Genesis: Friend or Foe

Using digital filmmaking to educate and protect vulnerable people

In 2006 Genesis Community was asked to identify gaps in the Group’s service provision and propose ways to fill them. Their tenant population includes vulnerable older people, and residents with learning difficulties, disabilities or mental health problems. When they consulted residents, some of whom had difficulties paying their rent, they discovered a number of tenants were being subjected to a subtle form of abuse known as ‘false befriending’. The perpetrators catch old and vulnerable people off guard with a plausible story and then coerce them into parting with money. It can be via email, in person, by phone or by letter, but the effects can be devastating. The scammers do it for a living. Some operate locally, insinuating themselves into their victims’ lives by posing as friends; others operate by mail from other countries. Both approaches defy intervention: Trading Standards officials and Citizen’s Advice Bureau staff say it is too hard to bring the abusers to book. Besides, when the victims do realise that they’ve ‘been had’, they often feel stigmatised and too embarrassed to report the matter to anyone.

Genesis Community’s Sue-Jane O’Keefe was tasked to look at ways to address and expose this insidious and unpleasant abuse and, ideally, to stamp it out. In previous work at Age Concern Sue-Jane had become aware of the scamming problem. “But when we started asking questions it was horrifying to find how extensive this abuse was. One resident was using almost all his state benefits to buy exorbitantly priced hair products from someone in The Netherlands in order to qualify for a ‘free’ holiday & “cheque” that he had been told he had won. Another was being conned into lending money to a ‘false befriender’ living on the same housing estate. Another was being charged 1500% interest on a loan.”

Sue-Jane discovered that some printed materials already existed for tackling the problem, “but the abused people we wanted to help can have reading difficulties or prefer other methods of communication. I saw that we had to do something different … something visual and experiential.”

A DVD seemed to fit the bill. The first aim was to build and train a team of people to make a difference and secondly to raise the profile of this subtle abuse and help protect people.

Sue-Jane saw that the approach had to involve people who had suffered or knew of others who had suffered this form of abuse and wanted to protect others by forewarning and empowering them to recognise and deal with it. She envisaged a programme segmented into bite-sized chunks for different viewers: healthcare professionals, carers, and individuals themselves’.

Sue-Jane’s project was awarded a £20,000 as part of NESTA’s Innovations in Mental Health project. Genesis Community seconded her time to the project at no cost and she engaged a local filmmaker, Jason Gleeson, who had experience of working with vulnerable people including people with substance misuse problems.

The project’s original name was ‘Exposing subtle abuse’, but when they tested this with the target audiences some people were put off by this and it was dropped in favour of ‘Friend or Foe DVD’. Work started in November 2007 by talking with carers and relatives of Genesis’s vulnerable customers, as well as consulting local mental health organisations and groups, mental health professionals, Primary Care Trusts and Local Authorities about content and distribution.

The volunteers were people who had decided to stand up & talk about it “… because if not, it’s not going to stop”. They were invited to describe real-life situations in which subtle abuse had occurred. In some cases this was the first time they had admitted to anyone that they had been or were being conned. Their scenarios were written up and developed into story lines.

Some of the tenants were then persuaded to act parts; others were inducted as film crew. “Most have enduring mental health problems. We engaged with them by offering a real sense of purpose, and not money. And we fitted them out with exclusive film crew T-shirts and caps to engender real ownership for the project – the important factor was that our tenants were involved in aspects of the film making, from the storyline, to set design, acting, and editing.”

Following a series of consultative workshops a set was built and the participants were bussed in to film, or were filmed in their local areas. Scripting and shooting took eight months; editing and production took a further two months. The film-maker Jason published blogs and video content on MySpace throughout the duration of the project, so tenants could provide feedback. On completion of shooting he edited the film stock and arranged for the DVDs to be made and boxed.

The result is Giantlands a 26-minute video set in 2060 when a flood had submerged East London. The stories it tells help to raise vulnerable people’s feelings of self-worth, with the aim of making them ‘job ready’ and employable.

Three hundred copies of the DVD have been disseminated to Housing Association tenants, Primary Care Trusts, organisations which support vulnerable people and those with mental health needs, housing providers, and also to media and PR people at relevant events. The DVD has now been entered in the Green Unplugged Film Festival and a videostreamed version is now available via a webhost in India and via MySpace.

The Friend or Foe project has raised the confidence of tenants within a safe environment and showed a positive side to mental health. The lives of many of the participants have been transformed. One participant was able to resume a lost interest in painting; another has enrolled at College to study filmmaking. One habitually wore a hat with a veil because of her perceived ugliness – but gained the confidence to leave it off for the film, and be a main actor in the DVD. Sue-Jane is particularly proud that one participant has now written a book and produced a DVD about homelessness and the road to recovery.

Sue-Jane sums up: “Our Friend or Foe DVD ‘Giantlands’ was a one-off project. Its purpose has been to get the maximum media coverage for the minimum outlay and to raise awareness about subtle abuse, and the harm this does cause. Its legacy is to get people to take positive action and to empower people so that they get advice and know what scams to watch out for … and not to be embarrassed if they have been scammed – it can happen to anyone.”