by Rachel Furniss, Health and Wellbeing Facilitator
MacIntyre’s Health Team have been grateful to receive funding for two signicant projects in recent years. We have broken down barriers surrounding dementia with our Dementia Project, and have recognised the need to support people to talk about death and dying with our Dying to Talk project
You may be thinking, 'what will MacIntyre do next?' Good question!
Our next funded project aims to raise awareness for people with learning disabilities and autistic people with a new "Let's Talk. Period.” project. This 12 month project, funded by Holland & Barrett, aims to break down barriers, tackle the taboos, and educate both staff, people who draw on support and families to have greater awareness on periods and menopause.
Rachel Furniss, MacIntyre’s Health and Wellbeing Facilitator leads this project and explains what the Health Team are aiming to achieve by shifting mindsets and providing education to aim for people to feel more comfortable to talk about periods and menopause.
Rachel says: "Let's be honest, periods and menopause, in fact women’s health in general, can be a taboo topic and not spoken about, it's the elephant in the room. Attitudes and support have improved over the last 10 years but change has been mainly in the mainstream population, and the younger generation, and has not recognised the need to support people with a learning disability and autistic people.
We started by scoping how best to approach the project. My first impressions were that the main focus would be needed in our younger people’s homes and schools - and we do need this -but from what we learnt it was clear that our focus needed to be to support people in their 30s and 40s. Some common things I heard were:
“I will have periods forever once they start”- 42 year old person
“Pain is normal and we just have to get on with it” - 36 year old person
“We don't talk about periods” - 32 year old person
We were surprised to hear what people were sharing, and are looking forward to changing attitudes.
I remember my education, reflecting back to a lesson I had around periods at school. The boys were taken to one room and the girls into another, the chalkboard would be pulled down and we were told which products were available (at the time it was just tampons and sanitary towels). The male teacher was clearly embarrassed to talk about this subject; it was delivered as quickly as possible, never to be discussed again. I was taught that although periods were natural it was "dirty and we should just deal with it". You can imagine my attitude then as a teenage girl, I was very confused and went on to feel a natural process was something I could never speak about.
Talking to my husband, they had even less education, and advised to give us chocolate, a hot water bottle and paracetamol. It's no wonder we are still struggling in certain areas when it comes to women’s menstrual health.
We are setting out to change these views and educate people at MacIntyre around menstrual health and menopause. We are creating news blogs and working groups to support this. We want more people to take charge of their periods and have choice about which products and medications they can take. This is already happening in MacIntyre and across parts of the UK. One lady, supported by MacIntyre said,
“I have medications prescribed to control the amount of time and flow. But this is my choice”
We want people in MacIntyre to talk more openly and use less jargon around periods, let's call it what it is, a period - not that time of the month or red week! Let's normalise talking periods and menopause with the hope of making this very natural part of a person’s life less taboo.
Let's Talk. Period!
