PROFILE
Changing faces
Adam Campbell learns how this innovative charity is working to make life more manageable for people with facial or other disfigurements
T
O WALK down the street, oblivious to those around you, except perhaps for the occasional glance from a passer-by,
is an everyday occurrence for most people. For Linzie, who grew up in Fife in the 1970s and now lives in Kirkcaldy, such anonymity would be nothing short of a luxury. Born with a double hare lip, a cleſt palate, hydrocephalus and three missing fingers, she has always attracted more than a little interest from passers-by – and frequently it has been negative. From a young age, she says: “I would
dread going out. It was like, ‘Am I going to actually get to where I’m going and back without being bullied?’ It was constant. I’d come in and, you know, I’d be really upset. My mum would be the one who I would scream at. At school I was bullied very much because of looking different. Tankfully I was born before all the mobile phones and that kind of bullying started. But it got quite bad.” Linzie had operations all through
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childhood and into her 20s, helping to change her appearance and stabilise her medical situation, but for a long time she remained extremely nervous about interacting with people she didn’t know well. “I used to be so shy. I couldn’t speak to anybody without getting really embarrassed.”
Society obsessed with appearance James Partridge, the founder and CEO of the charity Changing Faces, understands Linzie’s predicament better than most. In 1970, at the age of 18, he was involved in a car fire that leſt him with 40 per cent burns on his body and face. His recovery was prolonged and he remained profoundly disfigured. With much understatement, he describes first facing the difficult business of going out into the world: “I suddenly thought, I actually have to walk down the street. I have to try and rejoin this society, which is rather appearance-focused – and I’m not looking at my best, as it were.” It was the realisation that the
rehabilitation he required went far beyond the surgery and the dressings that ultimately led him, in 1990, to write a book, Changing Faces, about his experiences. It was well received and before he knew it he was setting up a charity of the same name, to pass on his unique insights and fight for the rights of people with disfigurement. “It was a very small, tiny thing, with two
goals. One was to support individuals and their families to regain or build confidence and to have the health system helping them to do that. Te second was to transform public attitudes from being rather uninformed and, dare we say it, stigmatising to being positive and inclusive.” Twenty-four years later, Changing Faces
is a £1.8 million charity employing around 30 people and supporting the estimated 540,000 people in the UK with a disfiguring condition to their face, hands or body – be it from birth, accident, cancer surgery, skin and eye conditions, facial paralysis or medical accidents.
More than physical needs One of the fundamental reasons for setting up Changing Faces, says James, was to address the gap he perceived in the available therapy for people with disfigurement: the need for a psychosocial aspect to what was already very good physical care. “It’s clear that around 30 per cent of people
cope quite well and quickly, but actually 60-70 per cent really don’t, and some never do. Time isn’t necessarily a great healer. People have come to see us 20 years later saying, ‘Actually my life has been pretty horrible. I’ve felt isolated, I’ve been distressed and I’ve been on antidepressants.’ Tat, in my view, is a failure of the medical system.” As part of its support for individuals, the charity has developed a care package called
SUMMONS
PHOTOGRAPHS: YAKUB MERCHANT FOR CHANGING FACES
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