The British School of Osteopathy community clinics

Instead they have instituted a series of community clinics across the London Borough of Southwark, as well as satellite clinics in Bethnal Green and at the Royal Free Hospital.  Here, some of London's least advantaged citizens can get free treatment.   They range from babies, to HIV positive adults, pensioners and homeless people.

On the one hand, the choice is pragmatic: it allows BSO students to see all human life, and emerge mentally flexible and unshockable when they graduate.  But the programme is also part of their drive for ‘osteopathy for everyone’.  The School also gives bursaries so that a wide church of people can train as osteopaths and not, as principal Charles Hunt puts it, ‘just people with plummy voices like me.’

A journey around some of the School's clinics shows just how many different Southwarks exist in a few square miles.  At the School's light, wavy-corridored headquarters, sessions for HIV positive clients take place three mornings a week.  The work here is far more than a fix for a stiff  back or neck - it's a general MOT in the battle to stay well.  

Robin Wright has been living with HIV for 16 years, and has become an expert in his own illness.  He says 'the long term effect of complex medication and ageing with HIV is taking us into uncharted territory.  There is no road map.  Doctors have a really specialist knowledge of the drugs, but HIV services can still be very unintegrated. This is the only place I come where people look at my health as a whole.' 

The tutors who run the service have a specialist interest in HIV-infection, drug therapies, and their associated complications, and musculo-skeletal conditions.

Another man emphasises the psychological impact: ‘you never forget about HIV – it’s a cloud over your head the whole time and you don’t know when it’s going to close in.  Coming here keeps me supple and helps stay well.' 

Osteopathy for homeless people 

A mile across the borough the Manna Centre, a day facility for the homeless, is serving lunch.   Here sixty or seventy destitute people, mostly men, gather for pasta.  BSO's weekly osteopathy clinic operates from a back room.  Clinic tutor Emma Chippendale says 'Sometimes with this client group you have to ditch the script.  A woman came in last week who was just shaking and shaking.  So I just asked her a bare minimum of questions, then treated for a bit, then asked another question.  Earlier today she came back with a packet of cakes for us - she was so grateful.'

All the students who work at these clinics are supervised by a qualified osteopath, but as tutor Paul Blanchard says 'I'm constantly impressed with how the students cope. Challenged by new stuations, such as treating prisoners under guard in our hospital clinic, they rise to the occassion admirably.'

 Length of care varies from patient to patient.  Users like Robin Wright rely on osteopathy to 'put them together again' each week, and older clients may need regular care to keep flexible despite arthritis.  By contrast, young users often need just short intervention, perhaps for colic, or as a part of primary school 'body learning classes'. Nevertheless, the curing of colic, as any parent will testify, can be a life changing transformation –  helping exhausted parents, as well as easing a fractious infant.

All this work isn't ‘on the side’ activity  – students will do many sessions in these projects before they go out into the world.   These sessions are the natural output of a liberal vision and desire to share which seems to permeate the whole School.  The community clinics also help to create highly experienced, well-rounded osteopaths for the future - which is good news for well-heeled clients too.