Hope in the Gaps & Dancing on Hills

by Wendy Lansdown On Twitter: @WendyLansdown

Rebel Alliance Breakfast: Left to right: Hilary, Donna, Zoe, Me, Ashling, Alice & Emily

You know how passing comments can sometimes really make you think?  In reference to the last blog an old colleague of mine Rob Fountain (who is now COO at Lives Through Friends CIC) said how we need ‘Gappers’ like me.  Not a term I’d heard before, he was referring to working in the space between services and the real world.  As I pondered, I warmed to it and realised how much I love working in the gaps, how much opportunity there is, hidden potential, ready to be unleashed.

Personally, I need gaps for reflecting too, rarely impulsive, I tend to take time for my ideas to shape.  But what I’m learning, is that sometimes it’s good to share reflections that aren’t fully formed, embracing and sharing the messy thoughts as we process them.  So, having just got back from a nourishing day at the Liberated Method conference yesterday, that’s what I’ll try to put into practice here,…it also gives me an excuse for any less well thought through elements!

There was such rich learning in the day, jam packed with insights and opportunities to learn and meet amazing people … by the end the sense of excitement amongst us all to put learning into practice was palpable.

One of the big messages from Mark and his team is that so much of what they have achieved is agnostic of the system.  Most of it could be done tomorrow.  So, even more reason to get started! 

And yet, despite starting the day brimming with ideas for things I could do to take the first step… as I sit down to write this having finished my first post-conference days’ work, I haven’t done anything different.  I’ve replied to the emails, I’ve done some reporting, a bit of connecting and convening, fairly useful things, but not the first step towards putting learning into action. I expect I’m not alone, the pull of the status quo is strong. So I’m writing this to hold myself to account. 

Yesterday began with an invite from Emily Brook to the beautifully titled ‘Rebel Alliance breakfast’.  She grew up in our patch and has moved away, now working for Care City where she’s doing intriguing work alongside Alice (of Ageable CIC ).  Emily holds a fondness for the fens, and we (Zoe, Ashling and I) are exploring whether there could be links to be made with our own work in the East Cambs Integrated Neighbourhood.  To be joined by Donna and Hilary before they took the stage was a real treat… we were buzzing before the conference even began.

You could feel the camaraderie in the hall as you walked in, 250 folk with shared values, similar purpose and what Mark brilliantly coined ‘Furiousity’ to change the broken system….

In the hours that followed our brains were filled with so much ammunition for how to get started, the nuts and bolts of the Liberated Method.  I’m not even going to try and tease them all out here (I couldn’t beat this webinar or this blog), except for a few key ingredients:

Three Rules and Five Principles (these remind me so much of Buurtzorg):

Rules

1. Do no harm
2. Stay Legal
3. Agree purpose early

Principles

1. Understand, not assess
2. Pull for help (or refer and ‘hold’)
3. Decisions about the work made in the work
4. The caseworker/citizen set the scope
5. The caseworker/citizen set the timescales

Having the rules and principles helps enable real agency for staff, who can follow the rules and be guided by the principles, whilst still having so much flex.

Approach

·        The importance of relationships

·        High support and high challenge

·        Bespoke by default

·        Minimising power dynamics

·        Start with the person

Organisational requirements

·        Having air cover to crack on.

·        Giving space and flexibility to experiment and iterate

·        Recruiting for values (more important than skills/experience)

·        Measure success differently, no KPI’s

Common Themes

The Changing Futures Northumbria team have noticed that for many people they support what matters most to people is focused around three core themes:

1.     Somewhere to Live

2.     Something to Do

3.     Someone to Love

True for us all.  Somehow writing it down helps it sink home.

Top Tip

Focus on how the person engages the system and START

Starting…so obvious and so important.  There was lots of references during the day to starting a social movement.  I was reminded of the early days of working with Timebanks in Cambridgeshire.  Somersham Parish Council the first in the country to choose to run a Timebank, and an equally progressive Housing Association, CHS, saw Timebanking as a way to build connection and neighbourliness across communities.  Our team lent a hand to get them started and soon we were seeing the amazing things enabling people to exchange time within their communities can achieve.

We wanted to build a movement, but we weren’t sure how.  A colleague inspired us with this film:

And here’s the TED talk where Derek Sivers explains the importance of the first, second and third followers.  So that the leader isn’t alone dancing on the hill. 

That gave us traction, we started talking about Timebanks everywhere we went, one of the Timebank coordinators was a gifted and compelling speaker, that helped!  We shared stories, inviting people in to learn and get involved.  And it worked by positive contagion, we soon had our second and third followers and before long our fourth and fifth, then in a couple of years we were into double figures.  Each Timebank learning from the others, and each shaped to their own community.

Might there be a similar approach for the Liberated Method?  Donna suggested that conference attendees commit to coming back together in six months’ time.  I love that idea.  How about…

·       inviting back all of those of us who plan to act on what we have learnt.

·       Ask us to bring a friend (could be either someone who loves the idea of the Liberated Method or someone who needs convincing!)

·       Holding a conference with a shared learning focus.  Perhaps use a more Unconference-y style approach, to share all we’re learning.  Or as Matthew Mezey has suggested, perhaps using Liberated Structures?

Longer term creating a Human Learning Systems approach nationally around the whole thing could be interesting.  We’ll need Toby Lowe’s brain to work out if/how to do that, or perhaps just grow the one that Changing Futures Northumbria already have in place and become our own countrywide Action Research Group?

Before heading to Newcastle I’d just started reading Rebecca Solnitt’s, Hope in the Dark and was looking forward to getting back to it, it feels like a really fitting read.  Then I arrived home to find a gift from my brother had arrived which is tempting to dive into… the quote from Nigel Crisp on the back cover also fits the mood

‘(Sick Society) challenges us all to put aside our cynicism, world weariness and feelings of powerlessness and do something to make the world a better place’

I wish I was a speedy reader!

Thanks for the inspiration Mark and team, all the amazing contributors to the conference…and Rebecca and Andy too!  Importantly, thank you to Bev and the team who pulled off the logistics of an amazing event, no mean feat.

It feels fitting to end this blog quoting Donna, in the same way as the last … Bring on the Rebel Alliance.

Creative Gates.

@WendyLansdown on Twitter                 Photo Credit: Donna Hall

When Donna Hall made the call for a Rebel Alliance last year, I wasn’t convinced.  I believed that whilst our team’s work falls into her frame of reference, what we do is basically common sense.  We get alongside communities to help them make the stuff they care about, and want to put their passion into, happen.  It doesn’t feel rebellious or radical….

But my colleagues across the system ‘got it’ whilst I was still catching up…and I realise now that what I’ve found compelling about Donna’s work is how relatable she is, encapsulating the nuanced learning from years of experience in a way which so many of us feel viscerally is right – those of us who came into our roles in the public and community sector because we care and want to be part of making a positive difference.  We share values – believing in people and grassroots action. Donna galvanises those of us who believe in Community Power.

It’s helped me reflect on how the ordinary can be extraordinary and as Social Care Futures say, the true value of ‘a gloriously ordinary life’.

In Neighbourhood Cares, my role evolved a bit differently to the rest of the team, there was room for us to flex and for me to explore community strength through a Neighbourhood lens.  It was so much fun, the Soham community is a treasure trove of talent, and we could be useful supporters of their emerging ideas, particularly through sharing our home, the library (see this previous blog).

Most of our Neighbourhood Cares team were trained Social Workers.  I already had an admiration for the profession.  In those three years it grew and grew, the way my colleagues took their encyclopaedic knowledge of law and translated that into practice, with people at the heart was extraordinary.

From their perspective using the Buurtzorg model through Neighbourhood Cares was liberating, in a way I hadn’t previously understood. Charlotte talked about how in traditional services the system tended to have high padlocked gates which were hard to get through if you needed help, and if you were having a ‘bad enough’ time to get through the menu of options was small and strictly defined.  In her own words:

‘Coming to the Neighbourhood Cares Team after nearly 20 years as a Social Worker, I loved that we were doing all we could to bring people in rather than keep them out. Removing access criteria and thresholds meant we could respond to people at the point that they were telling us things were feeling difficult, so that we made the links and relationships when they were needed and through a conversation, rather than when a waiting list dictated and via an assessment. What we were offering in those situations wasn’t an assessment, leading to a decision about what could be funded. It was information, support, links, practical help, an invitation to be part of what had grown out of our space in the library. And of course, in ensuring the gate was open, we became the place where offers of support and gifts of items to be shared could be left, so that we became better resourced, more of a community.

We were also able to utilise legislation as part of how we understood people in the context of their neighbourhood, with our focus always on the person, their family and community, in a way that had never felt possible from an office behind the walls of the organisation.

Sometimes the people we met did have needs that meant us considering a more statutory route to support. This meant people being considered not only by us, as the individuals we had got to know, but by panels and brokerage teams and commissioners, and we knew that some of the people shaped magic that we felt would be lost in that journey through the system.

I think what we’re starting to see, and what makes me feel hopeful for a ‘rebel alliance’ is that the reaction of people who sit on the panels, lead brokerage teams, commission services is changing. The gatekeepers are becoming more creative. There is still a spark of the rebel who wants to change the world in most Social Workers, I hope. We need people who move into positions of corporate power to retain that rebel spark, even though they are further away from the neighbourhoods we support.‘

‘The gate’ became shorthand for us in our daily conversations.  ‘Which side of the gate are we here?’

It made me appreciate how unusual my role is.  How increasingly rare in the cash-strapped public sector to preserve some roles whose primary focus isn’t on statutory duty.   That said, our aims are the same, to enable people to live their happiest healthiest lives, and as a consequence, needing our statutory services less. 

In Neighbourhood Cares this meant exploring how our statutory and community worlds could join hands over the gate. It felt magical.  We saw people in really tricky life situations supporting each other in a way I’ve never seen before.  An unlikely friendship between a formidable and lonely woman in her 80’s and a young animal loving woman who had an alcohol addiction, who helped build each other up through friendship, and sometimes stern words.

Community development mingled with social work helps create the conditions for people to thrive.  And whilst it felt magical, most of the fairy dust was simple; connecting people, creating a warm and welcoming atmosphere (kettle, room, kindness), people getting support when they needed it and celebrating the good stuff that happened together.

So, it made me smile to see Donna share a picture of her own gate on Twitter (see top)

A gate which embodies creativity… It felt like a metaphor for Neighbourhood Cares.   Using our collective imagination to carve and hone local community solutions through friendship, coffee, Repair cafes and dog sitting.… becoming co-carpenters of our mini-society.

Neighbourhood Cares gave us a protected bubble in which to co-create.  An amazing one where we lived in a parallel universe for a few years, trying out how things could be different if we acted differently

It worked, people loved it, we loved working this way, but it was small and it wasn’t in the real world. 

So, it was exciting to watch the Radical Place Leadership webinar  in which Andrew Laird from Mutual Ventures skilfully facilitated an hour session exploring the ‘Liberated Method’ with Mark Smith and Donna Hall.  Mark has pioneered the method in Gateshead, I won’t try to explain it in depth here, watch the recording, it’s an hour well spent. 

For Charlotte (who talked about the gates) it was reminiscent of the Three Conversations work she had been involved in. In this, much like both Mark’s work and the work led by my colleague Ashling in our Integrated Neighbourhood, small amounts of funding are made available, free from bureaucratic strings, to help unlock people’s personal capacity.  With skills and trusted colleagues (including Social Prescribers, Support Workers, Social workers) working alongside, this helps catalyse the most phenomenal outcomes; the additional vacuum cleaner which prevents a daily precarious stair climb, or the slow cooker that means someone can make changes to their diet.  Small human shaped things that you won’t find on a drop-down menu.

What I took away is how the Liberated Method starts with the person and all their unique strengths, foibles and complexities and enables them to build their life in a practical way, with the person in the driving seat, and a trusted staff member alongside, providing support and challenge in equal measure, and, crucially, having permission to do what’s needed to help the person thrive, with just two rules – don’t break the law and do no harm.

What’s exciting about the work both Mark and Donna have led is that it’s big, bold, built on relationships, trust and critically, it plays out in the real world, amongst the existing hierarchies, siloes and less than perfect partnerships.

We don’t need system transformation to get started.  In Mark’s words ‘we can do 60% of this on Monday’.

Sure, speeding up our journey to breaking down silos and integrating systems will help.  But it will inevitably take time.  I’m so pleased to have bright and brilliant colleagues in senior management and policy roles and the politicians who dedicate their time to make big system change happen for the benefit of the communities they represent.  For example, I’m proud to work for a county council who choose to include individuals who experience socio-economic disadvantage and those with care experience as having protected characteristics. 

Where I feel the Communities team that I work in can be most valuable, is in oiling the wheels to help make the 60% happen. 

Confidence is developing for our team to work beside communities and our internal and external, junior, and senior partners.  Weaving the networks and opportunities for connection which help build the relationships from which emerges the trust. 

We can work in concert with our senior colleagues when they hear, feel, experience and respond to what’s happening in our communities – shaping the big picture to enable the 60% to grow.  A shared value base between us all.

Working towards 70% on Tuesday. 

My heart is warmed by the growing sense of togetherness, how we’re increasingly working hand-in-hand over multiple gates and fences in our places and neighbourhoods. And a growing respect across our hierarchies, a recognition that inspiration and leadership can come from far and wide.

In this vein, I was delighted to learn that our organisation is embracing coaching.  I believe it’s a sign of a progressive county council, who trust in the agency of their people and believe that solutions can come from everywhere.

I’m excited too that our coaches are not only drawn from our L & D team. I’m undertaking the training to learn to coach alongside and as part of my day job, becoming a member of a coaching pool available to all at the council.  It’s been wonderful to meet amazing colleagues from other parts of the system on the training… including Danielle who is PA to one of our Service directors; young, bright and deeply insightful.  And Lucy who heads up our Family Group Conference Team, we think there could be some exciting ways for our teams to collaborate.

However trite it sounds, we are all partners taking steps on a shared journey. What I find refreshing in Donna, Mark and Charlotte’s work, is the open-hearted humility.  Donna comments on ‘spark plugs’, the people with passion and vision scattered across systems who need to be connected, she cherishes and champions them.  Mark recognises that at the heart of the Liberated Method are ideas that are ‘as old as time’ and Charlotte, that Three Conversations ‘wasn’t new, it was the next iteration of the best bits of wonderful stuff that came before’.

In a similar spirit Donna wrote this recent article in the Local Government Chronicle, highlighting the need for organisations to really know the people they support, and emphasising the importance of prevention in the frightening context we find ourselves:

‘£4 in every £5 of this additional spending is on “late intervention services” with a spiralling number of children going into residential care whilst preventative support in children’s services has been reduced by 46% in the last 13 years’

Donna gives us 10 brilliant questions as a system provocation which we’re planning to take to our next Integrated Neighbourhood Board to think about together, there’s no time to lose.

Her clarion call is perfectly pitched to galvanise us all, bring on the Rebel Alliance! 

From a Generalist in the Muddle in the Middle

@wendylansdown

Whilst I admire many who do, I’ve never aspired to climbing the hierarchical ladder.  That’s one of the reasons being part of Neighbourhood Cares felt like the best job ever.  I feel so lucky to work for a council with the guts to genuinely pass over the reins of control outside the higher echelons.  Trusting our team, as we walked alongside the community and those we serve, to do the right thing.  To do what made sense in that situation, with that person, their networks, their skills, their likes and dislikes based on shared values. The only rules were don’t break the law, or the bank and start with the person ‘Coffee then Care’.

The Buurtzorg approach is absolutely genius, and I hope and believe its essence will, in time, find its way into the heart of how we work here in the UK.  My sense is that our pilot was a bit too early and a bit too separate from the real world to take hold.  

The pilot ended four years ago.  Excitingly, I feel a tingle of opportunity here and now.  As an organisation we’ve continued to take learning from our Neighbourhood Cares experience.  It feels as though the stars are beginning to align and creating a space where Buurtzorg shaped work can emerge … not in a purist form, rather in small realistic, incremental steps, moulded by the system and context we’re in.  A context where hierarchies are still at the core of how we work, and can be useful, but we’re not bound by them.  Where we’re beginning to see chinks of light, to embrace the idea that you can ‘lead from any seat in the room’… and that sometimes those seats are out in the Village halls, Men’s Sheds and skateparks of our communities.

Our team is helping to deliver a piece of work called ‘Closer to Communities’. I like that name.  So much more relatable than decentralisation, subsidiarity, or other confusing terms I have to grab a dictionary to understand.  Numerous initiatives are happening with partners across the county to bring this to life.  The plans where I work in East Cambs, are less developed than elsewhere which has created room for experimentation.  

Listening

We have a Community Makers initiative underway within the Care Together programme which is about working more locally, so by nature fits Closer to Communities.  Community Makers has been shaped by listening work we’ve done using Appreciative Enquiry.  The listening taught us that people want to be connected to and valued by their community and that often they aren’t.  The floods of well-meaning posters and Facebook posts we generate don’t always reach people. 

To respond, we’ve learnt from Health Connections Mendip. We’re adapting an element of their work in Community Makers, supporting citizens to become active connectors, linking people they meet to sources of advice, info, and support.  The poster below gives a flavour of the simple and powerful idea which sees people within communities using human contact to make connections. 

The listening didn’t stop at the Appreciative Enquiry phase.  So much learning has come from spending time in the community with the people who make it tick.  I’ve always valued friendly informality and think it comes naturally to me, but I still needed a reminder.  

The promo is welcoming with beautiful illustrations from our colleague Chris.  It was a conversation with Kathryn the Community Link Worker, that showed me I was more caught up in corporate speak that I realised and needed to adapt.  Instead of a ‘Training’ we now have an Information Session and where once was an ‘Agenda’, we now start with What we’re going to chat about.  Inviting people to join us, rather than transferring knowledge from us to them.  In the initial sessions what we’re finding is that it’s us doing most of the learning from the community rather than vice versa.

Serendipity  

If we stay in the same place long enough, over time we develop a rich network, connections with people who have a similar take on the world and a generosity of spirit to share stuff that makes us smile.  

It was a memory of a conversation long ago about Network Analysis which led an old work colleague to share this fantastic blog by Sally from the Understory.   A few weeks down the line and we’re lucky to have grabbed the last opportunity to work with the Understory team as part of their National Lottery Funded project which will see the Littleport community benefiting from their support to create a network map of the town.  To make visible the relationships and bonds within the community, seeing how different groups interact, where they coalesce around things they care about and who they link with from outside the community to make stuff happen.  

Enabling

In our team we’re lucky to have the autonomy to spot opportunities like this and work with communities to make the most of them.  It’s part of the reason we’re here; to seek out the opportunities to bring nascent ideas to life.

I picked up the postcard in the picture at the top of this blog from the New Local Stronger Things conference earlier this year.  It’s a familiar quote, but this time it really struck a chord.  It resonates strongly with the work of our team – As the Communities Team we don’t hold power, we’re in the unusual position of not directly delivering a statutory service and we have very little in terms of budget.  What we do have is the huge privilege of working with amazing people creating magic in the places where they live.

We’re Enablers. Always alongside, never on top.

In Littleport the Network Mapping will be an enabler for us to reflect and learn alongside the Littleport community.

We also bringing people together who can make stuff happen… whether through forums we host or off the cuff intro’s between diverse folk who once connected can make good stuff happen.

I’m learning that Time Credits are another enabler.  They are a community tool which values time people give to their communities.  In the last blog I shared how Aidan, a fantastic young man who my husband and I support once a month, is feeling valued and supported for his time and skills, in a world where that isn’t always the case.

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have done things for the first time here in Cambs using Time Credits; learnt to swim, been to the theatre, gained their first paid job (often at the place where they earnt their credits).

It’s been a bumpy ride for Time Credits over the last few years, Covid hit particularly hard, not only in terms of impact on volunteers, but also for Tempo’s Recognition Partners – the businesses who generously offer activities and opportunities free of charge.

Getting back on track has taken longer than anticipated, and with the current contract ending in March next year, that’s an added uncertainty.  

Amongst the uncertainty is hope.  And that hope comes from thinking as a system. Over the decade that I’ve working with Tempo on Time Credits, we’ve moved on from seeing them through an organisational lens, how they can help us deliver our priorities, to recognise how Time Credits support shared aims across organisations – a golden thread which helps people lead happy, healthy lives where they are valued for contributing to their community.  

What we’re exploring now is Time Credits as fuel for the system.  What’s different to a decade ago when we began the Time Credits venture, is that Neighbourhood working has come on leaps and bounds.  What really excites me now is that the Time Credits Community fuel pump can be installed in Neighbourhoods, elevating the impact that can be achieved to a new level, with partners in each neighbourhood collaborating to make best use of this community resource.

Listening and Enabling with a sprinkling of Serendipity!

Back to where I began…Whilst not hierarchically ambitious, I – like so many colleagues – have impact ambition. 

Now, more than ever, I can see our team’s role.  Being the glue in the system and doing small stuff that makes big stuff possible; connecting, creating space for improvisation.

Sticking with it for the long run is the other key ingredient, and one of the reasons I feel so incredibly lucky to work in East Cambs.  We have so many people across the system, who have stuck about for a long time.  People who naturally had a shared value base, and through the Integrated Neighbourhood have met, building relationships and trust. Now we’re in a position to utilise those values to create a shared sense of purpose which we’re learning to describe and develop a joint narrative.   The themes from this blog have been key to getting us where we are:

• Listening, really listening, to everyone
• Enabling – improvising, holding things lightly, creating space for a way forward to emerge in a world of complexity
• Serendipity – with people across the district being well connected, friendly and inviting others to join in conversations, we increase our chances of spotting, creating and making the most of golden opportunities.

And with all of this, whilst money would really help and change the level of impact.  We can, and are, doing something useful right now with what we have, where we are.  

For me, I’ve stuck the postcard next to my laptop as a useful reminder.

Motherhood and Lemon Pie

Aidan comes to spend a weekend with us once a month.  He’s the happiest person I know.

He learns differently and I’ve learnt so much from him.

At work our team’s role is all about connection, helping to glue the system together and being led by people and communities, starting with what’s strong.  Aidan does all these things instinctively.

Ian and I met Aidan a decade ago through Cambridgeshire County Council’s Link service.  When he turned 18 two years ago and was transitioning from Children’s Services, it was time to think what next and whether we wanted to move onto the Shared Lives service.

To us, Aidan is our friend.  We’re lucky that we can afford to support him without claiming expenses and decided to continue as friends, not through the formal system.  In many ways that’s such a simple thing, at the same time it felt quite profound, a few things struck me:

• The Link service created a safe framework for natural bonds to develop
• Over time our relationship grew, along with trust between Aidan and us, and his wider family and friends.
• I was really impressed by how the Social Workers supported the transition, making sure Aidan would be safe, and so keen to enable our friendship to bloom outside the county council.

Aidan gives us so much.  Just thinking back his last few visits, he’s a natural Community Connector.  In spring he was visiting Mother’s Day weekend.  My mum died 12 years ago, I miss her dearly.  Having our own children wasn’t to be, so it tends to be a day tinged with sadness for me.  This year was different, Aidan wanted to do something for his mum.  She loves Lemon Drizzle… so we used my mum’s mixing bowl to make Aidan’s mums cake.  He was so proud and we had more than would fit in the tin, so he was keen to share with our neighbours.

Aidan is a natural community connector.  We’ve always been blessed with lovely neighbours…  through Aidan and his boundless curiosity we’ve met folk further and further down our road.  He’s formed a special bond with Miah, who drives a taxi and is often in and out, Aidan loves watching for him at the window and Miah spots him and comes for a chat. They’ve got to know each other well and Miah offered to take him out for a drive.  Aidan loves all vehicles, especially taxis and was beyond excited.  He couldn’t wait to tell us about it all on return and Ian took a picture which he cherished.

Next time he came, Aidan proudly showed us his newly printed sweatshirt, with the picture emblazoned across the front and couldn’t wait to show Miah, who was equally excited and brought him over to show the whole family, amongst the chatter Aidan heard about a recent visit to the mosque.   This piqued his interest and soon we’ll be off to explore ourselves.

We’re often out and about locally litter picking, an opportunity to chat with folk in the process. It turns out Aidan’s a diligent litter picker. He’d like to sign up as a volunteer with our local Street Scene team. This means he can then earn Time Credits, a community currency you earn for time you give and can then exchange for a whole range of activities from cinema ticket to entry to the Tower of London.  This warms my heart as I’ve worked with Tempo to develop the Cambridgeshire Time Credits programme for over a decade.  Aidan’s experience in developing his skills, being valued for them and then having a fun experience that he’s earnt in return is a great expression of why we started the programme all those years ago.  Our local pool accepts time credits and he’s enjoying learning to swim.

Excitingly, we’re now in conversation with colleagues across health, housing and beyond with the aim of growing our partnership to use Time Credits as community fuel for the whole system… But that’s for another blog….         

Aidan with Lemon Drizzle…if you look closely you can see the top of the photo printed sweatshirt

What happens if we Listen, really Listen, and grow from there?

by Wendy Lansdown. On Twitter @wendylansdown

Appreciative Enquiry in action – Ely Market Square

I recently learned that a dear friend who I have lost touch with sadly died last year. Roger and I had worked together back in the early 90’s at a hospital for people with learning disabilities. We were both baffled by why people in good physical health were in a hospital, on the outskirts of a village, separated from the world, even more so in the ward we worked on, with its locked doors due to ‘challenging behaviour’. I was fresh out of uni at the time and Roger tacitly became my mentor, helping me to understand how to work within a system, to build a new way of doing things.  

Roger taught me to listen, really listen, including to people who didn’t use words to communicate. He recognised people as human beings, discovering what made them tick, uncovering long hidden personalities, finding voices, seeing skills, where others only saw problems, challenges and need. Our team supported people who had rarely left the hospital to go on holidays where they – free from the restrictive ward environment – emerged from their shells. One literally finding his voice, speaking for the first time, having been electively mute for decades.

The changes wouldn’t have been possible without Ruth, an amazing nurse who started at a similar time and facilitated us as a team to set a strong joint vision. She created the space for good stuff to happen and gathered energy around the emerging positive culture. People who didn’t want to work this way, chose to leave, often for another more traditional ward. New team members were recruited who shared our values, and creativity flowed, together we brought in what we might now describe as early versions of Circles of Support.

Remembering Roger, I started seeing parallels with where I find myself today and with Neighbourhood Cares. Since the pilot ended, our team have moved on to an array of different roles inside and outside the council.  We are in regular contact (still using our Out of Hours What’s App group!).  Each of us continue to passionately hold our Buurtzorg learning as our compass, bring it to our daily life, hugging our vision of a stronger future, one which is community-led, where everyone has agency, built on strong relationships. 

Then and now, listening is at the heart of everything we do.

Gary Wallace has extensive experience of using Appreciative Enquiry in the world of Public Health in Plymouth and he kindly shared his wealth of learning with us. Almost 50 of us from across the East Cambs system are now trained in this listening technique; community and faith leaders, residents, policemen, social workers and Integrated Neighbourhood colleagues. We’re focusing on what helps people be happy and healthy at home for as long as possible.  We’ve heard a lot about the importance of being valued, connected and having agency.  Here’s our write up of our first attempt at using our new found skills. 

Now, in our deeper dive, we’re out and about having conversations at Warm Hubs. I love these rich conversations (although, perhaps unsurprisingly, we’re finding many people don’t love the ‘Warm Hub’ name). Something that struck me is how important it is for people, especially those who are more introverted, to be personally invited to join in. One gentleman shared how he’d been asked to bring his war medals. ‘It gave me a reason to come through the door’. 

Rich conversations are also happening across the system, the process of having the conversations has brought us together and our insights are sparking new potential.  One of the Clinical Lead GPs for our Integrated Neighbourhood got in touch to ask if her new GP registrars could join in the next training session. An opportunity that wouldn’t have come to light a few years ago. 

 Our Appreciative Enquiry work is firmly-footed in our Integrated Neighbourhood team. Ashling (who manages the Integrated Neighbourhood Programme) has deftly weaved an Appreciative Enquiry approach into numerous strands of work from Winter Wellness to Population Health management.  Others are using the technique for their work on vaccinations, community transport and one-to-one support. 

I’d describe our work as ‘inspired by’ Appreciative Enquiry, we’re not purists. It’s still relatively early days, we’re fledglings… although as Gary says, it’s less about learning something new, more about unlearning being a formal, straight faced professional, and remembering how to have a normal conversation.

Something else which has followed from listening to our communities is a small jointly run initiative which we’ve developed with our Integrated Neighbourhood. Volunteers are matched with Carers and their loved ones to make friends and for the Carer to have some time for themselves. We’ve seen some great outcomes, we’ve learned a lot, and can see how an evolution of the project will take it to a new level by incorporating the coordination role in a more systemic way. Simon, the PCN Manager’s has a brilliant approach. He suggested using the Care Coordinator role which is within the gift of the PCN’s as the ‘chassis’ for something more bespoke to our local need. The role is due to be advertised soon. And that feels core to what we’re all about, responding to what we hear by being creative with what we have.

With each of these examples there’s something about us as a system ‘getting each other’, seeing how we’re aiming for the same thing, using our shared values and approach to shape the way forward together. I love how Ashling describes it, ‘a relational way of neighbourhood working’

It feels as though we have done the work we need to now, to create the pattern for our joint system team. We’ve cut out the pattern and mocked up our first attempts to see how system working fits our organisations.  For our council the stepping stones have included Transforming Lives, Neighborhood Cares and Think Communities, with each step our paths more seamlessly intertwined with our partners.  

We’ve expended a lot of time and energy doing pilots, projects, and programmes…it’s been worth it to get us to this point.  Now we have a good fit and it’s time to proudly wear our new clothes.It is time for this to become ‘the way we work round here’. 

We are starting to think differently with Care Together, our newest initiative. As a ‘programme’ our team have struggled with measures and all the gamification and reporting they bring. I think this is particularly tricky for us as a Community Team.  Despite many attempts, our work just doesn’t fit into predictable linear boxes where we can say what will happen if we do well. However, together we are finding our way through, for example, 50 people have now been trained in Appreciative Enquiry and this measurable “output” is a foundation for positively impacting people’s lives in a way which will evolve organically.  We aim to retrospectively measure what happens as a result. I see Care Together as a bridge – straddling the tricky waters between traditional ways of working and a more nuanced approach which recognises the complexities of the real world.  With it, we have the potential to tread the delicate path between our current necessarily hierarchical structure, reassuring colleagues that we’re doing what we said we would do, whilst simultaneously generating space for creativity and the ability to work alongside our communities, sharing power, respect, ideas… based on where we are, what we see and iteratively shaping the future together.

We’re currently taking inspiration from Frome as we develop a Community Makers experiment (more about that soon) and I find it really interesting that in Frome, when they are thinking about the difference they make it’s in terms of real system change over multiple years e.g. 21% reduction in healthcare costs versus 21% rise across the country. 81% experience a wellbeing increase. And, 17% fewer emergency hospital visits versus 28.5% increase across the county.

Perhaps we are on the path to become more Frome.  It would be wonderful if we have comparable shared achievements when we have the luxury of looking back at what has emerged through whole system change, rather than trying to predict what will happen through single workstreams.

Thinking back 30 years to when I had the fortune to work with Roger, we were working for the NHS in what were seen as health-related roles. The positive winds were already driving change on a national scale with the Community Care Act, and within a couple of years we were delighted to be supporting the ‘patients’ to become residents of their local communities.  

And thinking back just three years to Neighbourhood Cares, there may be some parallels. Funded by the County Council, we were seen to be in council roles. In reality my roles both three decades, and three years ago didn’t fit into the health, council or any other siloed box. Done well, the aim of most public and community sector roles is about supporting people to have a good life. A good life as whole people, with all the complex, often wonderful, messiness that that entails. In East Cambs many of us in preventative roles come together informally as a Healthy and Wellbeing team – and we’re beginning to think how we can use our joint capacity to respond to what we hear.

It feels as though, within the existing system, we have begun to build a new way of doing things for our place, and that’s now ready to emerge bold and bright.

Is the Integrated Care System (ICS) our opportunity for system change today? And could our Integrated Neighbourhood be a starting point?

Yes, I think so, albeit less clear cut than the Community Care Act, but perhaps more fitting for that very reason.  The ICS gives the structure for building relationships and the canvas for us to jointly create something local, East Cambs shaped, with our communities… the chassis for our Neighbourhood to build whatever vehicle best suits our communities. 

Should I Stay or Should I Go….for the next step up the ladder?

by Wendy Lansdown | on Twitter @wendylansdown

The fabulous graphic created by Delta7.com at the Stronger Things conference.

My boss Elaine is leaving.  She is one of the most hardworking people I know.  She was instrumental in setting up our county Covid hub and can turn a committee paper on a sixpence.

Think Communities Area Manager is a tough role, requiring a whole heap of skills.  It’s also one that can make a real difference.  Applications were due this week which meant some serious soul-searching for me.  

It would be a steep learning curve, but I  believe I could do it.  Having not long turned 50, I found myself thinking I should be more ambitious and go for it.  But something was holding me back.  My colleague helped me frame it, suggesting I think about what I ‘want’ to do, rather than what I ‘should’ do.

That was a game changer for me.  What gets me up in the morning and keeps me excited after a decade in a variety of roles, each relating in some way to translating Localism, Big Society and now Levelling Up into real life… is where I can help catalyse community led change.  I love being alongside people and communities as they make magical stuff happen where they live.

I came into my current Place Coordinator role around the same time as Covid arrived.  As well as the community element, it’s also about being part of the positive glue which binds the system together. I love it.  The challenges that have meant a slow start – pandemic, Housing Support Fund, redeployment – are also the ones that have made us stronger.  To face these, partners across the system have worked in new ways, together.  The anchor colleagues I mentioned last time, have been my greatest source of learning.  Together we’ve built a kind of community infrastructure.  This weaves together formal elements – such as the Integrated Neighbourhood Delivery Board and Community Safety Partnership, with the informal; Parish and Community Forum and Virtual Wellbeing team. It made me smile when the set of principles we agreed for one partnership, was quickly adopted across them all, shining a light on our shared values and purpose; combining our efforts to help people thrive.

We’ve only just begun the real work.  I’m so excited for what we can create together with our communities. With help from Gary Wallace – who is kindly teaching a group of us how to do Appreciative Enquiry based on learning from Plymouth – we’re embarking on Listen Up East Cambs where we will use our new found skills to listen deeply to local residents and then take an experimental approach to what we do together to respond to what we have learnt.

This is all within the context of Care Together:Happy at Home.  I was apprehensive about leading a workstream within this programme.  I don’t really ‘get’ the whole programme management thing.  Like many working in community development, I find our work doesn’t fit into its neat boxes.  However, it’s proving to be a constructive experience.  Whilst I’ll never become a fan of New Public Management, my colleagues in the core team are showing me how we can use a programme management approach more flexibly.  We’re framing outcomes in the knowledge that if things change, they too will change.  There’s a recognition that lots of the learning we’ll draw isn’t predictable right now, and that much of the fab stuff that happens won’t be because of us, although hopefully we’ll have a hand in helping create the right context, rather than getting in the way!  Using Programme Management more flexibly brings the tantalising prospect of being able to build a bridge away from New Public Management to something which deals with the real world and all the complexity and humanity it entails … a Human Learning System approach maybe!?

This was all spinning in my head as I attended New Local’s Stronger Things Conference. There were so many compelling speakers, one that really struck a chord for the moment, was an 8 minute Lightning talk (brilliant concept, thanks New Local, a bit like mini TEDs) with Jon Alexander who articulated beautifully the importance of us acting collectively as citizens.  How, long before the individualised ‘Stay Alert’ message arrived from central government in the pandemic, all our communities naturally galvanised to help each other in a way that made sense in that place. 

It was great to discuss this idea with place based partners, how we can amplify the role we already play in convening, connecting and catalysing to help oil the system.  Excitingly, as well as my own team mates, I attended with a colleague from Health, with more from our Integrated Neighbourhood team joining online.  This felt like a step change since the last conference two years ago.  Whilst New Local has always been about the whole system, the connection between each partner’s role has never been more palpable. We found ourselves reflecting on how, together, we can develop the community infrastructure I mentioned above.  How our communities will increasingly become the beating heart of our system.  One idea we have is to co-create a kind of simplified place based deliberative democracy – a community hack-a-thon perhaps, whereby communities bring and share specific current challenges, along with food and world-cafe style approach and come up with some experimental ideas to try.  Will let you know how that one goes!

If you missed Stronger Things watch back here, and be sure to attend in person next time, such a rich experience.

Intertwined in all of this is the other reason I want to stay where I am.  When I joined local government, it was all about knowing your place in the hierarchy.  Fast forward a decade and we’re in a refreshingly different world.  One where the potential for leadership is everywhere.  I’m excited by what we’re learning as a system, and the ability to influence regardless of our titles. I don’t need a new job further up the ladder to make a difference, I can do that right here, right now.  Naturally there will be direction on how our time is spent.  What’s refreshing is that there is also now a recognition that –  by liberating staff and inviting us to invest collaborative time with partners and residents – we as a system are investing in community led change.

So, the night before the deadline, I found myself writing a blog instead of a job application, happy with where I am, in a role I love, feeling like I have some agency, and buzzing for what comes next.

Purpose, Trust and Connection

by Wendy Lansdown, Place Coordinator | on Twitter @wendylansdown

Care Together Workshop

A quiet January has  created some pondering time, a belated opportunity for reflection on the head-spinningly wonderful experience that was the Buurtzorg Caring Places: Building Healthy Communities Conference …. refreshing, scary, and nourishing in equal measure. 

It was my first in person conference since the equally mind-bending Stronger Things conference just before the first Lockdown.  I’m a bit of an introvert and with this emergence from hibernation, I found myself seeking out quiet corners, even the loo at one point, to find some headspace…room to process the rich, bamboozling array of ideas, conversations and mental fireworks, and just the experience of being amongst so many people again… a tingling shock to the system.  In those snatched moments I saw the core of our Neighbourhood Cares work more vividly than I have before.  Also, what remains true of the work of our Think Communities team today; Purpose, Trust and Connection.  The day was full of powerful stories, people who have lived and breathed Buurtzorg talking about its essence.  The founder Jos de Blok summed up its core in the plenary, encouraging us to mobilise our networks to create health by ‘focussing on Human Driven Systems and Community Centred thinking’.

This got me thinking about our Think Communities team.  We came into being less than a year ago, mini teams of three in each district.  Our purpose echoes that of Neighbourhood Cares; to support people to be happy, healthy and independent in their community, perhaps with a greater emphasis on interdependence. 

We are expanding the focus from adults with care and support needs onto the wider community in a holistic Asset Based Community Approach.  The aims and principles continue to chime with those of Neighbourhood Cares – we’re all about building trust, led by people and communities we work with, walking alongside each other. 

Caline, Chris and I are the East Cambridgeshire team.  As for so many in the public sector, the year hasn’t gone as we planned, the pandemic brought changing priorities and redeployment.  Yet, arriving in the new year we found ourselves with hope in our hearts, realising that despite all the unexpected twists and turns we have already started to feel more connected with our communities, and feel excited for the year ahead.

Chris became involved in a lovely piece of work before Christmas.  He’s got a skill for helping enable community magic without taking the limelight.  Through a walkabout in the small village of Westley Waterless, he discovered a real enthusiasm amongst local people to bring their dusty village hall back to life.  The amazing individuals he met already had ideas and energy, they asked Chris and other community partners if jointly they could help bring people together.  So Chris booked our Community Engagement Vehicle (aka repurposed Library Van) and joined the community for a few hours of fun and plan-hatching.   The event was buzzing, almost half the village turned up!  And a few weeks later the village hall has six new committee members, a new chair and the beginnings of a plan for the future.

Caline is one of those people who brings out the sparkle in others.  Through some early work we have done on the Care Togehter initiative (more about that later) we met a woman who is one of life’s natural community connectors, who was saying how sad she is that the communal room of their housing scheme has been unused since the pandemic began.   She is fizzing with ideas and has asked for a hand to help make them happen, Caline popped by and they had an initial conversation with their helpful housing warden and have plans to use all of the local neighbourhood connections to bring the community’s ideas to life.

Along with these community-led local initiatives, we’ve been getting to know people across the East Cambs ecosystem.  Like Neighbourhood Cares, our work is all about relationships.  Boy have we landed on our feet in East Cambs!

We feel so lucky to be in a place where finding shared purpose and values has come so naturally.  The two GP Clinical Leads of the Primary Care Networks which cover the majority of our district both believe health creation is at the heart of their work.  In the District council our colleagues embrace partnership working and across the community and voluntary sector we have found allies keen to collaborate, some weary from having been trying to do so for years, still welcoming us as we finally catch up with their thinking.

So far our work has focused on building a community framework for collaboration.  We’re really fortunate that across the system there are people who act as anchors – in both a pioneering and ethical way.  Across Primary Care Networks, communities, councils, education and Community Safety Partnership, there are people who share values and purpose and believe in collaboration.  People who have been in roles long term, and importantly, don’t plan on disappearing any time soon.  I really value weekly catch ups with anchor colleagues from district council and health.  It’s a friendly relationship, where we share what matters and work out our next steps.  We know the importance of good communication and together we frame conversations that can work across our communities.

This stability and shared view has been fertile ground on which to build collaboration.  The Integrated Neighbourhoods and Community Safety Partnership (CSP) have led the way, developing a broad, active and diverse membership and a momentum for change.  The few members who sit on both boards are helping fuel inspiration and cooperation.  

This is all part of a wider community tapestry, which we’ve enjoyed helping to weave.  The Parish and Community Forum which was mentioned in a previous blog ( Community is for Life, not just for Covid ) is going from strength to strength.  At the most recent meeting we discussed the growing concern around Food Poverty, we found a shared passion for this from across our communities and an enthusiasm to work together.  As a result, an online gathering has taken place and a plan is forming for a District wide Food Poverty network

The Mental Health initiative we mentioned here, also arose from the Parish and Community Forum.  It has played a role in garnering interest from a wide range of partners – charities, schools, community leaders, commissioners and health workers – people keen to collaborate to support positive mental health. When we first got together, we shared sad stories of desperation, long waits and isolation and felt a sense of futility.  However, through continuing to meet, we’ve found a sense of agency, a space where we can be positive.  We will never replace clinicians and therapists, but we believe the community can play a useful role in supporting people to stay well, or even helping in a fitting way whilst people are waiting for services.  We’re shaping a plan for a community based peer support initiative, focusing on young people.  There’s an appetite for this in one of our market towns.  With the wonderful mix of individuals and organisations involved, we believe this could be the start of something locally grown, and we have the right supportive expertise in place to build in the necessary safeguards whilst keeping the community at its heart.

All of these collaborations involve our Social Prescribers; an inspiring, talented team who have made such a phenomenal difference in such a short time, despite the pandemic turning their roles upside-down.   They connect, encourage and enthuse their way to some brilliant outcomes and go above and beyond to banish isolation, help people find purpose and meaning, a reason to want to live a long and healthy life.  The Social Prescribers are key to our Virtual Wellbeing Team. Meeting once a month, along with Community Navigators, Community and Housing colleagues, Health, Voluntary services our new Community Enterprise Catalyst, to have a friendly conversation about our shared interest in the preventative world, helping people to thrive.

When we meet this week we’ll have Care Together: Happy at Home on our agenda. Shortened locally to Happy at Home this is a new collaborative initiative in which our district will be early adopters of an Asset Based Area approach which will then grow across the county (great recent publication from Think Local Act Personal here). The photo above is from one of our early workshops. 

I’m excited to be leading a workstream within Happy at Home.  This blog is already too long, I’ll be back with detail as we get underway.  We are going to adopt an experimental approach, inspired by the Human Learning Systems work, and specifically by insights from the Practical insights into Putting People First event.  

Our instinct is to begin by inviting partners across the ecosystem to join us in using Appreciative Enquiry to listen and understand from residents how they see and value their community.  And together to use this learning to help people be happy at home for as long as possible.  

We believe that part of the warp and weft of this community tapestry will be inspired by Compassionate Frome creating a Community Maker role whereby we invite local residents who are natural community connectors to utilise the new How Are You East Cambs? website and Elemental software to help the people they see in the natural course of their lives to connect to the amazing wealth of community activity on our doorsteps.  Less a formal volunteering role, more a Dementia Friends style way to support brilliant people who are already making amazing connections at the heart of our communities.

It’s great to arrive in the new year with hope and excitement for what lies ahead.  Also to continue to feel the reverberations of Neighbourhood Cares running through our work today.  At the Caring Places event (which can be watched here) the importance of employing the right staff with the right value set was emphasised.  My boss has done an amazing job of this – creating a diverse countywide team with an eclectic skills mix and a deeply held belief in community power. 

Caring Places was also all about trust.  In a similar way to Neighbourhood Cares, Think Communities is building trust into our team framework, empowered by a Director who encourages us to proceed until apprehended, so long as we do no harm and leave the law and budget intact.  How liberating is that?  I wondered initially if this bravery was teetering on rashness. But no, it’s well judged. This pioneering, motivated team with shared values and brilliant partners across the county can move mountains and we keep each other on course through our shared purpose, trust and connection.

I’ve been a happy passenger on the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) bus now for about a decade.  For most of those years ABCD has felt like a nice thing that the Community Development team do, providing stories that make you feel warm inside. In itself this is worthwhile, real outcomes for real people like Anwar and sometimes going a step further by partnering with one or two other organisations as we had the pleasure of with Soham Library in Neighbourhood Cares.  Good and worthwhile, but still relatively small.

Writing this blog I’m catching a glimpse of what might be.  The partnerships forming in East Cambs are creating new possibilities.  What ABCD can achieve when it’s embraced and woven into the heart of the place – smoothing the road and fueling the tank for acceleration.   I’m looking forward to Stronger Things 2022 – Community Power: The Movement Grows to help light the road ahead. We are part of this movement.

It may be a tiny dot in the distance, but I can just begin to see how Purpose, Trust and Connection shared at an individual, community, organisational and eco-system level can make meteoric change.  The kind that have been seen in the Wigan Deal and Compassionate Frome. Where you stop trying to discern how a tiny piece of ABCD practice causes change – almost impossible to gauge in a world of complexity.  Instead you’re seeing at scale how a whole place embraces a way of working and being. Then – over a number of years – the crunchy undeniable impact of whole system change becomes clear.  A change so big and systemic that you can get past the limits of a Theory of Change (which work well for linear change created by individual projects, less well in complexity) and into the world where together we can demonstrate system wide change.  

In Wigan the proportion of physically active adults increased from 48 percent in 2012 to 63.4% in 2017. Over a six year period early deaths from Cardio Vascular Disease reduced by 29% for males and 25% for females.  And in Frome this happened:

published on Shift Design website

In both cases the changes have been made over the course of a decade.  It’s early days for us, exciting ones.  The sense of joint endeavour is palpable.  The fact that I’ve run out of synonyms and used the word ‘collaborative’ way too many times is indicative of how much this is at the heart of our work.  And the nature of that partnership is key.  A colleague from the district council reflecting on a groundswell of momentum we’ve all felt, commented ‘do you think it’s because we leave our egos at the door?’. Yes, absolutely, it feels like we’re all here together, using a shared compass to find a mutual path, and helping each other up rather than blaming each other if we stumble along the way.

A Local Viral Ice Bucket Collaboration?

By Wendy Lansdown | On Twitter @wendylansdown

On Sunday Patrick Quinn, the founder of the Ice Bucket challenge sadly died aged 37 of motor neurone disease.  What an amazing legacy and inspiration he leaves.  It made me nostalgic for that year when icy water brought so much fun and awareness, and personally at the end of that long hot summer (or is that just my rosy specs?) I got involved in a local community off-shoot – the Nice Bucket Challenge which saw neighbours exchanging buckets of lovely stuff… including many courgettes!

Every day I’m amazed by the creativity of individuals and the ingenuity of communities working together to move mountains.  Just recently this has been super-charged, and it drew me back to our blog to grasp the opportunity to appreciate, reflect, and ponder on how through our Think Communities approach we (folk in the public and voluntary sector) can support in the most useful way and amplify the effect, or perhaps proliferate through positive contagion, as we wrote about in Neighbourhood Cares in the days before Coronavirus.  I would really value your insights and help on this – please do get in touch.

Since the beginning of the pandemic a few East Cambs organisations have worked together to host a Zoom forum, a monthly space for community connectors, conveners and leaders to get together, share learning and collaborate.  One of the core themes emerging has been an increasing concern about an imminent mental health crisis, and forum members feeling ill-equipped to respond.  After an interesting discussion and exchange of experiences at one meeting, one of the Mutual Aid group members invited Tony Sigrist from Talking FreEly along to our next.  What a brilliant invitation… Tony had founded this organisation to raise Mental Health awareness and skills in our community.  He had the experience, knowledge and passion that people supporting their neighbours were calling for.  We formed a partnership, Tony kindly providing his time pro-bono to train up to 100 volunteers in the district on the Mental Health Aware course via Zoom. With Talking FreEly jointly funding the materials alongside East Cambs District Council, and the County Council promoting and coordinating.  So far over 60 people have been trained, with superb feedback, including one person who is planning to go on to the advanced course and become a mental health champion for her community.

Some of the towns and villages have their own online networks for collaboration. Following Neighbourhood Cares, I feel privileged to continue to be involved in one in Soham where a bunch of us from the local Foodbank, churches, schools, social prescribers, library staff and community association link up.  As so often happens, some of the best discussions happen before the meeting really begins. As I joined, a District Council colleague was sharing how her small village of Coveney had been adapting their usual events for pandemic times and the Soham vicar’s ears pricked up at the idea of mini-fetes.  Unable to have the usual scale of festivities, Coveney residents had adapted one big event into a series of mini ones spread across a month rather than a day.  A few chats and a visit later and Soham had its own mini fete with its own local flavour … complete with pumpkin fair paraphernalia and more…

The following week my colleagues Agnes and Yannick brought together our Time Credits Earn Partners.  Tempo Time Credits are earned when people give time to participating organisations and can be redeemed on a wide range of activities from a swim at the local pool to entry to the Tower of London. As with so many areas of life, it’s been tough lately – challenges for earning with many volunteering opportunities on hold, and equally with spending – almost all venues are closed.   Again the meeting provided a good connection point, a place for people with a shared sense of purpose and values to share ideas.  This time the connection sparked a brilliant idea from the Linda at Pinpoint – the Parent Carer Forum for Cambridgeshire, run by parents for parents. One of their biggest challenges currently is the extreme isolation of the families they represent.  Discussing this issue led to a creative idea for both earn and spend…. Where children’s birthdays could not be celebrated in the traditional way, then their day could be made special by volunteers dressing up to wish them a special Happy Birthday over Zoom… within 10 minutes we had suggestions of everything from puppets, juggling and Am Dram to singing, dancing and balloon sculpture!  Student Community Action’s representative Caroline was on the call and plans are already well under way to make this idea a reality.  And Agnes is working on a development of it… to bring Santa’s and elves Zooming into people’s homes as an alternative option for people to earn and spend Time Credits this Christmas.

There’s not a day goes by when I don’t feel lucky to be in a role which gives me so many opportunities to work alongside brilliant people who are making great things happen at a local level.  Now that I’m a few months into this role, I’ve also had the opportunity to start collaborating with others who share the same aims.  This week I’ve been working with Granville, CEO of Voluntary and Community Action East Cambs who is leading on the development of a Community Support Network for the district.  In the first instance this is as simple as identifying a group of people who are interested in their communities and sharing news of what’s happening and opportunities to get involved.  We hope it will evolve from there into a supportive network of community minded people who harness energy, help each other out and build ideas together.

Excitingly, we are currently advertising Community Connector posts (deadline is 29 November) .  The focus of these roles is to walk alongside communities supporting them to build on their strengths and resilience to create places where people live happily and healthily for longer. Reflecting on the power of collaboration, we think that a good way to kick off could be a socially distanced road trip (Lockdown allowing) around the district.  On the way creating positive stories for a range of communications channels in the form of mini-films, vox pops and photos, populating a map with all the interesting stuff we find along the way.  It will be well worth a visit to Coveney… where on 5^th November residents all turned out on their doorsteps at 6.30pm, sparklers in hand for bonfire night! 

Simple ideas worth spreading… it feels like we’re creating our own community version of TED talks… or the (N)ice Bucket Challenge… or perhaps in reality our own unique East Cambs shaped way to celebrate our incredible communities, learning and growing together.

I think adapting Neighbourhood Cares learning may be helpful again here.  Similarly, to the way our Neighbourhood Cares team recruited for people with shared values and work within an agreed framework, I wonder if it might it be a case of inviting community-minded people from across the district to join together as a light-touch team, igniting ideas, inspiring each other, and taking community ingenuity viral?  If you’re thinking about this too and have insights and challenges to share remember to get in touch. Thank you.

Community is for Life, not just for Covid.

by Wendy Lansdown | Twitter @wendylansdown

Following Neighbourhood Cares – my favourite job ever – I feel lucky to have stayed with Cambridgeshire County Council and found a role whose potential excites me just as much.  As Place Based Coordinator in our new Think Communities team.  My role is all about collaborating across the public and voluntary sector to see how we can team up better to support our communities.  Whilst we would never have wished for it, the pandemic has demonstrated the amazing power of community, and shown that community spirit isn’t something that we lost decades ago, but something that’s here and now in big bold colours today.

I love the diversity of responses from our communities.  In East Cambridgeshire where I work, we have a rich mix of examples; from neighbours-helping-neighbours, to Mutual Aid groups, to Timebanks, to Parish Council led volunteer teams, and in some cases a partnership of two or more of these.  The trend – even now with people going back to work – is that the community groups have more offers of support than requests for help.

The head scratcher for me has been to work out how I can be most useful.  Alongside colleagues from the District Council and the charity Care Network we realised we needed to understand how things were going for those who really know.  So, we listened to; those leading community responses, colleagues across the public and voluntary sector, people being helped, concerned neighbours and co-workers who were speaking to residents who are shielding. 

Following some one-to-one conversations, we held an online catch up with Parish councils and people leading community responses to ask how they were doing, and how we could help.  We found strong insightful groups who had creatively shaped their response to suit their community.  What seemed most helpful on the initial call, wasn’t anything to do with our statutory duties as councils, rather offering the space to hear from each other, empathise over shared concerns, and share experience on what had and hadn’t worked for each community. 

The enthusiasm and connections made on the first call, led to us suggesting another, and so began a regular on-line get together.  The most important messages and the inspiration in these calls always come from local communities.  It’s taught us as Local Authorities that rather than ‘telling’ people what to do we can be way more helpful by listening to what’s needed and asking what we can do to help.  On both sides of the conversation we’re honest about our parameters and through constructive conversations work out the next steps together. 

After the first few virtual catch-ups a shared concern was emerging – community leaders not being confident that they had reached everyone, particularly that those who aren’t online may be out of the loop and not know the local help and support that is available.  A second emerging theme was the uplifting stories that people were sharing from each community, how each community had used its own unique mix of skills, needs, connections and personalities which led to a plethora of brilliant and community shaped responses – from the local windmill keeping everyone in flour to the 80’s band sharing their songs from a front garden, to Captain America delivering Easter eggs, each created their own trademarks and in so-doing built new connections and new friendships, often between people who have lived in the same village or town for many years now making the most out of the opportunity to connect with new acquaintances.

The regular catch ups have now got a name – the Parish and Community Forum, and through this meeting space we are finding new ways to collaborate.  To ensure all residents had the info about local support whilst also celebrating the community stories we came together to produce this Community magazine for the District.  A real collaboration- with communities leading the way by contributing stories, one wonderful furloughed volunteer, Zoe, offering her comm’s skills to capture them.   East Cambs District Council covering the printing, public and voluntary sector providing key info, and County and District councils collaborating to bring the edition together.  Then a huge wave of volunteers helping to deliver door-to-door across the district.

As we’ve got to know each other and hear about each other’s ideas, so they have spread.  In Soham local community leaders noticed that many, often older, people were increasingly feeling the negative effects of isolation, but did not want to be ‘befriended’, rather were looking for a reciprocal relationship.  VE day provided the inspiration for a themed letter writing project between school children and community members, one which has evolved to include the local care home making a film of their residents’ memories, home-made gifts exchanged both ways – from pictures to embroidered bookmarks, and an evolution of the idea to incorporate sharing of crafts!

Reciprocity is also happening at community-scale with the exchange of ideas – Fordham, the neighbouring village has started their own community pen-pal scheme, and Soham residents are inspired by Fordham’s Wish Tree – the hopes and aspirations of locals may well be fluttering in the Soham breeze soon!

Personally, I’m learning that to be helpful in my new role I don’t need to be controlling anything or telling people what to do.  Listening, being open to ideas, connecting and being alongside has been where I’ve felt most useful.

Our response to the pandemic has been to absorb, and adapt – but might there now be an opportunity to transform?

“Just doing what we can, where we are, with the people we are connected with”

Thank you to our blog readers for sharing your experiences of lockdown with us. What a rich narrative we received! More than 30 of you responded, from a variety of fields; NHS (frontline and management), voluntary and social enterprise sector, Local Authorities, housing, psychologists, coaches and more. We expected stories illustrating how different things are under lockdown, but hadn’t anticipated so many silver linings. We wanted to see if there was a common thread, or threads, what we could learn from, and how we can build on the positives in our future (personal and professional) lives, ‘post-pandemic’? We weren’t sure how to do this in a logical and readable way without adding our own bias. We feel incredibly lucky that our colleague Caroline Lee, senior researcher at the University of Cambridge, accepted our invitation to help. She joins us as guest author, with an interest in collaborative and community-based approaches to health and wellbeing.

Charlotte (@ckkirin) & Wendy (@wendylansdown)

Guest Blog by Caroline Lee, Senior Research Associate, Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and Cambridge Institute of Public Health

find Caroline on Twitter @cazzerlee

When Charlotte and Wendy put out the call, the country was reeling from the immediate shock of being told to stay home, stay safe, protect the NHS. What did this mean for our work, kids, partner, family members? The vast majority of those of you who responded were clearly still working during this time, so there were reports of disruptions to working patterns, locations, workload, priorities, emergency procedures, uncertainties over need and availability of PPE etc. As time went on, though, you settled into new routines. What you found different, positive, and worth keeping offers insight for developing caring communities…

Ingredients for Caring (Covid-19) Communities?

In developing caring places, we need to acknowledge that we are operating with multiple identities – as workers and professionals – but also as individuals, family members, carers, neighbours, friends, and sometimes also as patients, and people who need help and support. Your stories were both ones of personal and professional adaptation. A mix of emotions were being felt – often simultaneously – togetherness, relief, recognition and gratitude (especially for key workers), alongside fear and, sometimes, resentment (of those with time off in their gardens).

Personal resilience

There were observations around coping, and ideas perhaps linked to personal ‘resilience’, such as being aware of and accepting these mixed emotions, embracing uncertainty, alongside greater appreciation of the ‘little things’ and what we have got (a job, a home with a garden, someone else to share your household). We noticed other people and our surroundings, and we appreciated nature, birdsong, quiet, a simpler and slower pace of life.

Many positive thoughts about ‘community’ were expressed, and you reflected on the importance of relationships, and reciprocity. There was a feeling of being ‘all in it together’. Community spirit was out in spades, aided perhaps by the fact that we had more time for our own communities. With less or no time spent commuting, we were more available to our families too, resulting in a better work-life balance. Did this contribute to an ability to absorb the shock, and adapt our responses?

Professional resilience

On a professional level, a sense of community was equally important, it seems. Investment in building team spirit was essential, and there were interesting reflections that when physical meetings were replaced with on-line, stronger relationships resulted from colleagues really ‘seeing’ and getting to know each other for the first time. New work patterns were not universally welcomed, though, and some reflected that online meetings are hard, while resentment could build where a lack of equity (in workload) was perceived.

Adaptations to work practices followed including, but not limited to, the opportunities of ‘digital’. Significant wins were recorded from a ‘can do’ approach and attitude, translating to faster decision making, better prioritisation, and overcoming organisational barriers.

“… Covid makes people much more focussed. This was the shortest meeting of this group ever! We need to retain this sense of focus … and not return to our previous rambling discussions.”

“Released from shackles of procedures, people work together towards solutions”

“Good to just do what feels right”

Negative side-effects?

While positivity was much more evident, there were observations too of the flip side to agility and responsiveness. These included: panic, anger, blame as well as ‘holding on’ to power and hierarchy. Similarly, warnings were also there to be careful and not allow a ‘rescue’ culture to develop, undermining a person-centred approach.

Unpacking the learning and moving forward

Some of the themes above speak to concepts of wellbeing, social capital, and resilience. When we talk about resilience, we often think about the ability to respond positively to shocks. It seems that the aspects highlighted above were key to our ability to absorb this particular shock – Covid-19 -, as well as to successfully adapt our responses – both personal and professional.

If resilience is what we need, how do we build it while avoiding negative responses? Understandably we see it is easier to commit to change at home than change at work. There were several ‘notes to self’ to look after our own health and wellbeing, to: slow down; reflect; be present; connect more; and take more exercise. Concurrently, we aspire to looking after the environment including reducing our car use. In our professional capacities, though, our thoughts are more ‘aspirational’ – recognising and reflecting on a need to act collectively within and across organisations.

“Will we take time to pause, notice, and learn? Not rush in, solve & put back – but take this chance to reset?”

“We need to be purposeful about the future we create – not just back to business as usual”

“… feels exciting because I can see so much about HOW we do things that shouldn’t return to pre-Covid normal as well as WHAT we do.”

What might a ‘reset’, rather than a ‘return’ (to normality) look like? In the reflections, there were strong feelings about what needs to happen, and what has supported us in supporting others. Good communication is vital, as are networks and infrastructure, to underpin our readiness to respond and mobilise. Encouragingly, it looks like people are already involved in localities where some of the right ingredients are in place. Capacity to mobilise also requires a broader understanding of influences on people’s health – “health is created more by people in communities than by hospitals”. There is a plea for ‘systems, not silo thinking’, joint working, recognition and sharing of assets and resources across communities and organisations.

Conclusions?

In a pre-Covid world, the ‘Caring places’ conference intended to pose a number of questions for discussion, including: How can public sector support community development? How can regulation and innovation go hand in hand? How can organisations support frontline staff to self-manage? All of these have been highly pertinent in our response to Covid-19, as shown by comments about: shedding bureaucracy and a ‘can do’ approach; working with local groups, not rushing in on a rescue mission; and the importance of communication and regularly ‘checking in’ with colleagues.

Can we use this experience to push for more transformative change, and ways of living and working that will improve our capacity to respond ‘next time’. Ways that build on what we have now, and support sustainability in the system? Has the shock of Covid-19 created a space and readiness for transformation? We’d like to think that it has.

As one respondent put it: “Having a shared purpose can move mountains”

 

Post-script: Please continue the conversation with us as we build on what we think we knew, and what we have learned since. If our blogs resonate with you and you would be interested in writing a guest blog, just get in touch – wendy.lansdown@cambridgeshire.gov.uk