The Social Care Experts Blog

George lives on his own, in a nest of paper. Each day at 9am a support worker arrives to help him through the day. I am one of them. The first task is encouraging George, who has autism, to dispose of some of the paper. There may be yesterday's Times, torn and scattered around the room. George likes to read from the obituaries, and tell us who's died. He's also big on anniversaries. Apparently it's 400 years since the death of Bess of Hardwick.

Every day, after his morning routines (shower, shave, brush teeth, clean bathroom, mop floor, put washing in machine, make supper and place in fridge for later) George will go out to lunch with his helper. Sometimes he will meet up with other people with autism and their support workers. He never has much money to spare, so Wetherspoons is a regular haunt.

Sometimes he'll join in planned activities, such as an art group or a gym session; at other times he'll follow his own interests which tend to be hanging around graveyards reading gravestones. He'll always end the day by acquiring more paper.

Paper can be acquired cheaply in several ways, all well known to George. Strictly speaking, it's not so much the paper that interests him as the written word. Fact is usually preferable to fiction, and photos are good too. Charity shops are a good source of books, but these can be a pound or two.

If there's nothing else, there's always the daily papers; The Times and the Daily Mirror give a good balance, in George's opinion. But best of all are libraries, as they sell off books for 20p.

After 5pm George is on his own again. That's when he and his paper really let rip. Come the morning, not one book will have retained its cover (George prefers them without). Newspapers will have been dissected. The sport will be quickly disposed of but the deaths and obituaries, the history and culture, the human interest or quirky facts, will all be pored over, retained and shared with the next morning's support worker.

It has to be said that some people are more appreciative than others, but I'm generally happy to start the day being regaled with the life story of a recently deceased celebrity, while sitting in a sea of paper.

 Jennifer Harvey works with people with autism

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