Need, not judgment, on our city's streets

THE streets do not own the poor. Many of the needy have shelter but that can mean they are out of sight, desperately alone, failing to cope, often in squalor.

The Brown Nurses find them. They have been doing it for almost 100 years, and without a cent of government funding.

In 1913, when there was no welfare safety net and entry to hospitals required payment, Eileen O'Connor - a young woman from a poor Irish family, who had been crippled in a childhood accident - and Father Edward McGrath founded the Society of Our Lady's Nurses for the Poor.

Based in Coogee, they started with seven women who went door-to-door wearing the cloaks, hats and veils of the nurses of the day, though in practical brown. They would soon be dubbed the Brown Nurses. O'Connor would tell them: ''The cause of a person's poverty is not yours to question. The fact a person is poor is the reason you help.''

This philosophy, which drives the nurses to this day, echoes Mother Mary MacKillop's mantra: ''Never see a need without doing something about it.''

MacKillop, of course, is soon to become Australia's first saint, the Vatican having accepted evidence of her second miracle. But few have heard of the Brown Nurses. Jonathon Welch, the famed conductor behind the Choir of Hard Knocks and Jail Birds, televised by the ABC, was not aware of them until he agreed to become their patron this year.

On the day that the Herald accompanies one of the Brown Nurses, Mary, on her rounds in inner Sydney, we witness no miracles. But we do witness the kind of daily wonders that are the nurses' stock in trade. She arrives with provisions, administers medication, helps manage money. She sneaks in the odd tidy-up. And all the while - good-humoured and non-judgmental - she chats.

''I couldn't live without them,'' says Don*, on his weekly excursion to the supermarket. The Brown Nurses are entrusted with $100 of his pension. Half they give to Don - his walk-around money for tobacco, transport, whatever. The other half is for groceries. Mary offers gentle encouragement in the direction of nutritious food. It doesn't always work.

Like four of the five men we will visit this morning, Don suffers from schizophrenia. So does Ben, in his 70s. For the past 11 years, Ben says, the Brown Nurses have been the only visitors to his Woolloomooloo public housing flat. ''It breaks the loneliness,'' he says. ''It means you're wanted.''

First it was the nuns, Ben says, now the lay nurses like Mary. The Vatican gave canonical status to the society in 1953. The order expanded to Brisbane, Newcastle, Campbelltown and Kings Cross. A small and ageing group of the nuns still works in the community. However, with dwindling vocations, they pay professional nurses to continue their mission. They rely solely on private donations, as they did in the beginning.

''We do not seek government money,'' explains Caroline Duhigg, the Brown Nurses' director of services. It is critical that they remain independent, unfettered by red tape, free to give ''holistic'' and non-judgmental care to the poor in their homes.

''Of course, home can be the gutter,'' says Sister Trish Davis, at Our Lady's Home at Coogee. When she joined the order in 1964, ''I was packed off to study nursing''. Then they would commonly tend to people crippled with arthritis or suffering illnesses such as cancer. Better drugs, diagnosis and referrals have relieved the nurses of much of that work, so they have gone to where the need is.

''We're seeing many more of the mentally ill,'' she says.

The organisation often helps the homeless move from the street to public housing. On her rounds, Mary mentions a man who returns to the street some weekends ''to be with his community''.

''You have to let go of what you want for them,'' she says. ''It's about what they need.''

Bill, in his flat in a tower at Waterloo, needs coffee and consoling. Mary gives him both. Bill wants to flee his toxic relationship with two men. They stand over him, force him to buy their marijuana. One takes his food. And yet they are his community of sorts.

The sun breaches a tatty Australian flag that serves as Bill's curtain. He squints as he asks whether he should seek a housing transfer or wait for his tormentors to move? This may become a case for the Brown Nurses' advocacy.

Eileen O'Connor was buried at Randwick in 1921. But in December 1936 her body was exhumed and moved to the chapel of her order's mother house at Coogee.

''Her body was found to be intact,'' says Caroline Duhigg. ''Traditionally, that has been the sign of a holy and blameless life.''

Mary MacKillop, she notes, is buried in her mother house at North Sydney. ''The parallels between these two women are noteworthy.''

*All names have been changed.

Source: www.smh.com.au/national/need-not-judgment-on-our-citys-streets-20091225-lf06.html