Love — it’s a matter of life or death for care experienced people

Tony McDonald 7th March 1988 – 2nd September 2022

Tony McDonald 7th March 1988 – 2nd September 2022

LOVE. If you believe that children in care must be loved. If you have campaigned for it, or tried to make it a reality, then you have been influenced in no small part by Tony McDonald.

Today this might seem like an obvious statement, but a decade ago the dominant narrative in social work meant love was an unrealistic and naïve expectation, as it was hard enough to keep children in care physically safe.

But Tony changed that. His powerful and determined narrative on his own tumultuous childhood, made delivering LOVE the central purpose to care systems across the world. He gave many working in the care system, who already knew in their own hearts that love was essential, the permission to work differently towards creating loving relationships.

The seminal day was at the Association of Directors of Social Work Conference in 2012. I remember him standing centre stage in the Crieff Hydro with two other care experienced activists, Mercy and Caroline, talking to 500 social work leaders about the impact care had on him. He looked directly at the Directors of Social Work in Scotland and told them how their ‘care’ had not just failed to love him, but added to his trauma. He didn’t do this angrily but with, passion, power and absolute clarity. “When I was a scared wee boy all I needed was a cuddle and love, but all I got was pinned to the floor and restrained.” This was a line that was repeated and resonated across the world — in Parliaments from Holyrood in Scotland to the Beehive in New Zealand. It gave Parliamentary Committees, to Funders Forums, to Prison Service Boards to hundreds of Corporate Parents to First Ministers and Prime Ministers and all who sat around Cabinet tables a mandate to think differently and the courage to act differently. I heard his voice in the speeches’ of others in Number 10, and to the UN where his care experienced peers demanded love become a right for all children. He set the benchmark for a global realisation that care systems were broken and had to change.

The 2014 Act put the reform of care on the map. Notionally it raised the care leaving age in all care settings in Scotland to 21, but in reality it opened Pandora’s Box on the need for the complete transformation of a dysfunctional care system. This realisation has reached much further than Scotland’s shores. On a personal level, it was Tony who gave me faith in the unstinting belief that care was broken but there was hope, and that the love of people in communities was a key part of the solution.

Tony more than anyone articulated why LOVE had to be at the centre of any child’s care experience. He knew personally that therapy, support, patience and money were needed too, but that they were not going to make any difference unless a child felt unconditionally loved. Tony didn’t stand in front ‘expert’ audiences and expect acceptance; neither did he seek accolades. He just wanted change. He did it in memory of his wee brother Jonny who was failed by care and died aged 16, and he did it because he didn’t think his own Mum should have been left to suffer with judgement and no support.

He didn’t attack people, but instead inspired them. The Scottish Parliament’s Education & Culture Committee came on a site visit to Who Cares? Scotland to inform their scrutiny of the Children & Young People’s Act 2014. Such was Tony’s impact, that 5 years later the Scottish politician Neil Findlay, who was involved with the passage of the 2014 Act, was still asking after him. I remember Aileen Campbell, as a new Children’s Minister in Scotland, being left open-mouthed at the power of his oratory and message when she first listened to Tony.

Tony captivating yet another audience.

His ability to communicate came from his heart and desire to make the world a better place. It didn’t come from school or care, those were places that continually rejected and ostracised him, leaving him to fully learn to read and write in his early 20s when most other young people are at university.

Tony was frank in his admission that as an adolescent he was on a path to be killed or to kill. This wasn’t a sensationalist statement, or one of shame, it was a sad fact about the scared, wired and toughened boy he had been. Within 3 months of being released from Secure Care, where he was kept for his own safety, he was in prison to keep society safe. He would bounce in and out of incarceration over the next 6 ½ years in an ever increasing cycle of destruction, addiction, pain and hopelessness. Tony talked about being fevered-up with excitement on the night before yet another release, like a wee boy on Christmas Eve, only to realise within hours of being free that he was ill-equipped on how to function far less thrive in the world outside.

It was an inner steel and a deeper love and respect for his Mum that stopped him destructively revenging his brother and taking the harder choice to confront his inner pain and vulnerabilities. His sub-conscious level of maturity and determination to go on this journey of recovery must have been immense. Shonagh McEwan (Tony’s biographer) reckons Tony had the determination and grit of an Olympian, this was titanically destructive for many years, but it was also what kept him on the path to salvation. It led Tony to the light and the beauty that he held within himself and shone on to others.

It should be a great source of pride for many that Tony beat the odds and succeeded in living life to the full. That he did so, is also due to many people’s patience tolerance and love. He drew hope from his Mum’s love and how she won her own battles. He drew belief he could do it from ‘wee Margaret Diamond’ who at Jericho House Rehab centre in Greenock, told Tony ‘I will Love you until you can love yourself’, and by God she did. Tony was clear that Margaret Diamond (no one has ever been more appropriately named) was the catalyst that enabled him to heal his addicted, traumatised body and mind. Over 18 months in a residential rehab centre, Tony learnt to love himself and recognise the joys in the wider world around him. If people want to know how to solve some of our drugs deaths in Scotland — go meet Margaret.

Perhaps it was learning to love himself that enabled him to love Nicola, Tony’s partner of the last 7 years and Zara their wee girl. Tony’s message is palpable in the life he lived — love for yourself, helps you give and receive the nourishing love of others. This helps create happiness. Tony’s life also demonstrated that it is never too late to choose this path — it was his salvation.

He is one of a very few people I’ve known who were ravaged by addiction and the brutality of a failing system that found the inner-strength, tools and support to truly develop and maintain their peace. That and the love of good women.

Tony embodied why we as people or organisations should never have steadfast rules. Tony arrived in my life at Who Cares? Scotland in 2011. Argyll & Bute Council wanted to know, ‘If we’d employ a care leaver if they paid his wages?’ Yeah sure, I said, but I also asked ‘why aren’t they doing it?’ Their response was because he had a criminal record. I’m proud that we didn’t immediately check that record to see if he was ‘fit to work’ in our organisation, being an organisation that was there to serve him. It was enough that his primary Corporate Parent — Argyll & Bute Council — knew he deserved a chance and also knew that their bureaucracy would stop them from doing so.

We were right to take a chance on Tony and thankfully others did too. When Tony was invited to New Zealand to engage their social work profession and care experienced community by the Minister for Social Development Anne Tolley, they too took a risk. You are only allowed a visa for New Zealand if you have spent less than two years in prison. Tony failed that criteria by 4 ½ years, his police check alone had over 10 pages of offences on it. Minister Tolley was unperturbed by this information. She marched across the Bee Hive and button-holed the Minister for Foreign Affairs and got Tony an exemption. In less than a week a visa was secured for Tony who should have been barred from New Zealand for life. He landed on their shores and left an indelible impact for the best of reasons. He toured the nation giving up to 3 lectures a day and is still remembered fondly there. When I said he might like to stay on and travel a bit — he said, ‘Travel a bit? I’ve travelled to the other end of the world, I cannae go any further you big daft eejit.

Tony outside Beehive (NZ Parliament 2016)

Beyond the sense of purpose that Tony gave to so many of us, he was also honest about how careful and sensitive we must be. When Tony left WC?S, he told us that the time that scared him the most with us was his first day. The day he nearly walked on by and never entered our office. He said he spent a long time on our doorstep summoning the courage to press the buzzer. Here was the hard-man from the streets, gangs and prison left feeling uncertain and scared by an office. He talked of how he felt inadequate, almost ashamed that he didn’t know how to turn on a computer. He knew he was entering an alien culture, where he was not tuned into the culture of our ‘professional office world’. Put Tony on a wing in a prison and he could rule the roost, but not an office, he felt he had no currency there. It meant confronting his inadequacies, showing his weaknesses and being at risk of shame. He showed us that the environments so many of us set up to ‘help people’ are inadvertently inaccessible, scary, middle-class or academic, where people stress about pedantic things like language, dress and signing-in etiquette. Small irrelevancies in most of our daily lives were nearly the major stumbling blocks that could have impeded his recovery.

Tony developed at Who Cares? Scotland and his role evolved away from leading campaigns into youth work. He ran groups and helped many other young care experienced people (and older ones) feel safe to connect and explore their care identity. Tony was a leader when he needed to be too. I remember him challenging, in part in jest, one of our staff; ‘will you no own your care identity, are you too good to be seen with the rest of us?’ He made what felt like big psychological leaps into seeming like safer, natural steps, where he’d be there to show them the way.

He left Who Cares? Scotland to work for Barnardo’s supported accommodation. This was a residential provision for young lads as they transitioned out of care. Tony could connect with these boys as he had lived in their shoes. But being a professional delivering service in the current care system was too much for Tony at that time. He found himself constrained by structures and policies of a system that didn’t allow Tony to bring all of himself to work. Ultimately being asked to leave his care identity at the door, was not something he could comfortably do and wasn’t healthy for him. Even though he talked of a good manager there, the slow pace of change was suffocating him and seeing too many lads pass on the conveyor belt to homelessness, addiction and prison was not sustainable for him.

Tony didn’t stop being an activist or leave care behind, instead he was a realist whose inner-self knew what it took to sustain his equilibrium. He knew the process of reform and its slow pace wasn’t acceptable. But he also knew it wouldn’t give him the nourishment to sustain him or keep his own recovery safe. I’ve seen others affected similarly take equally mature and courageous steps to step back for a time or realise some environments are not right for them. I think there is perhaps a level of wisdom and insight here from Tony, for many of us to reflect and learn from.

Tony helped us hold the line where we had to continually juxtapose the safety of supporting people to be candid and sometimes vulnerable in a spotlight, whilst making sure important messages were heard, not for the thrill but to stimulate action. He taught me the art of story-telling, how to take people to a moment in time, to describe the ordinary with extraordinary consequences; to the smell of a breath, the words said, the action taken, the feelings generated and the impact this had. Tony demonstrated how to portray vulnerabilities and strengths, but most importantly to give hope.

Alongside other activists, finding their own voice and narrative, Tony was the one who could really cut through and make it OK. He could do it because he’d done the work on himself. Months and months of therapy, writing and thinking and structure had helped him heal. Understanding his story and telling and re-telling it had been part of his healing, especially with those who listened non-judgementally and with compassion. He hoped it could help a hopelessly lost care system heal.

But Tony did none of this to satisfy his ego. One of Tony’s standout values was his humility. Tony more than anyone taught me that feeding an ego, to crave success and visibility does not help heal trauma, nor does it give purpose to your existence. It can be self-destructive and damaging to others too. It doesn’t bring belonging or peace. I never saw anyone who the accolades and congratulations from high up people had so little impact. He didn’t care for their opinion, he cared that they had the power to make change happen and that they would do it. When Tony, alongside other care experienced campaigners were nominated in the 2014 Young Scot Awards in a glitzy ceremony surrounded by celebrities, Tony did his duty and no more. He collected the award in the community category and did a media interview, but by the time the care experienced community were celebrating being crowned overall Young Scots of the Year, Tony was back home having a cup of tea.

Tony did though care how he was turned out. He was forever smart and dapper, helped by a frame honed by many hours keeping his mind and body healthy in the gym or in the hills or on a bike. He forever thought I was scruffy. I’m not sure he even listened to my fashion advice when I pointed out it was daft to iron his pants.

Tony was a pioneer, one of the giants many others have walked on the shoulders of since. His last message to me this summer was; ‘Who Cares was the best work I did to help change, but when I stepped outside I seen for myself it was a lot more than change that was needed. But it’s better to die trying.’

If you work in the reform of care — take Tony’s courage with you — take the risk like people did for Tony. It isn’t incremental change that he needed but radical transformation and look what was achieved when courage was shown and risk was taken by Tony and others.

Never forget the power of Tony McDonald. His life might have been curtailed cruelly short, but there are few people who experienced his childhood and young adulthood who would live three times as long and whose legacy would do so much good for so many. How he transformed from a scared and unloved boy into a man who loved, and was loved, was astonishing — take hope from it as Tony would want that to be his legacy.

When I was leaving Who Cares? Scotland in 2020, I messaged Tony and said ‘I can’t tell you the impact you’ve made on me and change in general. I’m going to make you sit down and listen to it one day. I love you pal. Dx’.

This is my snapshot for you Tony of the impact that you, such a humble, beautiful, giant of a man has had. Thank you and Yours Aye with LOVE

Tony campaigning for change in Scotland

ENDS.

Duncan Dunlop 9th October 2022.