The Grenfell survivors don’t need our pity – they need homes | Deborah Orr

The first duty was to make those affected feel safe and secure again. Surely that’s the very least they deserve

John Green, the psychologist who leads the mental health response to the Grenfell fire, says the disaster has transformed the local NHS trust into “the largest trauma service in the UK”. It’s not just the survivors of the fire who are affected. Many people in the community are haunted by what they saw, smelled, felt, heard, learned and imagined that appalling night and in those dreadful following days.

The singularity of Grenfell is that those affected are concentrated in a stable community. It’s not like the typical terror attack, which will usually strike many people from disparate places just visiting or passing through. Grenfell is tightly knit – a dense site of shared trauma.

Related: Grenfell Tower mental health response 'largest of its kind in Europe'

Continue reading... December 08, 2017 at 09:03PM