Meet our Chair, Stephen Redman MBE

York

“I came here for university in 1977, and since then I really sort of felt I belonged here but we didn't actually move here till '94. But I've been in Yorkshire since I was one year old. So, I consider myself a Yorkshire person, and I've lived within 23 miles radius of where I'm living now for the last 66 years of my life, I suppose.

“My favourite thing about living here is coming home. When I drive back into York, the thing that always hits me is I get to live here where 6 million people come and visit every year. And they go away and they think, “Oh, that must be a nice place to live.” But this is actually home for me.”

Career

“I didn’t start out in the ministry.  I was a retail manager for 21 years, starting off in specialist hi-fi. So, in the 1980s, I would sell you a hi-fi system for £5,000. Then I moved into retail of computers when computers were just becoming the thing that everybody had to have one.  And I spent my last seven years in retail working for PC World as a store manager.

“In some ways, I don't see much of a difference between working in retail, the ministry or volunteering. In every role I’ve worked with people - people facing challenges, tough times and good times. All of my work I think has given me a realistic view of people, and how to support them when they need it.”

Family

“I've been married to Pauline for 43 years, and my general feeling is I think I'm going to keep her! We're quite besotted and people still go, “Oh no, look at them.” But we're very happy and I'm very blessed to have her in my life. We've got three daughters, Libby, who's 37. Melody, who's 36, and Arielle, who's 34.

“We're all very close. One of the things that I always believe has made us this close is that we had a little boy called Rocky. And Rocky died when he was 7 after a three-year battle with cancer.

“And so I've also been very involved in working with parents who have a child with cancer, and of course, particularly those that have lost a child. That resulted in me becoming chairman of Candlelighters, the Yorkshire children's charity, and later I became the chairman of the Family Support Committee.

“When I first started getting involved, I remember the matron on the ward saying, “Stephen, are you sure you want to do this? Because most people, when they have a loss, we never see them again.”

“And I said, “Well, I don't understand that, because so many of the nurses and the doctors really became people over a three-year period that I felt very attached to. And childhood cancer may be the biggest killer, other than accident, amongst children in our country, but it's still a tiny number of people. Most GPs will maybe see one child with cancer during their entire working life. We're talking about something that's that rare. And I think for that reason if you cut yourself off from the structures of treatment and the people that work in it then I think you are cutting yourself off from the reality of something that's had a big impact on you.”

“And I mean, we had almost three full and fantastic years walking through the doors of the Leeds General Hospital. So, I started to volunteer to welcome parents and invite them to sit with me for an hour and tell me their stories.”

Leeds General Hospital volunteering

“I remember one day, where I used to sit, I could see the lift at the end of the corridor open. And one day the lift opens, and this guy, who was built like a real rugby player, stormed out of this lift angry. And he stormed down, and I figured, this guy's going to hit me.

“So, I quickly cut a piece of gateaux, put it on a plate, and I held it in front of me, and I’m thinking “Well if he hits me now I'll probably get this in the face, which may cushion the blow, and it might also be quite tasty!”

“I said, “Take this.” And he took it in his hand, he sat down.

“I said, “How do you take your coffee?” Gave him his coffee.

‘And I said, “Now, tell me what's just happened.”

‘And he said to me, “I've just come up seven flights in that lift with an old woman who has done nothing but whine about the pain she has in her foot because she's had an operation for a bunion. And this morning, they told me, my daughter's going to die! I wanted to strangle her.”

“He said, “I wanted to hit her head against the wall.”

“And I remember thinking, “Oh, Lord God, what do I say to this man?”

“And I said to him, “You know, pain is real. And when you're suffering, you're suffering. And when she's suffering, she's suffering. You can't compare pain with pain. You just have to accept someone else's pain.”

“And I said, “I know a woman who lives on our street. She had that operation a few months back, and she's still walking with a stick. I know that it's painful. But the pain that we're going through, well, that's a bit different, isn't it? But it's still there. Personal pain.”

“And the man began to cry, and I hugged him and I thought well that's turned out very different to what I'd expected when I saw him getting out of that lift. And I think this carries over into Amarna House. It carries over into church ministry and church life.

“Back then I had still been working in retail, and both my wife and I realised that our work felt relatively meaningless, and we needed to do something that helped more people. And so my wife got a degree and became a teacher, and she has continued to teach these many years. And I went and became a minister. And in both ways, I hope we've sort of helped. Sometimes by volunteering and sometimes by paid work, but it's definitely a matter of being there for people.”

Friends of Amarna House Care Home

“Since being a child, church has always had an involvement for me with care homes. When I was probably 9 years old, there was a brand new care home built near the church that I attended, and we started going in there I think maybe once a fortnight to give them a Sunday service.

“So, when I planted this church here in York, which is called the Ark Church, we immediately started looking for a connection with a local care home. And, personally, I always feel that people in care homes can get forgotten by the community.

“I met David Wood for a coffee and heard about the Friends of Care Home work and that was that. It’s been 13 or so years now since I first became the chair of the Friends of Amarna House Care Home.

“When I think about the value of volunteering in care homes I immediately think of this one lady who from the day she moved into Amarna House until the day we got the first volunteers in, no one had ever visited her. She had no family and she just sat alone in a corner in a chair. And that first visitor changed her life. She lived for another three years, I think, in the home. The fact that she knew there were people who would come and spend time with her was revolutionary.

“I’ve met so many people over the years. We just sit down and we share the day and we experience life together.

“I've found over the last 13 years at Amarna House that there are many people who do come into the care home with a church background. But of the typically 25 that come to a Sunday service, actually, there's probably only seven or eight of them from a church background, and the rest of them are people who are hungry for something. And they don't even quite know what they're hungry for. But they want to engage.

“Volunteers, visitors, befrienders, people offering spiritual support, whatever it is, these people offer a huge support to these people who, until the day they were wheeled into the care home, were considered as the lady in the street, the gentleman across the road. People that others would go to the pub with, who they would know them from the supermarket, they knew them from the post office. It's just very sad that, as a society, we really quickly forget them.

“In fact, I think that largely when someone goes into a care home, people in the street think they've died. I knew a lady that lived in Amarna House for seven and a half years, and a very, very full life she had. But the people from the street that she lived on before thought that she died.

“That was seven and a half years of very productive life overlooked by the community. But this is where volunteers make a huge difference. They made a huge difference in that woman's life.

“I knew her well, and I knew that she was into writing poetry, and we had a volunteer who taught creative writing, so we paired them up. Once a week this volunteer used to come in and give her an hour, and this lady in Amarna House built up an exercise book of all her notes and poems.”

The power of song

“One of the things we do is that we go in and we sing hymns. When we go into the care home, we practice old style hymns because we think people may have had some memory of school assemblies.

“Once I went into the wing in Amarna House dedicated to people who have stopped engaging with people at all. And there's a guy in there, we'll call him Mike. I said, “Well, now we're going to sing you a hymn you might remember, And can it be, that I should gain, an interest in the Saviour's blood?” And three or four of us stand up and sing.  And Mike, I didn't know he could stand, but he stood bolt upright. And he sang the hymn. Word perfect, all four verses. And then sat down again.

“And at the end, the senior nurse on the unit said to me, “You do know what's just happened, don't you?” And I said, “Well, I know something's happened, because I saw all this flurry of activity in the background, but I don’t know what’s happened?” She said,

“The activity was me getting all the staff in the building to come and see because in the 18-months Mike’s been in the unit, he has never interacted with anybody verbally.”

“And he had just stood up and sang four verses, without a word sheet, and got them all, nailed them. And then when he sat down, that was it. It was finished again.

“I had no idea that it was having that effect. Which for me shows a couple of things. It shows that people remember words that they've learned with music from many, many years previously. But it also showed me that there was something happening in him, because at the end of the song, there was a little tear dripping down his face.

“I will never ever forget Mike. He's long since dead now, but I shared that moment with him, which for me is something I'll never forget.”
The power of volunteering

“I think, whatever your motivation is, whatever the driving force that's made you do this thing, I think that volunteering is positively life changing to so many people, even to you, the volunteer.
“I think volunteering is really a vital part of society.”