'The Kirk's Best Kept Secret'

Tuesday August 19 2014

Jackie Macadam meets Dr Sally Bonnar, Convener of the Church’s Social Care Committee.

“WE have so much to offer the Church as a whole, and to churches individually.”

Dr Sally Bonnar, Convener of the Church of Scotland’s Social Care Committee (CrossReach), is passionate about the organisation’s work – and the work it could do for churches across the country.

“Time and again I hear about churches and church organisations who are paying out a lot of money for input from experts from outside charities and other institutions for advice and training, when we at CrossReach have so much experience and expertise we could offer if only people would think about us and come to us.

“We’re not just care homes and activities for old people. The core care is there of course, but we can offer so very much more.”

A medical doctor, child and adolescent psychiatrist, long-time committed Christian and an elder at Perth North Church, Sally is an enthusiast.

Hailing from the west coast, she moved to Glasgow to study medicine in 1969 and stayed there for ten years.

While there, she met her future husband, David, while they both sang with Sandyford Henderson Church of Scotland choir.

They married in 1977 and their first son, Stephen, arrived in 1979.

In 1980 the young family moved to Newcastle where David had taken a job as House Manager at the Theatre Royal. Her second son, Andrew, was born in 1981.

When Andrew was a year old Sally went back into training as a psychiatrist and developed an interest in child and adolescent psychiatry.

“I appreciated the opportunity to be able to perhaps allow a youngster to receive intervention at a time when it would stop them going on to develop worse problems later on in life.

“It helps parents understand their children better; helping them become therapists for their own child in a way.

“Mental illness is terribly stigmatising – to the parents as well as the young patients. For people with a physical impairment there seems to be a degree of sympathy because the ailment can be seen. Young people with serious mental health problems seem not to receive the same kind of sympathy in general.”

Four years later the family moved again, this time to Perth where David had taken the position of General Manager at Perth Theatre.

This time they stayed, and have been there now for around 30 years.

Sally worked with the Children and Adolescents Mental Health Service (CAMHS) for 20 years, and latterly, as clinical lead in the North of Scotland planning group Tier 4 CAMHS unit, developing a specialised psychiatric service for 12 to 18-year-olds suffering from very serious mental health conditions.

The call to work with the Church was ever-present. Sally had been a member of what was then the Board of Social Responsibility (later CrossReach) and became the Vice-Convener half way through her second term.

“CrossReach is a true mission of the Church. Everyone can be involved in it in one way or another. CrossReach should be able to connect more deeply with local churches, the projects and groups they support, to allow them to access our expertise and our experience.

CrossReach are already involved in helping church projects across Scotland.

Sally adds: “Use us. Please. Remember us. Use our skills and our knowledge. Just ask.

“We’ve been told in CrossReach that we are, in some ways, the Kirk’s best-kept secret.

Read more about the work of CrossReach at www.crossreach.org.uk

This a shortened version of an article which appears in the August issue of Life and Work. Subscribe here