share with you that the books we have been able to purchase with this grant have now arrived! We look forward to populating the shelves of our library with these fantastic books, and allowing local healthcare and social care professionals to read and learn invaluable information from them.
Thank you
We would like to once again thank the BMA for granting us this very generous funding, these books are a much needed educational resource that will really help many people!
Volunteers' Week 2021
Volunteers’ Week is here! This is an annual opportunity to recognise and thank our volunteers.
We have had numerous volunteers support the HEART of our organisation since we began. In fact, between 2012 and 2020 we had a total of 8 long-term volunteers and 130 short-term volunteers! Even now we have a constant flow of volunteers in and out of service.
So this Volunteers’ Week we want to say a big thank you to all those past and present that have given their time, energy and skills to support our work, we couldn’t do it without you.
Some of our volunteers:
Note, most of these photos were taken pre-pandemic.
COVID-safe offender healthcare electives!
We are excited to announce the relaunch of our offender healhcare electives, which now centre around Zoom-delivered telemedicine and so are completely COVID-safe!
Interested or know someone who is? Find out more!
A Presidential Visit
Our Police Detainee Welfare Program delivers meals, personal care items, spiritual comfort, social assistance & telemedicine healthcare to detainees in precincts in & around the Philippine City of Olongapo.
This week our team was honoured to have a VIP accompanying them on their weekly rounds. Ramon Lacbain II, President of our Philippines arm, Integridad: Heart for Detainees Inc., joined in with distributing food to the detainees.
As a Christian faith-inspired organisation, we believe that spiritual nourishment is as important as physical nutrition and medical care. Detainees who wish to can hear our staff talk about God’s love for them can do so. We give them a specially designed leaflet that explains the Christian message in a way that makes sense to detainees. Mr Lacbain shared words from the Bible and prayed with & for the detainees. That particular day 43 detainees were assisted in two police stations and a drug enforcement unit. We thank God for the opportunity to share His love and comfort with those most in need.
Those interested in volunteering with our police detainee welfare program may contact Operations Manager, Mam Loy Napalan. And of course we welcome any financial donations to help support this vital pandemic ministry.
Exciting Training Opportunity
Institute of Medical Ethics (IME) Scholarship
The IME are now accepting applications for 2021 intercalated scholarships. The scholarships, worth up to £2,000 each, are awarded to support UK medical undergraduates who wish to undertake an intercalated degree in medical ethics commencing 2021. Applications will also be accepted from students who wish to intercalate in a subject closely allied to medical ethics but this must form a substantial component of the degree.
The application form and guidance can be downloaded via the IME website
The closing date is 23.59, Monday 29th March 2021
Who are our neighbours?!
Today we were pleased and proud to be exhibiting at the Christian Medical Fellowship’s Who is my neighbour now? virtual conference, which explored the various ways that Christian healthcare professionals can care for our neighbours (Luke 10:25-37) like Good Samaritans and obey Jesus’ Great Commission to ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19).
It was an excellent event. A great time was had by all who attended, and the day kicked off with two questions…
Who are our neighbours?
Having already said that we should ‘love our neighbours as ourselves’, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus explored the identity of these neighbours...
What do our neighbours believe?
And it would be good to know what our neighbours believe in. We were particularly struck by this video…
That said, please note that the A/B/C diagram is meant to represent statistical thirds. It is absolutely untrue to say that people groups living in the Middle East, South-East Asia and Western Pacific (where we have our non-UK base) fall into Group C; rather, their people groups are largely Groups A and B.
Serving our neighbours in a time of pandemic
The pandemic may still be wreaking havoc across our globe, but our telemedicine offender healthcare service is able to reach patients from Groups A, B and C! You could volunteer for us as a telemedicine healthcare professional, regardless of where in the world you are right now. All you need is a laptop and a reasonably reliable wifi signal.
We are also looking for healthcare professionals on gap years and for even longer periods, and again you could work from anywhere in the world or (once the pandemic permits international travel) or you could serve from our Philippines base.
In addition we are looking for non-healthcare professionals: we need a chief operations officer (who could be based anywhere in the world) and a Philippines-based social worker. Why not get in touch with us?
Books, CDs & DVDs galore!
We are excited to announce that our emerging resources centre at Integritas House Olongapo in the Philippines will be receiving a massive boost in the near future…
Grant
We have just been informed that our application to the British Medical Association’s Information Fund has been successful. This means that, very soon, our training centre will be receiving almost £2000 worth of the latest medical, nursing, dental & social sciences textbooks of relevance to our work in the Philippines & farther afield.
Sharing
This is the second time that the BMA has been generous to us with gifts of textbooks and other medical learning resources. We intend to share all of these resources with local healthcare & social science professionals in the Zambales region, by opening up our library for public use. We will post an update as soon as the latest resources have arrived and are adorning our library’s shelves. For now though, let’s just say ‘Thank you BMA!’
Death to the Inequality of Justice Part 1: Letter to POTUS
On 12th January 2021 the US government plans to kill Lisa Montgomery by lethal injection; she will be the first woman since 1953 to receive the federal death penalty in the USA. She was arrested in 2004 after she strangled a pregnant woman, cut her unborn baby from her abdomen, and then kidnapped the child to pass it off as her own.
TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD AND MENTAL HEALTH
However abhorrent her crime might be, it must be placed into the context of her tragic and traumatic life. Lisa’s parents were alcoholics and she was raised in a deprived and violent household. Reported to have suffered brain damage as a child, she was a victim of sex trafficking and physical abuse, has a genetic predisposition to mental health problems, and has since been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative personality disorder. Yet all this mental strain went unrecognised and her mental health un-investigated - until after she was arrested and detained.
Lisa has taken full responsibility for her crime. Since being in prison she has been able to receive the help she needed in the first place, to begin to stabilise her mental health. Yet psychological reports, which stated that she was psychotic when she committed the murder and that her childhood trauma could explain her behaviour as an adult, were ridiculed in court. Her legal team’s attempts to have these arguments weighed in her sentencing were dismissed as ‘abuse excuse’. Instead her poor personal hygiene and unkempt home were used to degrade her character - as a person and as a mother.
As for the ‘abuse excuse’ accusation: examining a suspect’s mental health history and unfortunate background is the very opposite of looking for an ‘excuse’. No, it is a search for a partial ‘explanation’ at least.
Capital punishment is a divisive subject. Lisa’s crime was abhorrent. But regardless of what one believes about capital punishment, surely it isn’t right to execute someone who committed their crime whilst seriously mentally ill?
With less than 24 hours to go until Lisa is executed, we appeal to President Trump:-
Mr President
Sir, your administration has permitted Lisa Montgomery - a woman who committed a heinous crime whilst chronically mentally ill after a lifetime of severe social injustice - to be put forward for execution during the closing, supposedly ‘lame duck days’ of your presidency.
We would suggest that the death penalty is unnecessarily politicised in the USA and we feel that this scheduling is suggestive of political manoeuvring. Yet, reaching far beyond mere suggestion, the last few days have demonstrated solidly that passions boil over, people over-reach themselves, and allegiances switch - in politics and in personal lives.
Compassion is not the weakened motions of a lame duck - rather it is the decisive stroke of a strong man. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour in who you profess faith, commanded us so: ‘Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you’ (Luke 1:37-38).
For the next few hours Lisa is still alive and for the next few days you are still the most powerful man on Earth. When we stand up in God’s court room, we will all need forgiveness. I will. Lisa will. You will too.
So Sir, please do the strong thing.
Yours respectfully
Dr Rachael Pickering (Prison doctor) & her colleagues at Integritas Healthcare