CAREHOMES

You find yourself in strange company in care/nursing homes. Here, we have at least one suspected alcoholic and one who appears to be on the threshold of possibly her third nervous breakdown or personality realignment within two years. (Does one cause the other?) I'm talking about the care staff, not the residents and God knows how much worse it is going to get as more and more of them, particularly the agency carers, have communication difficulties with the natural English speakers -- nearly all the residents are English speakers but only around half the care staff. (For statistical reasons only, I'm classifying carers from Scotland and Yorkshire as English speakers. Oh yes, I can do controversial.)
To protest about the language and communication problems can be difficult. Nearly all those who demonstrate some difficulty in fully comprehending a particular request or statement are African and the prevailing political-correctness means you have to be very careful not to imply that we have an "African problem". When 99% of the residents are English-born and English-speaking, I think that fluency in English should be an absolute minimum requirement for working with individuals who are disabled, dependent on the carers for personal requirements, while they have their own communication or speech problems resulting from strokes or cerebral palsy. Hey, I can feel my testosterone kicking in here! I'd better go and have lunch before I lose my temper and ask one of the carers to throw something at the television for me.
Lunch.
Much better now, thank you for asking. The healing and therapeutic properties of chilli cannot be praised too highly.